Portfolio: Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer

Teaching

Since autumn 2000, I have been teaching at the Federal Training and Research Center for Graphic Arts and Media in Vienna, better known as die Graphische, an institution founded in the nineteenth century.

My lessons cover basic and advanced typography, type design, computer graphics, picture manipulation, as well as individual student projects. I have also been involved with institutions such as the TGA (Typographische Gesellschaft Austria), and KARP.

Teaching FontLab.

All the fonts you see here are actual working OpenType fonts created by my students in their first semester. They had to create a handwritten sample sheet, scan it in, and then proceed to create an outline font based on their scans. This way, the students get to know the basic functions of FontLab, and also develop a feeling for PostScript vectors, which they typically deal with for the first time.

Teaching Photoshop.

The students get a series of assignments for which they have to use certain tools and techniques, and thus get to know various aspects of the software. The “flag” assignment, for instance, covers layers, alpha channels, distortion filters, and rendering filters. Students are encouraged to creatively surpass the requirements of the assignment.

Teaching vector graphics.

I usually start with teaching basic technical aspects of PostScript in Adobe Illustrator, trying to show what makes a good PostScript path, and how to avoid printer errors. Drawing techniques, which again are taught step by step in various assignments, include clipping and compound paths, global colours, varying stroke widths etc. Students are only shown the basic technical aspects of the respective assignment, and are consequently encouraged to extend their assignment as far and as creatively as possible.

Type design workshops.

I give weekly type design workshops for the TGA in Vienna. Since June 2008, I have been giving workshops internationally. On the photo, you can see workshop attendees during a break in Cologne, Germany.

Teaching typography.

In my theoretical classes, I try to convey a basic understanding for good typography. During the first two semesters, I show, amongst other things, how to avoid typographical mistakes, how to work with a grid, and how to recognize typefaces and classes of type.

pet-needs: logo design process

For this client, a distributor of pet-related products, I presented the logo designs in the form of business cards, thus allowing him to better relate to and identify with the designs. He could not decide between designs one and four, so I fused them into one design, taking the paw prints as the basic design and adding the cat and dog as mascots.

FSZ: logo design process

This sheet illustrates a logo design process, first sketching out and doodling a series of various designs, more or less inspired by the given topic. Then I have the client pick his favourites, and I work out colour and shape variations.

In this case, the client was the owner of a training track for car safety, where drivers can safely practice their reaction in dangerous driving situations. The grey arrows indicate the client decisions

Early agency work

I started out as a graphic designer at Vienna-based event agency in the mid-nineties. These pieces represent a selection of my early contracted work, mostly logos, icons and signs for the various events.

Early independent work

In the late nineties, I would regularly take part in logo competitions, and occasionally win them. For instance, the designs for the FTW (Vienna Research Center for Telecommunications), won their competition. The client eventually picked the fourth design (the green one at the bottom).

35mm portrait: Maximilian Bratt

For most of my photo assigments I use a 35mm Minolta X700 with a variety of MD lenses. I tend towards the shorter end of the focal length spectrum: Most photos are done with a 28mm or a 17mm fixed length lens, such as these portraits of Vienna-based musician Maximilian Bratt, which I took for a Swedish newspaper.

Medium and large format portraits

My studio equipment includes a Hasselblad 503cx and a set of Hensel flashes, both of which I frequently use for portraits such as this series of a medieval music band named Joculatores Primae Noctis. In this case, the photos were used for the promotion of their first CD release.

Being a trained photographer, I enjoy working with large format monorail cameras. Unorthodoxically, I like to put them to use in portrait photography, for instance for my self portrait, and for my final diploma assignment for which I took the portrait of American book collector Billie-Ann Lopez.

“Direct Photography”

Together with two of my fellow students, I developed a way of taking 35mm photographs where we would refrain from using the view finder, but instead set our focus to a certain distance, and then try and take photos of people and animals as quickly as possible, and with as little thinking as possible.

For instance, we would set our focus to 60cm, or, when we felt more daring, to as close as 30cm, and then go out and take portraits of people while passing them by. Because of its unmeditated nature, we would refer to it as “Direct Photography.”

Travel photography

For the past years, I have been taking pictures on my extended trips through Europe and the United States, both black and white and colour. The black-and-whites displayed here were taken in Villach, Austria; Venice, Italy; The Hague, Netherlands; Central Park, New York City; and Scheveningen, Netherlands.

When I use colour material, I like to cross-develop E6 slide films, thus achieving colour shifts as in the first four pictures displayed here. The colour pictures were taken in New York City; Salzburg, Austria; Brussels, Belgium; and at Lake Geneva, Switzerland.

