osp blog - works

NaturArchy exhibition design

2024-06-04T16:03:00+02:00

Introduction

OSP were commissioned by iMAL to design a graphic identity for the exhibition NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract, taking place in Brussels, from the 25.05 till 29.09.2024.

As the exhibition is comprised of art/science collaborations on the theme of nature, we began with an intention to experiment with pen plotters and bio inks. The bio inks were previously used in a 2018 collaboration between OSP and María Boto Ordonez, a scientist working at the Laboratorium.

Pen plotters

A pen plotter is a machine that draws. Or rather, a machine that takes instructions to plot coordinates on the x- and y- axes with a pen, while it is up or down. These machines pre-date the modern office printer as a way to output vector graphics on paper.

Using a pen plotter is a slow, musical process. We found the "songs" it made came from the shapes it was drawing - the pitch depending on the angle of the line. A plotted circle (which is in reality not a continuous curve, but rather a series of small increments of points) produced a musical run through a wide range of notes. Often we could know which drawing it was making by the song it was playing. Drawing the same shape (for example a flower) in two different sizes, would create the same melody but at a different speed, the small flower playing at a higher tempo.

Pen plotters speak a language called HPGL (Hewlett Packard Graphics Language), which has a relatively simple syntax. HPGL uses commands such as SP (Select Pen), PU (Pen Up), PD (Pen Down), PA (Plot Absolute), PR (Plot Relative) and LT (Line Type). For very expanded documentation, the Isoplotec website is a good resource.

There is quite a collection of pen plotters available to use within the newly-created plotter station at OSP. The machine that we used was a Roland DXY-1100. It holds A3 sheets of paper electrostatically in place for a pen to move over it. After the machine is initialised, the plotter picks up a pen from one of eight slots in the carousel. The thickness of the lines it will draw depends on the type of pen, and specifically the width of its nib. We used both commercially manufactured Stabilo brand pens for synthetic ink and refillable pens to hold the bio inks. As the pens we were using were not manufactured specifically for pen plotters, we had to fit a 3D-printed adaptor that the machine would be able to hold. Several methods for making fine adjustments in the vertical alignment have been improvised by other pen plotter enthusiasts, such as the students of XPUB (Experimental Publishing) Master at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. We did not have such a vertical alignment tool, but instead improvised with masking tape, trial and error.

It’s hard to seek total control and perfection with the pen plotter: sometimes it’s not grabbing the pen, it’s pushing too hard, sometimes the bio inks are too dry leaving no mark, or too inky creating liquid stains. It is this uncertainty we cherished but which also required us to stay next to the machine all the time, either fixing the mistakes by hand, or embracing them and watching them happen, mesmerised. After some time, the pen plotter felt like a companion or a pet, that we had to feed and take care of. It had its own personality, being always surprising and nonlinear. We caught ourselves several times silently smiling and observing its every move, rocked by its melody. Like a proud parent, our phones were full of videos of its actions.

Bio inks

The bio inks we used for this project are created by María at the Laboratorium, a biolab located within the Media Arts Studio at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent. They are made with natural pigments and algaes, and they naturally disappear when placed in direct exposure to sunlight. We decided to work with this ephemerality, imagining having posters with some details almost completely faded out by the end of the exhibition.

Before visiting María’s biolab, we made some experiments by plotting with “natural” inks we made from materials we found at the OSP studio: soy sauce, turmeric and coffee. The result was exciting but very pale and only brownish in hue. The aspect of these inks when used on paper is very close to watercolour, it’s very pale, fluid and had a fragile feel.

At her biolab in Ghent, María generously gave us some new bio inks: a very bright pink, a deep blue, an orange and a green, which were much more interesting to work with. Because María is working more with structured color these days than with bio inks, she still had some reserves left over.

Some inks worked great and without needing close assistance, for example the pink was very fluid but dense and the result was very bright. In contrast, the green was hard to mix and was very pale, almost invisible. The timeframe for this project was super short, so we didn't have much time to experiment. With more time we'd like to dig a bit deeper into different fluids to mix the pigments with (such as alcohol, or oil).

The poster series

Our initial research involved trying out making patterns that used the shapes of iMAL's identity (circle, square, triangle, diamond). These shapes provided a basic starting point from which to understand HPGL. To draw a line, the pen plotter needs instructions where to take the raised pen to. These come in the form of a direction to move the raised pen to a set of coordinates. Then a direction to put the pen down and move it to another set of coordinates. In this way, the machine uses HPGL to draw the outlines of shapes, and crosshatch fills for them.

We generated patterns in HPGL using a python script. These created a series of moiré effects that we could directly send to the pen plotter. We tried also with a stereotypical flower drawing, using only basic curves, and other typographic experiments. The fonts we used come from the Hershey typeface. These were generated from an extension of the software Inkscape. We chose to use Hershey fonts as they are monoline fonts, meaning that they are composed from lines. This makes them therefore suitable for a pen plotter, which draws lines but not fills.

First, we had to use an inkjet printer to print all the partner’s logos at the bottom of the poster. Plotting all of these legibly would have been a real challenge. It was risky, since the outcome would have created too much change to the logos, which needed to remain intact. A big pile of coloured paper with only small logos at the bottom was then ready to be plotted. The default Clairefontaine paper is usually very popular for printing, we used this type since we had some leftover at the OSP studio.

