SPECIFICATIONS
Exhibition and curation:
João Miranda & Desisto
Visual Identity: Desisto
Design & Communication: 
João Miranda & Desisto
Animations & AR:
João Miranda & Serafim Mendes
3D: Serafim Mendes
Webdesign & code: João Miranda
Words: João Miranda
Video: Rui Silva
Photography: João Miranda,
Desisto & Catarina Rosa 
(from the Two Design Studio)

NOVEMBER 2018

Big Kitchen

What are you missing when you look at type?

This is the question that gave birth to the “Big Kitchen” exhibition, which through an exhaustive exploration of a single type family through an interactive experience that explores type anatomy. We open the kitchen where typefaces are developed, making it easier for everyone to understand what this craft is about making use of different graphic production methods, reinterpreting traditional formats to showcase typography such as a poster or type specimen.

Big – Type Family

This exhibition is the climax of the development of the type family BIG, which origin comes from a wooden type found in Andrew Howard studio. The digitalisation process started 5 years ago with Bruno Rodrigues and it was in 2017 that João Miranda developed a single weight in to a family of 24 (including a stencil version). BIG is an elegant condensed display font created for strong and impactful headlines.

A wooden type that reassembles the industrial victorian style which has now been expanded to 20 cuts, ranging from Light to Bold, with Italics and a stencil version, covering all your needs for a striking visual effect just with plain type with distinctive features and personality, standing out from the crowded world of display sans serif.

A variety of production techniques

The project approach is defined by the many ways typography interacted with the space and the visitors while making use of varied use of mediums and materials. BIG is a typeface that came from wood, making this a central material to be explored in the exhibition. In order to make it richer and diverse we used laser cut and engraved acrylics, 3D printing, pen plotter, neon, RISO, digital and screen printing.

Interactivity through different mediums

'Potential' is a hard word to evolve into something tangible. Although BIG has it's quirks and features a typeface will always have the potential to surprise the type designer by the way it is used and especially the way it can affect public perception through its interactivity. Big Kitchen has screen printed posters with AR, 100x70cm drawings made with a Pen Plotter.

Screen printed posters with AR

A traditional medium in graphic design with a contemporary approach, these 4 posters showcase the BIG typeface with different animations. Red, black, white and silver were the colours used in the posters.

Weekly Calendars with AR

To celebrate this living type specimen we wanted to provide different levels of interaction while providing an opportunity for everyone to take something home.

Website design & development

To promote the BIG typeface the website was developed in order to make the most of the variable font specially developed for this project while working as an extension of the versatility and flexibility of typography usage in the exhibition.

Website animations

Animations were developed for each creative involved in the project and they were inspired by their main scope of work: type design, graphic design & 3D.

Social media posts done with code

Adobe After Effects is still not ready to make the most of variable fonts and that makes the animation process very tedious and exhausting. The alternative to make the many type-led posts we had to do was using the Drawbot app which allows you to write simple Python scripts.

Talks & Workshop

It could be just an exhibition, but we believe that hosting talks and workshops are a great way to create synergies among everyone who is interested in our areas of expertise.

Big Kitchen — A living type specimen

Experiences built in digital, physical and virtual worlds should converge into a coherent body of work and that's how AR and the pen plotter came in very handy in order to make Big Kitchen a unique way of showcasing a living type specimen.

Thanks to all the sponsors that helped us on this journey.
They are FICA – Oficina Criativa, IADE – Creative University, MILL, Fedrigoni, Letra and NOW_ Cowork Lisboa.

In case you have any inquiries about acquiring the artworks or would like to see the exhibition in your city just fire an e-mail.