[ All work & images © Robert Ettlin ]
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American graphic designer Robert Ettlin is a recent graduate of prestigious RISD. In late 2011 he created this handsome hand bound book drenched in experimental typography and lettering, patterned lines and forms in response to his 5 month tenure studying abroad in Rome. The work is entitled The Roman Flaneur.
Throughout my stay I collected a plethora of design ranging from coasters to first day issue envelopes to store signs. During the last three weeks of my stay I began to trace all the designs I found and combine them into a book. The book is organized chronologically. One structure that I added to the book was an abstracted map. As I collected each piece of design I pinpointed, with pins, the exact location on a large AAA map that I bought from the local bookstore; I then took string and connected all the pins. I then photographed this and made it into a vector to be used as a visual element throughout the book. Each pages has a different composition of the map because the place where I found the design is always located on a third of the way up on the right page, but each object was found in a different location so the map is different on each page, due to the nature of the structure.
I wanted to not only retrace the hand of the designers by tracing the logos and typefaces, but I wanted to experiment with them as well, which is why each page not only has a photograph and tracing of the logo but I composition made from the letters etc.
I wanted to show my appreciation of the less well know designers whose designs have made it to Italy from all over the world.
See more of Robert’s portfolio here.
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