We plotted from 10am till 10pm for three days approximately, to produce a total of 42 posters for the exhibition. Each poster is structured with informative text: the title of the exhibition, the location, the dates, a context sentence about the bio inks, and credits about the partners of the exhibition. Those rather formal assets served to structure the posters and let us play around with the background elements. No two posters are the same. Sometimes we had to readjust the pen position by hand, some pens drew clearly, and others left stains and blobs of bio ink. We composed them in the moment, laying them out on the floor in the studio to see them together, while trying out different inks and shapes. After scanning all 42 posters, they were sent to iMAL with instructions to attach them to their large glass windows near the entrance. We're most curious to see how the duration of the exhibition will change them.

The other exhibition assets

Alongside the posters, we also produced other assets for the exhibition, including designs for introduction text, exhibition title, captions for the artworks, flyers and a digital kit of imagery to use online.

At the end of plotting process, we had some spare sheets with logos at the bottom. We recycled them and asked iMAL to use them to display the introduction text at the entrance of the exhibition.

As for the title of the exhibition, we mimicked the drawing process of the plotter. Usually, vinyl is applied to the glass outside of iMAL for exhibition titles, as it is a weather-resistant material. However, we decided to not use vinyl, opting instead for water-based paint. We printed the text that would be displayed on A3 sheets, which were then stuck together, one for each glass panel. These were then placed on the glass inside iMAL, and the lines of the Hershey fonts were traced by hand on the glass outside of the space. When it rains (as it often does in Brussels), the paint may wear. It can then be traced again as long as the exhibition is on display.

The captions of the artworks have been laser engraved directly at iMAL since they have a wood workshop and a laser cutting machine. With the gesture being similar to the pen plotter (sending a file to a machine that draws), it was an efficient reference of our initial process.

We were asked to deliver 2000 flyers to promote the exhibition. As this volume was unreasonable to produce with the pen plotter, we printed them using the Risograph technique at R·DRYER STUDIO. This seemed a good alternative, since Risograph has a crafty and “imperfect” aspect and also is more ecologically sound than an offset or digital commercial printing process. We could produce the flyers locally in Brussels, in dialogue with the printer. The process felt also similar to the posters since each layer of the flyer was printed with ink in different colours.

Finally, we delivered a “digital kit” which consisted of scans of selected posters, that had different levels of legibility. We selected them from a range of very legible posters to more experimental and stained versions. Each poster could be cropped as a square or a rectangle, for different social media purposes. The scanned posters have a particular materiality which felt interesting to see on the usually sleek and perfect screen.

Balsa modes d'emploi

2018-07-02T21:07:00+02:00

Septième saison associés avec le Théatre de la Balsamine! Et pour celle-ci, sous le signe obligé mais d'une certaine jouissance, l'arte povera numérique d'OSP en auteur visuel et à l'écriture de modes d'emploi. Déplier une table pliante, bricoler un piège à mouche, tenir les voiles pendant la tempête, nouer ses lacets avec un dead knot, faire un cunnilingus, construire une barricade... Le tout en courbes spiro torréfiées bruit imagemagick.

↑ Entre autres références, Les économies au féminin, Skip, 1980

Le poster dans le métro en prémices Inkscape, avec son historique fournis de sept saisons de logos.

Le programme-pass en A6, avec html2print et deux couleurs spot décalées. À voir aussi en pdf les 64 pages avec les couleurs spots avant traitement ou la couche du noir des 64 pages après traitement.

L'affiche A0 en version unique sur le totem à côté de la Balsa.

Les premiers flyers qui inaugurent la gamme de couleur bien bam.

Et le site web installé la saison passée, balsamine.be/#saison-1819 complètement remoulu en spot colors et timeline acide sucrée.

Making a living

2011-05-09T22:37:00+02:00

makingaliving.pdf
OSP contribution for the LGM Tools-exhibit in StudioXX, Montreal.

Archipel is under construction

2010-05-18T20:08:00+02:00

An organology of contemporary musics
"Archipel is a navigation on emotions and their history through sensorial zones."

La Mediatheque asked OSP for a full scale project: a new section called Archipel. It is an honour for us to collaborate with this gigantic library of media institution.
Archipel will be a serie of fictional islands where supports will be mixed and organised through sensitive keywords and subjective browsing.
OSP team has on charge graphics for its visualisation, identity, graphics, web consultation and on site installation.

The website deals with complex database and break through SVG interface, where Michael Murtaugh seems to get fun.
Furnitures are also part of the project, And Mathieux Gabiot leads this new design dimension of open source publishing - we're currently working on a GPL-based license for 3d objects.
After an draft installation at BPI during Cinema Du Reel 2010 festival in Beaubourg last month, public launch will occur this fall.

More to come soon!

Valentine scripting

2010-01-29T13:09:00+01:00

Poster and flyer designed and produced in OpenOffice

This week and next, colleague and friend An Mertens (a.k.a. Ana Foor) works out of the Elsene local library Sans Souci. She'll be listening to your account of meeting a loved one for the first time, those habits that keep your relationship alive or which imaginary place you would like to visit with your best friend. Just like an oldfashioned Ecrivain Public, Ana Foor will transform these conversations into unique Valentine letters and -stories published on the fly. In the waiting room, a selection of (Dutch language) romantic literature is available, plus a choice of styles and formats presented in a catalog developed/designed by OSP's Femke, Ludivine, Ivan, Nicolas and Pierre M.

