“Select, Arrange” Vitra Catalog
A two-volume catalogue, displaying the recently designed Home Collection of Vitra. While the 'select’ part presents the individual articles of furniture in isolation along with their product specifications, the 'arrange’ part sets the furniture in the context of actual and/or imaginary interior design scenarios. The two parts of the catalogue are joined together into a single volume by means of a simple bookbinding device.
I first spotted ITC Grouch on the cover of Cornel Windlin’s outstanding “Select, Arrange” catalog for Vitra at last year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. Always artfully ahead of the curve, Windlin seems to have plugged into the ’70s typographic revival that’s been happening for some time by digging up a lost vernacular gem and injecting it into a high modernist context. Grouch’s serifs pair beautifully with Vitra’s all-lowercase Futura Bold, and Windlin even uses Vitra’s quirky built-in period as the conclusion to his Grouch-y run-on sentence. Apart from a few colors and some underlining for emphasis, Windlin’s cover has one star only: ITC Grouch. With so much personality, Grouch almost becomes a character on the cover, a stand-in for the irreverent owner of a house where all this classically cool furniture so naturally gels. The boldness of ITC Grouch swells with enthusiasm and confidence; the casualness of ITC Grouch puts its feet up on the expensive coffee table and makes it accessbile.
Reviewing the catalogue in Eye Magazine, Rick Poynor adds: “What is so impressive about the catalogue is the unerring accuracy with which it strikes the right contemporary note. These are luxury objects conceived by some of the finest designers, manufactured to exacting standards and with price tags to match, but they don’t want to appear to be trying too hard, standing on ceremony, or making a fuss.” Windlin recently won a Swiss Design Prize for his efforts.
