Parallel-Parallel is a gallery of works by graphic designers that
a) have been postponed indefinitely,
b) will never be realized or published,
c) were published for an event that will never take place because of this damn virus.

We believe that graphic design plays with potential realities and with this current crisis we want to see what has been left, on pause, in your hands.

If you are a graphic designer and have been working on a project that fits this description please reach out to us via:
email@parallel-parallel.com

We are looking forward to hearing from you,
your fellow designers,
Dorothee Dähler & Yeliz Secerli

PS: This website is programmed by Quentin Creuzet!

Parallel-Parallel is a gallery of works by graphic designers that
a) have been postponed indefinitely,
b) will never be realized or published,
c) were published for an event that will never take place because of this damn virus.

We believe that graphic design plays with potential realities and with this current crisis we want to see what has been left, on pause, in your hands.

If you are a graphic designer and have been working on a project that fits this description please reach out to us via:
email@parallel-parallel.com

We are looking forward to hearing from you,
your fellow designers,
Dorothee Dähler & Yeliz Secerli

PS: This website is programmed by Quentin Creuzet!

Weltformat Magazine

Weltformat is an annual graphic design festival which takes place in Lucerne (CH). It was one of the rare events that were realized despite the virus in 2020. The newly launched Welformat magazine offers background information, this year’s theme was “Not (Yet) Canceled.” Sound familiar? The essays and projects were manifested, initiated and kick-started because of the pandemic. Read thoroughly, flip slowly, and enjoy a surprise parallel appearance in the end.
Buy it here

Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith

We finally have our reward (thank you COVID19!) with Intimations, a collection of essays that tells us exactly what Zadie Smith has been thinking all this time! She walks us through her personal experience of the pandemic. She writes as a coping mechanism, as a place to hide. She looks into herself, then her people, and the people outside. She writes about the city she lives, loves and leaves (New York), and the rotten roots of the country and its ongoing bad behavior. When you finish it, you feel like you’ve undergone heart surgery; the heart aches but you’ve been given a second chance to live life with a new set of priorities.
Buy it here

What The Great Pandemic Novels Teach Us

In this article, Orhan Pamuk demonstrates the remarkably consistent ways in which humans throughout history have responded to fear. After extensive research for his new novel, Pamuk takes us on a journey through many of the most enjoyable pandemics in history; both fictional and true.
Read it here

What Are Parallel Universes?

In this unusual interview, Fred Alan Wolf, quantum physics specialist explains the concept of parallel universes so that even the interviewer begins to understand it! Wolf says that quantum physics explains many facts of physical life. Yet it is still a mystery to most experts which isn’t very reassuring. Perhaps they have it all figured out in another universe.
Read it here

Parallel Cards by Ryan Gander & Europa

Ryan Gander isn’t just the joker in the pack.
Look behind the poker-faced humor of these parallel cards (playing cards where both sides are the front) and you realize there is more depth to the concept. His perception of playing cards has taken on a journey of its own since he was a child and the aesthetics of their usage within this deck opens up a universe of new possibilities.
Get them here

The Third Policeman

In this essay, Ted Gioia explores (and delights in!) The Third Policeman—a novel by Flann O’Brien (the pen name of Irish author Brian O’Nolan). This surrealist crime novel, now regarded as a literary classic, remained unpublished until 1967, one year after his death (nobody appears to have made a crime novel out of this fact!) “A book that starts out with overtones of Crime and Punishment, says Giola, “soon takes on a flavor more akin to Alice in Wonderland.” Incidentally, you’ll be hard pushed to find a more enjoyable book cover design!
More here

Kuki Shūzō : Parallel Lines

A joy-read on Iki (粋/いき), a Japanese aesthetical concept which translates roughly as chic or stylish, but means so much more. The word was used in 19th-century Japan to define the endless charm of the geisha. Design is crucial for the manifestation of iki. These lines on parallel lines are drawn from the fourth chapter of Kuki Shūzō’s 1930 book Reflections on Japanese Taste —The Structure of iki (Tokyo: IwanamiShoten, 1930), brought to you by the Serving Library.
Download here