For practical and conceptual reasons, we wanted to produce the customised stories and letters with the help of the well-known word processing tool OpenOffice, and were curious to see what could happen if we'd use that same tool for designing and printing the catalog, poster and invitation too. Most of all we couldn't resist to play with odfpy, a Python library that can generate .odt documents from scratch. It got us into various strange and exotic problems, just the way we like it :-)

Templates

This form lists all possible styles presented in the catalog

We designed a set of 6 basic lay-outs mixed with 9 different decorative 'spices' and this for three different types of content (story, poem or letter). On top of that, there are three types of media to choose from (web, A4 sheet and booklet). To help identify each of the styles, we came up with a flexible system of re-combinatorial template names that also somehow explains how the project works:

Sexy Maan
Lavendel Panter
Lungo Ijs
Espresso Stormen
Chocolade Valleien
Koraal Verlangen
Kristallen Maan
Roze Panter
Champagne Ijs

odfpy
"Unlike other more convenient APIs, this one is essentially an abstraction layer just above the XML format. The main focus has been to prevent the programmer from creating invalid documents."

Nicolas had pointed us to the odfpy library a while ago, and this lovely catalog seemed the ultimate opportunity to experiment with it. odfpy adds a Python-scripting interface to OpenOffice; with the help of this library you can dynamically generate files in the Open Document Format (.odt, .ods). odfpy uses OpenOffice in the background, but without its graphical user interface.

To see what elements an .odt-file consists of, 'extract' it like a .zip or .tar file

<office:body><office:text><text:sequence-decls><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Illustration"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Table"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Text"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Drawing"/></text:sequence-decls><text:p text:style-name="Standard">Hello World</text:p></office:text></office:body>

Fragment of content.xml

The Open Document format is written in a rather clean kind of xhtml, which means it is legible compared to most other Word Processing or Desktop Publishing files we looked at. Still that did not mean it was evident how odfpy generates a frame, or calculates the size of a font. The odfpy documentation is rudimentary; it provides extensive information on the hierarchy of frames, elements and styles but for example not a list of what style-options are available. While it is nice to know at what point a frame needs to be generated, without the syntax for a single or triple border, whether it is red or shaded you can only guess. We designed sample files and than browsed their 'source', reverse engineering document settings and -styles with the help of the Open Document file specifications. It obviously took us a ridiculous amount of time to generate 162 different templates in this way.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*- # drawing hearts in the snow! from odf.opendocument import OpenDocumentText from odf.text import P, Span from odf.style import Style, TextProperties, ParagraphProperties, BackgroundImage, GraphicProperties from odf.draw import Frame, TextBox from texts import * from liblove import *
From the header of character_spices.py: A heartwarming address

Even when the odfpy-scripts Ivan was writing and rewriting, started to read more and more like love letters themselves ... even with our general distrust of efficient methods ... would we have been better off doing all this by hand? With the printer deadline approaching rapidly, we had to settle for a very basic set of styles but managed to use nearly every OSP font currently available. This publication will be both a stalenboek and fontcatalog.

herbal_scripts.zip
After having installed odfpy, run $ python name_of_script.py in your commandline and generate many .odt files at once

OSP_fonts_ok.zip
Sneak preview: Drop the contents of this folder into [yourhomefolder]/.fonts and restart OpenOffice

Output to different media
Our next concern was to generate a pdf that could be handled by the in-house city council printer of Elsene. We had 162 A4 .odt files and three A5 .pdf files (produced in Scribus) that needed to be combined into one pdf. We wrote a bash-script that takes all .odt files inside a folder, transforms them into pdf, resizes them from A4 to A5 and than gathers all files into a multi-page pdf.

transform.sh
Using some of our favorite tools: unoconv, ps2pdf, psresize and pdftk transform a series of A4 .odt files into a multi-page A5 pdf.

As we were working on generating the files until the last minute, we failed to notice that we somehow introduced full color into a pdf that would need to be printed in black-and-white. Also, the printer needed PDF1.3 and we were generating default PDF1.4. In a quick fix, we added ghostscript to the already long list of pdf-tools used in the bash-script; probably making many other steps redundant (ps2pdf has ghostscript integrated for example) but no time for clean-up or rewrite.

transform_gray.sh

Still not all trouble was over. Our printer reported that he was unable to deal with part of the embedded fonts (Unable to read .ttf? Using an old-style rip?) but probably inspired by our friendly persistance, he figured out a way to transform our files into postscript once more, regenerate the font-images from there and finally ... the file passed.

Textflow and style names

OpenOffice: Where did the characterstyles go?

