K is for Kris (Aug/Sept cover story)

…and K is for Klim and koru. Kris Sowersby’s AGDA Inter­na­tional Speaker Tour poster.

Kris Sowersby’s Aus­tralian Graphic Design Asso­ci­ation (AGDA) poster, designed by The Inter­na­tional Office.

The Inter­na­tional Office designed the poster using Sowersby’s PLINC Exotique typeface.

If there was a type design equi­val­ent of a poet laur­eate, a type designer laur­eate for instance, would it be too con­ten­tious a state­ment to let Kris Sowersby, from the Klim Type Foundry, wear the raiment. The designer of typefaces such as Fei­joa, Newzald, National and Galaxie Coper­ni­cus is in demand not just as a fash­ioner of let­ters and such, but also as a pub­lic speaker. Quite pos­sibly, he’s the face and the voice of New Zea­l­and type design.
Sowersby’s latest foray into the realm of pub­lic speak­ing was as a guest of the Aus­tralian Graphic Design Asso­ci­ation (AGDA). His tour of duty took in the Lucky Country’s major met­ro­pol­itan loc­ales and Hobart. Of course, any pop­u­lar pub­lic speaker requires a pro­mo­tional poster, and in this instance Sowersby com­mis­sioned Duncan For­bes and Elaina Hamilton from The Inter­na­tional Office (formerly known as Exper­i­menta) to do the design work.
“Kris always asks me to design his stuff, and I always say no,” says For­bes, refer­ring to Sowersby’s pre­dilec­tion for per­fec­tion and strong opin­ions about what looks right. In this instance, how­ever, For­bes said yes col­lab­or­at­ing (via iTalk, pos­sibly for safety) on the design of the poster.
“We star­ted off with some­thing quite ser­i­ous,” he says, “but it quickly became more light-hearted.”
For­bes sug­ges­ted using one of Sowersby’s unpub­lished typefaces PLINC Exotique, which was com­mis­sioned by House Indus­tries, as the poster font. The strong col­ours chosen – red and black – also have a strong cul­tural con­nec­tion.
The font has two lay­ers, and is a two-tone typeface, which means you can incor­por­ate any two col­ours you like.
“Many of Kris’ typefaces have a little bit of kooki­ness,” says For­bes. “They’re hard­case, like him – it’s his humour com­ing through. Fei­joa, for instance, if you look closely, is quite organic.”
Anec­dotal evid­ence sug­gests that the poster, and the speaker, was well-received by Aus­tralian typo­graph­ers, and For­bes thinks that Aus­tralian typo­graph­ers would have got­ten a kick out of see­ing such defin­it­ively Aus­tralian names treated in such an obvi­ously Kiwi style.

– Michael Barrett