Weltformat Magazine

Weltformat is an annual graphic design festival which takes place in Lucerne (CH). It was one of the rare events that were realized despite the virus in 2020. The newly launched Welformat magazine offers background information, this year’s theme was “Not (Yet) Canceled.” Sound familiar? The essays and projects were manifested, initiated and kick-started because of the pandemic. Read thoroughly, flip slowly, and enjoy a surprise parallel appearance in the end.
Buy it here

Intimations: Six Essays by Zadie Smith

We finally have our reward (thank you COVID19!) with Intimations, a collection of essays that tells us exactly what Zadie Smith has been thinking all this time! She walks us through her personal experience of the pandemic. She writes as a coping mechanism, as a place to hide. She looks into herself, then her people, and the people outside. She writes about the city she lives, loves and leaves (New York), and the rotten roots of the country and its ongoing bad behavior. When you finish it, you feel like you’ve undergone heart surgery; the heart aches but you’ve been given a second chance to live life with a new set of priorities.
Buy it here

What The Great Pandemic Novels Teach Us

In this article, Orhan Pamuk demonstrates the remarkably consistent ways in which humans throughout history have responded to fear. After extensive research for his new novel, Pamuk takes us on a journey through many of the most enjoyable pandemics in history; both fictional and true.
Read it here

What Are Parallel Universes?

In this unusual interview, Fred Alan Wolf, quantum physics specialist explains the concept of parallel universes so that even the interviewer begins to understand it! Wolf says that quantum physics explains many facts of physical life. Yet it is still a mystery to most experts which isn’t very reassuring. Perhaps they have it all figured out in another universe.
Read it here

Parallel Cards by Ryan Gander & Europa

Ryan Gander isn’t just the joker in the pack.
Look behind the poker-faced humor of these parallel cards (playing cards where both sides are the front) and you realize there is more depth to the concept. His perception of playing cards has taken on a journey of its own since he was a child and the aesthetics of their usage within this deck opens up a universe of new possibilities.
Get them here

The Third Policeman

In this essay, Ted Gioia explores (and delights in!) The Third Policeman—a novel by Flann O’Brien (the pen name of Irish author Brian O’Nolan). This surrealist crime novel, now regarded as a literary classic, remained unpublished until 1967, one year after his death (nobody appears to have made a crime novel out of this fact!) “A book that starts out with overtones of Crime and Punishment, says Giola, “soon takes on a flavor more akin to Alice in Wonderland.” Incidentally, you’ll be hard pushed to find a more enjoyable book cover design!
More here

Kuki Shūzō : Parallel Lines

A joy-read on Iki (粋/いき), a Japanese aesthetical concept which translates roughly as chic or stylish, but means so much more. The word was used in 19th-century Japan to define the endless charm of the geisha. Design is crucial for the manifestation of iki. These lines on parallel lines are drawn from the fourth chapter of Kuki Shūzō’s 1930 book Reflections on Japanese Taste —The Structure of iki (Tokyo: IwanamiShoten, 1930), brought to you by the Serving Library.
Download here

Parallel-Parallel
Opening : June 3rd, 18:30pm at The ÖFF (St. Jakobstrasse 54)
Lecture: June 4th, 16:00
OffShore Studio’s Isabel Seiffert, Turbo’s Mothanna Hussein and Stoecklin & Wilson’s Melina Wilson will be giving presentations about their ‘ghost’ works. The lectures will be presented in English.
Ortolan: June 11th,16:00
Kaj Lehmann and Nicolas Schaltegger will run «Ortolan», a pop-up bar with special cocktails

After two years of collecting projects, and showcasing them online, Parallel-Parallel became an in person exhibition. By showing a selection of works from the website, some produced and some not (drawn directly on the wall) we aimed to examine the different states of the graphic design practice, in other words, the process of materialization of the design object. How do we talk about and present the ‘ghost’ works that never left our computers or that remained in our minds?