The custom publications An will produce on the fly are based on the same .odt templates that we printed in the catalog. In a first dry-run, we realised that they needed to be corrected since the documents we had generated for the printed catalog, basically consisted of single frames. Also, it took a bit of work to generate documents that made the applied styles correctly available in the OpenOffice style menu. We managed by making each of the documents 16 pages (maximum length of the booklet) but gave up on making character styles behave correctly.

podofoimpose
“PoDoFo is a library to work with the PDF file format and includes also a few tools. The name comes from the first two letters of PDF (Portable Document Format)”

After Ludivine converted three of our favourite templates into css stylesheets for web-output (we love @fontface!), our last challenge was to deal with was imposition. Since early OSP-days we've been experimenting with several ways to generate A5 booklets, but we never managed 2 x 8 pages on an A4 (A7 booklet). Pierre Marchand pointed us once again to PoDoFO, a pdf-processing tool to which he once added podofoimpose, adding the useful function to run custom imposition 'plans'. With only a bit of trouble and help, we installed PoDoFo on our machines (We're using Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.10):

Start with downloading ('check out') the latest files with svn (install svn with $ sudo apt-get install subversion)

$ svn co https://podofo.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/podofo/podofo/trunk podofo

Download and install the libraries PoDofo depends on:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential g++ cmake libz-dev libtiff-dev libjpeg-dev libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig-dev
$ sudo apt-get install liblua5.1-0-dev

Than, copy the files into a folder into your home directory (you need to create the folder first):

$ mkdir /home/[your_user_name]/src/podofo
$ cp /home/[podofo_download] /home/[your_user_name]/src/podofo

From inside the build folder, you now need to compile PoDoFo from source with the help of the cmake-compiler (install cmake with $ sudo apt-get install cmake)

$ cd /home/[your_user_name]/src/podofo/build
$ mkdir $ cd $ cmake ../podofo $ make $ sudo su $ make install

podofoimpose can read imposition instructions from files written in lua, a scripting language that is used with ConTeXt for example. With the help of a proper paper dummy, Ludivine managed to write the correct 'plan' to output A7 booklets :-D

InOctavo.plan

PushRecord((pgroup*count)+9, (count*2)+1, rot2, 0, tw) PushRecord((pgroup*count)+16, (count*2)+1, rot1, 2*th, 0) PushRecord((pgroup*count)+13, (count*2)+1, rot1, 2*th, 3*tw) PushRecord((pgroup*count)+12, (count*2)+1, rot2, 0, 4*tw) PushRecord((pgroup*count)+1, (count*2)+1, rot1, 2*th, tw) PushRecord((pgroup*count)+8, (count*2)+1, rot2, 0, 2*tw) PushRecord((pgroup*count)+4, (count*2)+1, rot1, 2*th, 2*tw) PushRecord((pgroup*count)+5, (count*2)+1, rot2, 0, 3*tw)
Turning and twisting: imposition from scratch

You can use the plan like this:

$ podofoimpose output.pdf input.pdf InOctavo.plan lua

A loose hand
When the printed catalog is finally delivered, the result is not what we expected. Pages are out of order and it seems they only printed the left bottom crop/bleed mark and than everything has been cut out of the format at the top and right side. When we try to complain, we realise that dealing with an in-house city council printer has its complications. To explain our exotic project to them is not easy. But we do not flinch and keep smiling, even if we did not hand in any certified pdf's ... and even omitted page numbers! In the end, the responsible politician grants us a re-print.

So ... after all: A Happy Valentine!

Future Farmers Free soil

2009-06-04T12:24:00+02:00

A journey through the history and currents of free education, counter-institutional movements and the economy of information in Silicon Valley + beyond.

Free Soil presents a bus tour, exhibition, outdoor film/video festival & on-site exchange in conjunction with the 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge in San Jose, California. This tour takes inspiration from the spirit of counter cultural activities prevalent in this region in the late 1960’s, namely the activities of the Mid-Peninsula Free University, Homebrew Computer Club,draft-resisters and the back-to-landers. These prototypical models of alternative education formed in reaction to the growing influence of the military-industrial complex on American universities. Courses were taught on topics ranging from intentional communities and sand-casting candles, to Maoist political theory , “To Be Gentle,” and "The Art of Giving Away Bread."

...Join 30 artists, scientists, curators on a 1.5 day long journey that includes small walks, lectures, mini-workshops and other particpatory events. The Tour lasts 7 hours and includes lunch, drink and snacks.

As part of the Free Soil Bus Tour Project a reader will be collated and printed by this occasion. This reader is primarily a resource for people engaged in experimental/alternative learning projects. Marthe is now working hard on this reader by trying Scribus. And OSP is willing to get on the bus at last stop, to share the joy of this journey in coming weeks, someday in sunny June.

Hic Sunt Leones

2009-03-20T22:20:00+01:00

... and for the same Cinema du Réel festival, OSP worked with Michael Murtaugh on HIC SUNT LEONES, a collective slideshow of on-line visual contributions gathered during the festival.

Javier Packer, director of the festival, describes the project as follows: "HIC SUNT LEONES means 'Here are lions' in Latin. Romans used to write this on maps over unexplored territories suggesting unknown dangers could lie there. What does 'Cinéma du Réel' mean to you? What images of the world would we like to share with others in this improbable and undefined community created by the user of the project? What uncharted lands? What dangers?"

http://www.hicsuntleones.fr

Contributors can choose at what point they want to insert their upload, and as a result images start to respond to each other, make and break groups of images, build a narrative. The slideshow was screened in the festival's public space.

