5 years of Free, Libre and Open Source design experiments. Now available in chronological order: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/works

Last sunday we drawed a book.
675 417 km2 pour Luce
contour lines of France
scale 1:385142
interval : 30 m
strokes : 0.05 pt
16 binded sections
cover : green cardboard 300 g + clothed back
single copy
Sur base des élévations au pas de 250m proposées au téléchargement par l’I.G.N. France. Calcul des courbes de niveaux et sortie Postscript opérés par GRASS [...]

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 [...]

Alexandre Leray and Lauren Grusenmeyer just finished an intense collaboration for the website of the literary platform nY— website en tijdschrift voor literatuur, kritiek & amusement, voorheen yang & freespace Nieuwzuid.

nY-web exists indepently next to the paper edition with it’s own editorial staff, writers categories and settings. While nY is a magazine with a profound literary history it confirms it’s existence as an independent web platform, that is to say — it uses full virtues of publishing online.

Pour le numéro de janvier consacré à la visualisation de données, le magazine français étapes: ouvre une double page à OSP pour notre carte Cinéma du réel 2009.

> voir +

Earlier this year, we were invited to work on the identity of the Brussels-based Cimatics A\V Platform.
Cimatics is a framework for initiating and facilitating audiovisual productions, events, publications and workshops.
To launch the new identity, we developed a new family of fonts! We hope you’re ready for the libre dingbats attack URW Gothic L dusty noisy [...]

Organised by a little open source minded people crew driven by fixed gear bikes, this Alley Cat Race will occur next sunday in Brussels.

Starts
20/09/09 — 14:00 (day without car)
Rue de la Victoire 96 — 1060 Bxl map
Distribution of spoke cards + checkpoint map
Ends
Place du Jeu de Balle — Aperitive, music, results etc.
Inscription: 3€
Trip:
+/- [...]

If you want to dance on the 26/09, here is the place!

Mamma Roma are 3 pizzerias in Brussels. Collerettecocofilllsd designed a logo, OSP adapted it for a flyer and poster. This caracter will be declined on the pizza delivery boxes. Done in Inkscape.

Pierre Normal (pneu) and The Dreams en tournee.
16 June – Strasbourg, Le Troc Café, Rue du Faubourg de Saverne
17 June – Zürich, Kalki, Kalkbreitenstrasse (Palais Chalet)
18 June – Lausanne, Espace Autogéré
19 June – Stuttgart, Club für Flüssigkeiten & Schwingungen
20 June – Genève, L’Ecurie, (Palais Chalet)
21 June – Luzern, tbc
22 June – Genève, Duplex, 波(なみ) [...]

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 [...]

A new version of the impolite NotCourierSans is available on the Open Font Library : NotCourierSans 1.1

Among the 100 people involved in the creation and realisation of this poster, OSP.
2 of them are hidden in the picture (free poster for the one who spot them) and 3 other helped the setup…
This poster was done during the first year graphic design course at ERG, Brussels.
This course has been commissionned by Radio Panik [...]

OSP participe actuellement au développement du projet Gender Art Net.
Gender Art Net propose de créer un atlas interactif donnant accès à différentes vues et lectures d’un ensemble de positions artistiques feministes dans l’Europe contemporaine.

La Selec is a magazine edited by enthousiasts of La Mediatheque, a public service for renting records, movies, games and so on. Each issue La Selec invites a local artist to produce a poster inspired by their recommended selection of medias. This month it was Harrisson, so was consequently OSP. Here’s the poster we did [...]

The association “Jazz in Antwerpen” asked us to do the visual of their concert agenda.
We proposed this black and red Not-Courier logo.
In good jazz magazines this month

… 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.

As a side effect of the BPI/cinéma du réel festival, OSP has been asked to “perform” the program map in full scale in the Centre Georges Pompidou main hall, where the festival occurs.
The map is a derivative from the printed one, folded into the brochure.
It networks the festival selected movies and the subjective links between [...]

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.

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 [...]

Our friend and Dj Athome just recieved a new logotype for his inspiring radioshow. We asked artist ROGER3000 to do calligraphy for. Rough, spontaneous and good style Digitalisation using XSane Image Scanner, and image correction in Gimp.
BIS-ARTSHAKER is being played by DJ ATHOME aka HOPHEAD and guests every wednesday 20:30-22:00 at Radio [...]

