Yanone Officially Launches Antithesis Film

As you read in my report of the first day at TYPO Berlin 2014 "Roots", the final presentation was by Yanone about his smallest superfamily ever and its companion film. Today the designer and multimedia artist officially launched the 10-minute dance film about The Big Bang for his typeface "Antithesis".

Yanone at TYPO Berlin 2014. Long-exposure photograph by Katja Hofschröer-Elbers using trafostick technology by trafopop.com.

I wonder who Yanone had to sell his soul to to always look so frickin' cool in photographs.

This is the typeface Yanone calls his masterpiece. Antithesis has its roots in the concept of extreme figurative tension which initially sparked his interest in type design. This concept evolved from undiscerning sketches around the year 2000 via his application portfolios for the Bauhaus University in Weimar to his thesis project at Type&Media type design master at the KABK in 2011, where he picked up the old idea for his graduate thesis. This is where he presented a coherent concept for a typeface exploring for the first time the tension between three unequal poles. A good three years later the typeface finally was released as FF Antithesis by the FontFont type foundry.

Three poles — it is the quest for calm in a densely woven web.

He who navigates dexterously will find the point of clarity.

This quote that Yanone first heard on Weimar's local radio has had a great impact on both the design of the typeface as well as its application by the graphic designer. The three sharp-edged styles Regular, Italic and Bold differ profoundly from each other in terms of construction, yet speak an identical language. It is their combined rethoric that pushes the user to find balance in the three-pole space. It also references other models of holy trinity, like the philosophical model of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Only when the synthesis sets the preceding thesis and antithesis in relation to each other does it give the two their right to exist. Similarly Yanone hopes that one day the creation of a third Synthesis type family – yet to be designed by another type designer – will give his minimalistic Antithesis the right to exist next to Lucas de Groot's Thesis (1994), one of the largest type families of all times.

▼ Antithesis from Yanone on Vimeo.

This convinced Yanone to pull out all the stops for the release of his typeface. Together with Dresden-based contemporary dancer Johanna Roggan he produced a 10 minute dance film about the The Big Bang. The idea behind the film is that – according to Indian philosophy – the existence of the universe too consists of three phases: the formation, the duration and the decomposition.

Still from the Anithesis film. Photo by Daniel Scholz

Yanone has worked on the film ever since he left The Hague in 2011. He released a trailer at the end of 2012, followed by a lukewarm crowdfunding campaign. Having spent a multiple of the campaign's profit on the film since then doesn't disconcert him. "The resulting film looks unbelievable," he bursts out, "the images, the dance, the music… From the very onset the first music samples turned the film into a work art, even before we started shooting the first scenes. It was an incredible challenge to do the score justice with my images."

Production shot from the Antithesis film. Photo by Christiane Kupfer

Georg Bauer, the composer and producer of the film score, creates and deejays Psy-Trance music under the moniker Nocti Luca. When he told Yanone on a trance festival in summer 2011 that he had forever wanted to create a music piece about The Big Bang, the deal was sealed. In early 2014 Yanone and Bauer managed to convince soprano Anna Sophia Backhaus to contribute a human touch to the digital composition.

Production shot from the Antithesis film. Photo by Christiane Kupfer

Also present at the shoot was Yanone's long-time friend and photographer Daniel Scholz, who is responsible for the film's photography and parts of the cinematography. Daniel also shot the amazing image of Johanna shown below that serves as the key visual for the project. An A1-sized poster is available for order in Yanone's online shop.

Key visual for the Antithesis project. Photo by Daniel Scholz

The complete project can be discovered on the Anithesis website, where Yanone screens the film. He also offers a download for the quality-conscious audience who – just like himself – are disappointed by the encoding quality of online streaming services.

Yanone. Photo by Daniel Scholz