Graphic Design: Hort produce an absolute whopper of an architectural publication

When I think of Hort, images of clever doodles hurriedly taped to studio walls, or well-practiced smiley faces drawn on cups spring to mind. The work that Hort creates and associates itself with is cheerful, cheeky and colourful – assets you would not always associate with large, in-depth architecture volumes. Hort being what they are decided to buck the trend and just go for it, designing Rainer Schmidt’s Landschaftsarchitekten + Stadtplaner, a whopping six-book series contained puzzle-like in a box, flashing small blocks of colour when rearranged, and covered in large, code-like typography.

Hort decided to channel the themes of architecture into this coffee-table monster and inject the core principles into the layout itself: “Both the product and graphic design reference the conceptual elements of landscape architecture. They form an autonomous layer of the design creating a neutral platform for the different contents.” Eike told us. “The individual books are each variants of the B series format and have a consistent 192 page range. Typography and composition are scaled proportionally to the format of each book.”

Yes, it’s mostly grey, yes it’s about architecture, but this has Hort written all over it. After all, anyone who makes an article entitled Campeon Infineon Ecological Urbanism look genuinely appealing must be the work of genii.