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:

= = = = = = = = = = = = [...]

We’re currently working on a poster for the support comittees for the nine people accused of “criminal association for the purposes of terrorist activity”. They were arrested the 11th of november 2008, in France, and 2 of them are still in jail.
They and others are the victims of a witch-hunt in which the word [...]

Nous sommes heureux de vous inviter à la présentation du livre collectif :
- – – – – – – – – – – – -
Vomit’ can ich i’neun dî’neun?
en quoi puis-je vous etre utile?
- – – – – – – – – – – – -
qui accompagne l’exposition
- – – – – – – – [...]

The Libertinage font set we developed for FLOSS+Art book is available on the Open Font Library for several days.
We built Libertinage by copying and pasting parts of Linux Libertine glyphs or simply by all-turning glyphs.
There are 27 variations, one for each latin letter in the alphabet + the ‘Full’ version, containing all modifications.
Un petit goût [...]

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 [...]

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

The FLOSS+Art book (that we proudly were commissioned to design ) will be out this thursday at Mute Magazine HQ!
Book preview, panel discussion and software party!
Don’t miss the opportunity to also check out the Libertinage font set we developed for this book: 26 variations of the Linux Libertine font! Which will be available [...]

Excellent Brussels based graphic design studio collerettecocofilllsd just released a book called “Le Sale Boulot”, from german Franco-Chilean artist Vladimir Cruells. Main font used is NotCourier we designed. We’re proud!
http://collerettecocofilllsd.com/blogblog/

This flyer has been done by hand and by gimp with our beloved DJ Atka, to promote a new clubnight: Le Palais Chalet.
Palais Chalet first event will be this 24th of October, and is called La Corneille d’Or. Pierre Normal, from pneu record label and Dolina will play live. Atka, DJ Athome and Le [...]

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 [...]

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

For a while already, we wanted to experiment with the Scribus Scripter API in a printed job and a catalogue for the Piet Zwart Institute’s Media design graduation show formed the perfect excuse.

At the Polish print party, we tried a possible automation of the nineteen steps. We gave out numbered tickets at the entrance, and at the end there was a numbered copy of the booklet for everyone. The booklets were all different via Python and Scribus. The imposition and printing was very simple Perl.
If you just [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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

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 [...]

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). [...]

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

OSP are currently working and testing hard for Verbindingen – Jonction 10 festival, organised by meta collaborators Constant. Offset CYMK Printout (5000 ex.) expected for next wednesday, with all the blurs, transparencies, gradients and fonts…
While trying to export the svg from inkscape to pdf, we encountered few problems with transparencies, and blur was completely ignored. [...]

OSP is testing Liberation Mono in an invitation for an exhibition in Brussels:

(Inkscape, Gimp and Scribus)

No it’s not a new software, it’s a record OSP contributed to, using inkscape and gimp… Proud to announce another printed matter on a great maxi.

Mute Vol 2 #6 – Living in a Bubble: Credit, debt and crisis is out!
After a few months of testing and trying, the work flow of the entire magazine was converted to Free Software (OpenOffice, Inkscape, Gimp and Scribus on Kubuntu and Ubuntu systems) and… with succes.

Read low-graphic pdf’s online or order your own copy [...]

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.

Frog and Prince is a fairytale featuring free software, python scripting and an open font. The story was premièred at LGM 2007 (Montréal, Canada), and formed the centerpiece of the Canadian Printing Breakfast (Brussels, June 2007). Below is everything you need to make the recipe, but you can also browse through sample documents for [...]

Schablonenschrift A – Din1451 – August 1949
Inkscape drawing.

Good way to practice softwares is getting jobs done for friends. This week, Maluka, an excellent, enthusiasming and courageous organic shop (placed at the corner of our office street, which helps!), asked us to design them a logo and cards. Here is the proposal, using Vera Sans Serif and Inkscape, and specifically its magic “clone [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

Mute Magazine develops Open Source software, and has recently installed Ubuntu on all office machines. Now they want to move their lay-out away from QuarkXpress too.
Last week, Simon Worthington and Darron Broad from Mute came over to discuss the project. First of all we will need to make sure their original templates can be migrated [...]

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

A report from the whole day is here: http://www.stormy-weather.be/wiki/in…

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.

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 [...]

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