The playlist-code is available here: http://activearchives.org/wiki/Software

OSP + BPI = Cinéma du réel

2009-03-18T17:49:00+01:00

Carte du réel

OSP has been sollicitated by documentary Cinéma du Réel festival to construct a map for an alternative reading of the movie selection.

Though book-like brochure is the most efficient and practical way to organise complex information of a 3 day with more than 100 documentaries, gathered in 7 different fields, this form seemed too restrictive for its director, Javier Paquer.

The linearity of pages goes against the idea that those movies have complex and multiple relations between them, and programmation is articulated in contexts wich need to be expressed in a way that audience could do their own choice as if they were travelling in a heteroclite thought meaningfull environment.

For that he asked OSP to graphically interprete this diversity and homogeneity...

Modus operandi

We worked in a very close relation, and the map is more done by its director than us.
General image is based on a famous image from Chris Marker's “La Jetée” movie.

The map reflects also a current situation of movies / documentaries / television / cinema situation. It offers a subjective interpretation mixing production and context.
A pleasure to realise, especially with it's director humor.

Moreover, spending 2 weeks on inkscape was a pleasure we didn't expected. Program is stable and pretty much reliable. If you don't go to far in the special features (types on curves, clones...) you're ready for print. And don't forget to vectorise ALL the fonts!

This deep breathe ino inkscape also shown the importance of a collaboration between users and developpers. It's funny to find stitches in interface, or counter intuitive logic when you're using the software.

For that, we'll have few suggestions for the inkscape board...

Most interesting features we used were around the clone functions. Drawing one pictogram, cloning it all around the map and modify this whole by just changing the mother clone is very effective.

Those special features are delicate to handle if you move out of Inkscape. This clone feature react strangelly when svg are imported in other programs.

The CYMK Elephant

Scribus is necessary to get files ready for printing. We imported the inkscape files as SVGs, and converted colors into CYMK manually. (Something should be done at that stage). PDFs looked good. Print culture is not that developped in FLOSS world, but it is very frustrating to see how archaic methods of conversions we had to invent just to get a basic quadrichromical document. This means last minutes corrections are compliquated, as everything is turned into paths and ungrouped.

The biggest threat was to obtain overprint of the black color. Drawing and lines are so thin that we couldn't dare to print in "réserve" (traduction needed)

To avoid it, we did 2 inkscape files: one with Cyan Magenta and Yellow, and separate one with Black. We imported those 2 files in scribus to convert RGB inkscape file to CYMK (manually). Parisian graphic designer “Dasein”, on charge of the brochure, gathered the films.

Check were stressy, due to the fact clones, groups, and “types on curves” reacted very lunatiquelly. Blurs and transparencies have to be avoided. It just don't work once exported, or with heavy and risky file treatment.

PDF is pleasantly light. 2.6 Mega for this impressive 440 x 550 mm document.

This map is integrated in the general programm brochure, and is re-interpreted in large scale in Centre Georges Pompidou, where the festival will occurs.

A table!

2009-03-11T14:02:00+01:00

Un petit livre de cuisine en préparation... il s'agit un livret de recettes créées par les habitants de chez Puerto. Une association qui offre un soutien aux personnes qui sont en difficulté entre autres en leur proposant un repas équilibré à prix réduit. 3 services (entrée | plat | dessert) pour moins de 4 euro par personne, pour un total d'une quinzaine de personnes environs. Un vrai challenge! Le livret sera illustré non seulement par les les mains du graphiste mais aussi par celles des habitants . Une session de dessin a été organisée le 23 février après diner.

En attendant que les légumes soient découpés, le four préchauffe... on espère pouvoir vous faire les partager bientôt avant l'été.

Logo Galore

2009-01-10T11:49:00+01:00

Lots of work going on the OSP Studio.

Here are few of our recent production:

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Logo for
Le Vecteur

Cultural space in Charleroi city

Button version:

This logo that can be adapted in multiform patterns:

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Logo for
The Fernand Baudin Prize

Submit!!!

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Logo for
Parallellipeda

Parallellipeda will be an exhibition on Art and Science, which will occur in Leuven next year, curated by Edith Doove, ed.project

For that, we developped an abstract font that creates 3D "cubic" patterns:

A second abstract font is under construction.

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Designing with LaTeX

2008-10-28T09:28:00+01:00

Designing with TeX: episode I

OSP is currently working on a book containing essays, interviews and images following from the Constant festival/seminar Tracks in electronic fields and we are laying it out in LaTeX!

LaTeX is a tool developed in the context of academic publishing, specifically for technical or scientific documents. It combines markup à la CSS with powerful algorithms automatizing widow / orphan control and intelligent image placement.

We've grown more and more interested in LaTeX because it is specifically developed for typographically sane paper publications, and as far as you can get from regular canvas-based typesetting. We are also curious to experience from up close the sophisticated typographic system developed by Donald Knuth.

How will we be able to design with LaTeX? Will we need to change our workflow? Space for experiment and playing around? Can we use the design patterns built in to the tool, in another context? Will the book 'look-and-feel' like a scientific publication in the end?

