I Heart Design

no. 25

SELECTED BYRUDY VANDERLANSTYPOGRAPHY AS DISCOURSEDESIGNED BYALLEN HORI

In my estimation, one can trace much of the experimental typographic expressionism during the early ’90s to the work created at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, where Allen Hori’s work was my personal favorite. Hori mixed the precision of Swiss design with the spatial freedom of, for instance, Hard Werken, the famous Dutch design studio where he later worked as an intern. Hori was the bridge.

He tied all these experiments together. He abandoned traditional typographic hierarchy and demanded from the reader a fair amount of involvement in order to decipher the message. Hori was also not too shy to include personal messages in his work, both visual and verbal. ...