Read more
We are grateful for everyone who came to visit, who gave us their incredible space (Matthias Wyler and André Rothfuchs from Studio Sirup), who helped us install and draw (Coline Houtot), who wrote our introduction text (Andrea Salerno), who made ghost stickers for us (Experimental Jetset), who recorded our voice labels (Rhona Mühlebach), who shared so candidly and gracefully their ghost projects (Isabel Seifert, Melina Wilson), who made fantastic cocktails for our Finissage (Kaj Lehmann, Nicolas Schaltegger), while (@_thisislookah, @alpha_mi_, Flo Olomski) played the best music, who hosted us in their flat (Raphael Schoen), and of course all the designers who have been part of Parallel-Parallel. Looking forward to the parallel futures. 👻
Palace
Palace

There is not much to say about these posters, except that they are probably the first ones in a long series of cancelled concerts. My predecessor as designer for Palace was Christoph Nüssli, he had used many different Pantone colours for the monthly programmes. For the series of single posters I therefore decided to use his leftover colours to pre-print the paper in offset rainbow printing process. This resulted in about 24 different gradients. On top of that the respective subject is printed in black using digital printing.

Designer(s):
Anna Haas, Zurich (CH)
Client:
Palace, St. Gallen (CH)
Wang

People can only see that they know the content, and the more they know, the more confused they are. Environmental pollution is a global problem. Although people have read a lot of reports on public welfare undertakings, they are still wasteful and unrestrained in their daily life, just like the disorder in the page.

Designer(s):
Wang Xiao-Shuai, Bei Jing (CHN)
Client:
KENMORI, (CN)
Astronomical Observatory Belgrade

This is a poster announcing an exhibition about asteroids and the history of asteroid observation in Serbia. Unfortunately the exhibition was cancelled. The idea was to screen print hundreds of them in various colours and spread them all over Novi Sad. This is where the exhibition was supposed to take place. While working on it more and more sponsor logos were arriving. Gosh! There were so many, keeping them small wouldn’t help! So I decided to make the logos part of the design instead of hiding them. A fatal NO GO: placing the sponsor logos on a white stripe at the bottom of a poster!

Designer(s):
Aleksandar Todorović, Bijeljina (BA)
Client:
Astronomical Observatory Belgrade, Belgrade (RS)
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa

Post-Scriptum : Ep.01
Poster exhibition, Nancy (FR)
[From] March 12 to [April 2], 2020.

This poster series was originally designed for the exhibition Post-Scriptum : Ep.01 at the NaMiMa gallery of the National School of Art and Design in Nancy and initiated by Valentin Garcia, Galaad Gonzales, Paul Bergès and Jules Durand. The exhibition was scheduled to open on March 12 2020, unfortunately, the same day the lockdown was announced in France. Only those present during the few opening hours were able to visit it before it closed definitively that evening. Post-Scriptum : Ep.01 therefore only existed for the duration of a vernissage.

Read more
For this exhibition in partnership with Le Signe in Chaumont, we acted as curators “investigators” and we revealed and told stories that were hidden behind curious graphic objects. This is the reason why the exhibition’s communication hides the signs specific to the world of French graphic design inside the posters. The vertical lines and the color code are borrowed from the Macintosh “mail” interface, there is a brush typography (the ‘Pantera Black’) drawn by Jean-Marc Ballée, one of the exhibited graphic designers. We can also find, here and there, a Mickey Mouse, a figure already used by the emblematic graphic designers Grapus, who plays an investigator which is a metaphor for our role as curator in this exhibition. *In the Post-Scriptum : Ep.01* exhibition and images were presented by officeabc (Catherine Guiral and Brice Domingues) with Marie Clément-Welles and Romain Grateau, Christophe Gaudard, Jean-Marc Ballée, S-y-n-d-i-c-a-t (François Havegeer and Sacha Léopold) with inmates from the Bois d’Arcy, Chaumont and Baumettes prisons, Christophe Jacquet, Xavier Meurice and Christophe Sauvageot, Étienne Hervy, Thierry Chancogne, Alexandru Balgiu and Olivier Lebrun.

This event was organized in partnership with ENSAD Nancy and Le Signe in Chaumont.

Designer(s):
Paul Bergès, Nancy (FR)
Lets Talk
Lets Talk
Lets Talk
Lets Talk

Let’s Talk—meeting, conference and stories about experiences, tries to take up the challenge of discovering untold stories about the ways we experience the world around us. This should have been the second conference in the Let’s Talk-series. We designed the identity and a book about the designers’ experiences.