There are several reasons to want to know the definitions of LaTeX commands: from the simplest “idle curiosity”, to the pressing need to patch something to make it “work the way you want it”. None of these are pure motives, but knowledge and expertise seldom arrive through the purest of motives.
http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=ltxcmds

Installing fonts in LaTEX has the name of being a very hard task to accomplish. But it is nothing more than following instructions. However, the problem is that, ﬁrst, the proper instructions have to be found and, second, the instructions then have to be read and understood.
http://www.ntg.nl/maps/29/13.pdf

![]({filename}/images/uploads/lines.png "lines"){: .float }

Ivan and Pierre are the OSP's to take the first plunge. Ivan has tetex installed on his Gentoo system, and Pierre texlive on Ubuntu. Getting the Belgian-French Azerty keyboard working was not easy, and also installing other fonts than the default took some time. But once done, they are quickly producing those typical academic standard publications from OpenOffice documents, though this time with quite a different kind of content.

The book is planned to come out before the end of this years so we will report back with more concrete design samples soon.

New Arrival

2008-10-23T09:42:00+02:00

Just arrived from the printer: Routes + Routines, a booklet designed by OSP's Yi Jiang and Ludivine Loiseau documenting Peter Westenberg's Hasseltse Netwerkwandelingen.

New book cover approved

2008-08-21T19:16:00+02:00

We're currently finishing the layout of a new book: FLOSS+Art
Here is a preview of the cover, designed with Inkscape using the "clone tile" function. Font is Not-Courier Sans...

FLOSS+Art critically reflects on the growing relationship between Free Software ideology, open content and digital art. It provides a view onto the social, political and economic myths and realities linked to this phenomenon.

Topics include: digital art licensing,
copying and distributing under open content models,
the influence of FLOSS on digital art practices,
the use of free software to produce art and
the art of producing free software,
FLOSS as an embedded political message in digital art,
paradoxes and limitations of open licenses for digital art,
FLOSS as a way to quote and embed other artworks in
the making of new works, definitions and manifestos
for a free software art…

With contributions from:

Fabianne Balvedi
Florian Cramer
Sher Doruff
Nancy Mauro Flude
Olga Goriunova
Dave Griffiths
Ross Harley
Martin Howse
Shahee Ilyas
Ricardo Lafuente
Ivan Monroy Lopez
Thor Magnusson
Alex McLean
Rob Myers
Alejandra Maria Perez Nuñez
Eleonora Oreggia
oRx-qX
Julien Ottavi
Michael van Schaik
Femke Snelting
Pedro Soler
Hans Christoph Steiner
Prodromos Tsiavos
Simon Yuill

Compiled and edited by Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk

This publication is made possible with support from:
- the Digital Research Unit at the University of Huddersfield
- Piet Zwart Institute, the Willem de Kooning Academy
- Constant
- OpenMute
- GOTO10

500 (printed!)

2008-07-05T14:59:00+02:00

500 unique books installed in Worm, Rotterdam.
Giant pixel image by Gordo Savicic and Danja Vassiliev.

More images: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/image/?level=album&id=23

Towards #2 is out

2008-06-25T13:20:00+02:00

Towards is a cartographic project close to OSP and the second publication is finally out and available after a long 9 months of preparation. Following our informations, it's the last one that will be produced using proprietary software ;)... But the timeline present on the cover and backcover, made from all the posts written since the beginning of the Toward’s website, is already manufactured with an open smile. It has been generated programmatically : a php script has pulled all the information from the database and produced an svg file. A shell script has spidered all the images attached to the posts. All these elements have been glued together using inkscape. The positioning of the blocks have been finalized by hand and with the help of the inkscape connectors. More info and download the code on www.towards.be/code.

Kanttekeningen / Sidemarks

2008-06-09T15:08:00+02:00

Kanttekeningen bij een databank documents our investigation into the inner workings of the database of BAM, the Flemish institute for visual, audiovisual and media art.

To visualise the data stored, we wrote a plugin in Inkscape, manually generated graphs and scripted .svg - you can read everything about what we found and how we worked in 16 pages that are inserted in the back of the CROSS-over book (in Dutch).

All documents, sketches, code etc. are gathered here: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/kanttekeningen.

Cross-over

2008-06-02T20:08:00+02:00

image/index.php?level=album&id=21

Hot off the press: CROSS-over, Kunst, media en technologie in Vlaanderen.
Published by BAM / Lannoo and designed by OSP :-)

500

2008-05-29T20:36:00+02:00

With 9 Media Design students graduating this summer from the Piet Zwart Institute, OSP's Harrisson is busy producing 500 different books - all in Free Software of course. The books contain essays, images, project documentation and typographic experiments and will be printed using the Mute POD system.

Image: Inkscape Clone Tile Color Randomization plus Align and Distribute: Randomize Positions

In the pipeline

2008-04-16T12:22:00+02:00

With * new * OSP Yi Jiang we are currently working on typography and lay-out for CROSS-over: Kunst, Media en Design in Vlaanderen, a publication edited by Liesbeth Huybrechts and published by BAM / Lannoo.

The book is layed-out in Scribus and contains various database visualisations generated in Inkscape (in collaboration with Michael Murtaugh). It will go to print by the end of this month.

Voilà!

2007-11-18T23:37:00+01:00

The Adventure Continues

2007-11-11T20:05:00+01:00

(A post for readers with some F/LOSS stamina)

After producing a flyer for VJ10 in Inkscape without too much trouble, we confidently decide to do a poster next. With a three week programme of lectures, workshops and installations following four interwoven themes, scattered over five locations and of course translated in three languages (Dutch, French and English), VJ10 might not be the easiest event to fit on a poster but Harrisson courageously dives in.

Experimenting with the spray paint tool he soon produces a playful image mixing and mapping the complicated Festival program. But than the trouble begins.

Finalising corrections and inevitable changes, it becomes harder and harder to navigate the document in Inkscape until we can only view it in preview mode. We also learn to split text and image into separate layers and work most of the time with the image layer switched off.

To be able to check the document, we need a full size print and this we manage with the help of poster (although our colour printer chokes on the resulting 450 MB document).

Our solution to produce PDF's with the help of the Apache Batik library is for some reason failing, so we tile the document on the basis of a poorly rendered EPS. In itself not such a problem but we know to expect problems in a later stage.

The problem with Batik originates in the 'flowroot' element that has been added in the SVG specification 1.2. Inkscape incorrectly refers to version 1.0 and Nicolas figures out that when you open the Inkscape document in a text editor and change the reference to SVG 1.0, Batik stops complaining.

But... the problem itself does not go away - the resulting PDF contains black blocks in the place of text.

We figure that 'flowroot' (text that is in a 'dynamic' textbox) is still the problem so we manually select each textbox and un-flow it. Converting the text to outline would also do the job but both solutions create a new problem. We have used colours to distinguish French, Dutch and English texts from each other but when different colors/languages placed in the same text frame are converted, they end up having only one single color.

We decide to give up on colour coding (it would mean to split all languages into separate textboxes - this is too much work and too risky with so little time left for checking and corrections), convert all text to black and mark the transitions with hearts.

Now we have a document with no 'flowroot' left, we still need to convert the SVG to PDF. With the size of this document (600 x 840 mm) Batik starts to run out of memory.

After trying to open the background image in Gimp, importing the whole .svg in Scribus, exporting the background as bitmap from Inkscape and even considering to piece screenshots of the blurs together...

Nicolas helps us out again and explains how we can assign more memory to Java so we can rasterize the file.

java -Xmx1152M -jar batik-rasterizer.jar -m application/pdf poster_vjx_verso.svg

The computers we normally work on, have not enough memory for this so we decide to descend to Constant's cellar and work on the powerful dual core machine that has been custom built by the Open Source Video team to process video files.

We have forgotten to switch on the image layer in the .svg file so we need to open the document in Inkscape first before we can pass it on to Batik. We quickly install Inkscape on this machine through the Synaptic package manager but unfortunately it defaults to version 0.44 which does not handle blur/transparency at all. The Inkscape website offers Linux Autopackages of version 0.45.1 but these fail to install on this machine (this can be the result of the specific set up of the system which is optimized for video use) and we are getting a bit desperate.

In the mean time, Nicolas has managed to convert the file on his machine and has uploaded it to a webserver. The verso of the poster is luckily converted quickly on this fast machine and we are finally ready to hand our files to the printer the next morning.

The printer experiences problems trying to output the file on high resolution, and explains us that this is caused by our 'non standard PDF'. It is hard to be sure whether that is true, or whether we have simply handed in a non-Adobe PDF but in the end he decides to open the file in Photoshop and RIP it from there... :-(

On Friday morning, we receive an e-mail from our printer. He basically tells us that there will be a two day delay (this is partially because of the unconventional folding we chose) but we are also asked to pay an additional 60 euros for having our PDF opened in Photoshop.

The proof we receive on Friday afternoon shows a reasonably well-rendered image, with one surprising detail: the size of the poster has decreased by 98%; and as a result the outer margins are too large.

Another proof will be made with the mistakes corrected and we're expected to do a last check tomorrow morning at 08:00. The adventure continues...

Questions and answers [update]

2007-07-16T10:38:00+02:00

Over the last few months, the OSP and Mute team have established a new design and production workflow for Mute magazine, using Open Source tools. Below are a few of the questions we are encountering during the last stages of this process.

------------------------------------------------------------
Mute 2 6 – Questions and answers
------------------------------------------------------------
Storing images, should they always be kept in the same place, at present we've made a folder for each Scribus document and then I sit an images sub directory, this way I can move the whole set of files around without risking losing images?

Good idea; yes this procedure is necessary (just like old versions of QuarkXpress).

Fonts between OS WinXP/OSX/Linux are not being recognised in ODT or SLA. Linux if OK but WinXP and OSX (check version numbers of Scribus) have problems. Could this be a font TTF issue?

What do you mean 'between'? And what are the problems exactly? (hard to test / recognize the problems for us because we do not have a Windows machine available)

On the biographies, black boxes and the title boxes, how should we bring in the pointed angled graphics into the document?

Re-make your basic shape in Inkscape, save as SVG and import into Scribus (File -> Import -> Import SVG). SVG's can be altered in Scribus.

How do we export text and second how to we make PDFs text machine readable?

We wished we had thought of this beforehand... ~~Scribus automatically outlines *all* .ttf fonts to outlines, i.e. renders them machine un-readable (Subscription pages etc. have already been converted to outlines btw. so there we don't have any choice).~~*

For the next issue, we will need to choose our fonts based on this, but testing is needed because Type1 fonts with problems (a missing glyph for example) might end up as outlines as well.