Designer(s):
Punkt Widzenia (Point of View), Łódź (PL)
Client:
Content Story, Warsaw, (PL)
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale

The Luminale—Biennial for Light Art and Urban Design is one of the largest cultural events in the Rhine-Main region. The colour reduction to black and white, as well as the Favorit typeface by abcdimano, form the basis of the new look. The clear appearance should provide a high recognition value, yet at the same time not visually compete with the light art of the participants. The Luminale should have taken place in March 2020 and got cancelled at short notice on the day of the vernissage.

Designer(s):
Bureau Sandra Doeller, Frankfurt (DE)
Client:
Luminale, Frankfurt (DE)
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque

Cinémathèque is a small art-house cinema in Leipzig. It shows current films in original language with subtitles, curated film programs and experimental formats. Last year we designed a visual identity, which also includes a monthly booklet. The program for April went to press only the week before the lockdown in Germany, and cinemas had to close temporarily. Unfortunately the printed booklets were never distributed in the city.

Designer(s):
Bureau Est, Paris (FR), Leipzig (DE)
Client:
Cinémathèque Leipzig, Leipzig (DE)
Looping
Looping

This poster was an early sketch for the 2020 edition of the Looping Festival, which takes place in Montreuil, in the outskirts of Paris in France. Based around an innovative electronic music line-up, Looping is a friendly festival on mixed territories. The festival was unfortunately cancelled due to Covid-19, and we’re hoping it will happen next year. The design plays off of the “looping” idea and repetition, while using candy-like and retro colors.

Designer(s):
Élise Rigollet, Paris (FR)
Client:
Looping Festival, Montreuil (FR)
Parallel-Parallel
Opening : June 3rd, 18:30pm at The ÖFF (St. Jakobstrasse 54)
Lecture: June 4th, 16:00
OffShore Studio’s Isabel Seiffert, Turbo’s Mothanna Hussein and Stoecklin & Wilson’s Melina Wilson will be giving presentations about their ‘ghost’ works. The lectures will be presented in English.
Ortolan: June 11th,16:00
Kaj Lehmann and Nicolas Schaltegger will run «Ortolan», a pop-up bar with special cocktails

After two years of collecting projects, and showcasing them online, Parallel-Parallel became an in person exhibition. By showing a selection of works from the website, some produced and some not (drawn directly on the wall) we aimed to examine the different states of the graphic design practice, in other words, the process of materialization of the design object. How do we talk about and present the ‘ghost’ works that never left our computers or that remained in our minds?

Read more
We are grateful for everyone who came to visit, who gave us their incredible space (Matthias Wyler and André Rothfuchs from Studio Sirup), who helped us install and draw (Coline Houtot), who wrote our introduction text (Andrea Salerno), who made ghost stickers for us (Experimental Jetset), who recorded our voice labels (Rhona Mühlebach), who shared so candidly and gracefully their ghost projects (Isabel Seifert, Melina Wilson), who made fantastic cocktails for our Finissage (Kaj Lehmann, Nicolas Schaltegger), while (@_thisislookah, @alpha_mi_, Flo Olomski) played the best music, who hosted us in their flat (Raphael Schoen), and of course all the designers who have been part of Parallel-Parallel. Looking forward to the parallel futures. 👻
Palace
Palace

There is not much to say about these posters, except that they are probably the first ones in a long series of cancelled concerts. My predecessor as designer for Palace was Christoph Nüssli, he had used many different Pantone colours for the monthly programmes. For the series of single posters I therefore decided to use his leftover colours to pre-print the paper in offset rainbow printing process. This resulted in about 24 different gradients. On top of that the respective subject is printed in black using digital printing.

Designer(s):
Anna Haas, Zurich (CH)
Client:
Palace, St. Gallen (CH)
Wang

People can only see that they know the content, and the more they know, the more confused they are. Environmental pollution is a global problem. Although people have read a lot of reports on public welfare undertakings, they are still wasteful and unrestrained in their daily life, just like the disorder in the page.

Designer(s):
Wang Xiao-Shuai, Bei Jing (CHN)
Client:
KENMORI, (CN)
Astronomical Observatory Belgrade

This is a poster announcing an exhibition about asteroids and the history of asteroid observation in Serbia. Unfortunately the exhibition was cancelled. The idea was to screen print hundreds of them in various colours and spread them all over Novi Sad. This is where the exhibition was supposed to take place. While working on it more and more sponsor logos were arriving. Gosh! There were so many, keeping them small wouldn’t help! So I decided to make the logos part of the design instead of hiding them. A fatal NO GO: placing the sponsor logos on a white stripe at the bottom of a poster!