Even if the font was *not* converted to outlines, the exported PDF's still need to undergo some treatment, but that in itself is easy to do with the help of our friends pdftops and ps2pdf.
(read this thread)

Another option, is to extract text from the .sla; which seems a bit archaic ... although interesting with respect to web-to-print.

* Update: apparently the problem was in the fontfile itself. After using another version, the problem dissappeared.

How do we output with and without Crop Marks?

Save as PDF > check: Clip to page margins (= without cropmarks)
Save as PDF > uncheck: Clip to page margins (= with cropmarks)

How do we join PDF pages together for the book block?

Use pdftk (command line tool):

$ pdftk inputA.pdf inputBpdf output combined.pdf

EXAMPLE:

fsnelting@station:~/Desktop/articles$ pdftk '/home/fsnelting/Desktop/articles/0005.pdf' '/home/fsnelting/Desktop/articles/0004.pdf' '/home/fsnelting/Desktop/articles/0003.pdf' '/home/fsnelting/Desktop/articles/0002.pdf' '/home/fsnelting/Desktop/articles/0001.pdf' output combined.pdf

More ideas/ways of using pdftk: http://www.pdfhacks.com/pdftk/, or see pdftk manual - you can take specific pages from certain documents, re-arrange order etc. etc.

How can we later replace specific pages?

Repeat the above recipe with the new pages instead (you simply re-create the whole package).

How to crop an area from the cover and add it as a page to the book block PDF file?

Ehm... how would you do this otherwise? Our guess: Edit -> Document setup -> change to final cover size; make sure to check 'apply size setting to all pages'. Than re-position artwork, and export as pdf. Add to pdftk ingredients (see above) and merge with other pages.

How do we check and apply leading to the SLA files?

Leading can be applied through styles or in the Properties box (Windows -> Properties -> Texttab), but surprisingly not in the text editor. The properties box is a bit tricky to handle because you will never be sure whether the displayed leading applies to a single frame or to multiple frames, and when you re-apply a leading here, it will overrule the leading applied in styles. Best is to trust styles + check visually with view -> view baseline grid.

How do we update folios and page numbers?

On each article: Document setup -> Sections -> change start number.

Out of the veil

2007-04-28T11:05:00+02:00

250 cm2 of printed matters OSP visit card have been delivered.
They look bright! The file delivered to the printer was a PDF from inkscape.
It seems that the SVG suffered of a RGB to CYMK conversion which altered a bit the colors. All colors were based on 100% of magenta and/or cyan and/or yellow and/or black. And it's not not interesting.

Soundscape goes Inkscape

2007-04-27T14:22:00+02:00

The new maxi vynil from Odessa is about to be send to production. We worked on the label design yesterday and inkscape's "clone generator" feature did the difference. It was the perfect tool to render an electronic disco ball - and type, evoking the minimal dance pop of the music and the complexity of the sound production and composition. Hopefully soon to be heard at your local dance club!

In Print

2007-01-03T11:48:00+01:00

Contribution by De Geuzen in Open magazine about Travail Mobile, a workshop for Digitales.

After theCrash Test-post a few month ago, finally pictures of the result!

Thanks to Peter Linnell (one of the main Scribus developers), who after I posted about some Postscript troubles to the Scribus mailinglist, came to the rescue on IRC.

Crash test: Travail mobile

2006-09-13T09:30:00+02:00

Lay-out in Scribus
Download low-res PDF
Finished! Sketched and produced a seven page contribution to Open (Dutch bi-monthly on art in public space) + inside cover. Images were prepared in Gimp; pattern assembled in Inkskape and document lay-out in Scribus (v1.3.3.2); all on Ubuntu.

- Importing outlines from Gimp, re-using them with multiple images / layers in Inkskape: flawless; selection editor + svg export in Gimp works well with vector options in Inkskape. Had some problems with transparency in PDF-export from Inkskape.
- EPS export from Scribus, after a few trials and errors flawless too; including transparency of layers.
- Lack of interaction with EPS-export is frustrating; default is to crop the document along its margins so all you can do is set margins to zero before export.
- EPS can only export one page at the time...
- Bleed is automatically cut off on export too, but making the document 3mm larger on each side, is a quick workaround.

About Constant Verlag

2006-09-12T22:16:00+02:00

Constant Verlag re-publishes material from the depth of the Constant Archives in A5 cahiers of maximum 48 pages. Some of those texts are available on line as well, others are just saved on one of our harddrives; some written in French, others in English or Dutch; recent or as early as 1997. In addition to material generated by Constant, we have started a sub-series Retrospective Readings, proposing you materials worth re-reading.

Find all editions here: Constant Verlag

If you want your own copy, visit us at a Printing Party or download the PDF and use this recipe. All texts are layed-out using open source software, and available under a free licence.

Inkscape Poster

2006-02-22T23:41:00+01:00

Poster done with Inkscape, the context is the visit of Bob Stein at the Jan Van Eyck Academie

Thursday 23 February, 15:00
The Jan Van Eyck Academie
kindly invites you to:
The Tomorrow Book
Robert Stein presentation