Designer(s):
Aleksandar Todorović, Bijeljina (BA)
Client:
Astronomical Observatory Belgrade, Belgrade (RS)
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa
NaMiMa

Post-Scriptum : Ep.01
Poster exhibition, Nancy (FR)
[From] March 12 to [April 2], 2020.

This poster series was originally designed for the exhibition Post-Scriptum : Ep.01 at the NaMiMa gallery of the National School of Art and Design in Nancy and initiated by Valentin Garcia, Galaad Gonzales, Paul Bergès and Jules Durand. The exhibition was scheduled to open on March 12 2020, unfortunately, the same day the lockdown was announced in France. Only those present during the few opening hours were able to visit it before it closed definitively that evening. Post-Scriptum : Ep.01 therefore only existed for the duration of a vernissage.

Read more
For this exhibition in partnership with Le Signe in Chaumont, we acted as curators “investigators” and we revealed and told stories that were hidden behind curious graphic objects. This is the reason why the exhibition’s communication hides the signs specific to the world of French graphic design inside the posters. The vertical lines and the color code are borrowed from the Macintosh “mail” interface, there is a brush typography (the ‘Pantera Black’) drawn by Jean-Marc Ballée, one of the exhibited graphic designers. We can also find, here and there, a Mickey Mouse, a figure already used by the emblematic graphic designers Grapus, who plays an investigator which is a metaphor for our role as curator in this exhibition. *In the Post-Scriptum : Ep.01* exhibition and images were presented by officeabc (Catherine Guiral and Brice Domingues) with Marie Clément-Welles and Romain Grateau, Christophe Gaudard, Jean-Marc Ballée, S-y-n-d-i-c-a-t (François Havegeer and Sacha Léopold) with inmates from the Bois d’Arcy, Chaumont and Baumettes prisons, Christophe Jacquet, Xavier Meurice and Christophe Sauvageot, Étienne Hervy, Thierry Chancogne, Alexandru Balgiu and Olivier Lebrun.

This event was organized in partnership with ENSAD Nancy and Le Signe in Chaumont.

Designer(s):
Paul Bergès, Nancy (FR)
Lets Talk
Lets Talk
Lets Talk
Lets Talk

Let’s Talk—meeting, conference and stories about experiences, tries to take up the challenge of discovering untold stories about the ways we experience the world around us. This should have been the second conference in the Let’s Talk-series. We designed the identity and a book about the designers’ experiences.

Designer(s):
Punkt Widzenia (Point of View), Łódź (PL)
Client:
Content Story, Warsaw, (PL)
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale
Luminale

The Luminale—Biennial for Light Art and Urban Design is one of the largest cultural events in the Rhine-Main region. The colour reduction to black and white, as well as the Favorit typeface by abcdimano, form the basis of the new look. The clear appearance should provide a high recognition value, yet at the same time not visually compete with the light art of the participants. The Luminale should have taken place in March 2020 and got cancelled at short notice on the day of the vernissage.

Designer(s):
Bureau Sandra Doeller, Frankfurt (DE)
Client:
Luminale, Frankfurt (DE)
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque
Cinémathèque

Cinémathèque is a small art-house cinema in Leipzig. It shows current films in original language with subtitles, curated film programs and experimental formats. Last year we designed a visual identity, which also includes a monthly booklet. The program for April went to press only the week before the lockdown in Germany, and cinemas had to close temporarily. Unfortunately the printed booklets were never distributed in the city.

Designer(s):
Bureau Est, Paris (FR), Leipzig (DE)
Client:
Cinémathèque Leipzig, Leipzig (DE)
Looping
Looping

This poster was an early sketch for the 2020 edition of the Looping Festival, which takes place in Montreuil, in the outskirts of Paris in France. Based around an innovative electronic music line-up, Looping is a friendly festival on mixed territories. The festival was unfortunately cancelled due to Covid-19, and we’re hoping it will happen next year. The design plays off of the “looping” idea and repetition, while using candy-like and retro colors.

Designer(s):
Élise Rigollet, Paris (FR)
Client:
Looping Festival, Montreuil (FR)