Press photography: Opera Ball in Vienna

Every once in a while, I used to take on newspaper assignments, such as this report about the Vienna Opera Ball for the Boston Phoenix. The final series consisted of more than 400 black-and-white photographs, for most of which I combined the use of a flashlight with a long exposure time, in order to achieve the impression of a moving background while keeping the foreground sharp and in focus.

Blend illustrations

For vector illustrations like this, I use a simple blending technique. And while the process itself might appear rather simple, the amount of time needed for such a picture can grow up to a day, depending on the number of details that need to be displayed.

WirtschaftsBlatt Infographic

Typical graphics for the Austrian daily WirtschaftsBlatt. The graphics were created, proofread, and corrected in a very efficient workflow and under high time pressure, usually within less than an hour.

OMV Infographic

Every once in a while, I would accept outside contracts, such as this graphic showing the international involvement of Austrian oil company OMV.

Charts

Graphics for the front page also serve an illustrative purpose, as this vivid visualization of Moulinex’s 2001 “crash” exemplifies.

Whenever time permitted it, I would put more detail work into the daily charts and graphics, such as this graphic describing the price developments after French metal giant Usinor’s announcement of taking over two of their competitors.

Maps

Two examples of maps, for which I combined vector coastlines with satellite images of the respective regions. These two were made for the weekend supplement of one of Austria’s largest daily newspapers, Kurier.

Poster Designs

Two poster designs for the Delft University of Technology. I was approached by a representative of the Department for Philosophy and asked whether I could improve their poster designs, and so I did. Read her testimonial in the About me section.

Archibald und Herr Baumann (“Archibald and Mister Baumann”)

Archibald: “I’m too old for this!”
Mr. Baumann: “We’re off to a good start, aren’t we?”

The rejected original proposal for a funny comic in an Austrian Architecture Journal. See the following entry for the design they eventually picked.

Franzi Kaffkanner (“Franz Coffeecan”)

Frame 1: “If I continue like this, I will soon turn into one big coffee can addicted to caffeine and with high blood pressure. Do I really want that?”
Frame 3: “YES!”

His name being a pun on both Franz Kafka’s name and “Kaffeekanne”, the German word for coffee can, this cartoon character was originally developed for an Austrian magazine, but later had various re-appearances across all sorts of media, and in all kinds of visual variations.

Marina

Frame 1: “Papa, why do I have to eat that bread?”—“So you can become big and strong, Marina.”
Frame 2: “And why should I become big and strong?”—“So you can earn your daily bread one day.”
Frame 3: “But I don’t want any bread!”

The idea of that cartoon was to have the girl ask her father naive, but difficult questions, and build up for a punchline in the girl’s final commentary. Originally developped for a local newspaper, Marina was modified twice for other clients.

Steinreich (“Filthy Rich”)

Like Archibald und Herr Baumann, this cartoon was drawn for the magazine of the Austrian Board for Architects. The client wished for a comic similar in style to my journal comic mekka blue, and from the various drafts I had worked out, this is the one they eventually picked. It ran for about a year before the magazine decided to slash costs and drop it.

Pet-needs mascots

These animals are part of the pet-needs corporate identity. See the “corporate identity” category for more pieces I created for that client.

Schwapp Multiple Master

This MM font was developped for a project where a multitude of weight variations were necessary. Schwapp allows for approximately one thousand different weights, so it is possible to start with a very light cut, then gradually increase the weight letter by letter, and eventually end up with a heavy typeface.

Mekka Blue Felt Tip

I created this OpenType font for my own journal comic mekka blue. This font has a variety of Unicode codepages set, so it is possible to write in various scripts, including all available Latin extensions, Greek, Coptic, and Cyrillic scripts. Apart from that, the font sports several OpenType features. I am planning to expand it further to include Japanese characters in the near future.

Schmopen Schmource.

The idea behind this font is that it is kept open source, and everybody is invited to contribute to it, thus covering as many Unicode codepages as possible. As of this writing, all Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew codepages are finished, while Devanagari, Hiragana, Katakana (to name but a few) are being worked on.

Stachel (“Sting”)

Stachel was an experimental design study, which I occasionally use for more effect-oriented typography. In this case, beauty of the form, as opposed to legibility, was the main goal in this type design experiment.

Chappawulf

Chappawulf is an experimental design. While typing, the letters rotate through eight sets of glyphs. This effect works in any application, and was achieved through the use of an OpenType feature. The letterforms themselves are based on Carol Twombly’s Chapparal Bold, which has been ‘degraded’ with a Python script for this Beowulf-like look, hence the name.

Harmonitzer and Serifenthaler

Two typeface designs that originated in the TGA workshops. Their names are derived from the TGA founding members Martin Tiefenthaler and Erich Monitzer, respectively.

Lawabo.

Originally designed for use with a book for learning the Afrikaans language, this font design, coming up in various weights and cuts, is intended to be both legible at many type sizes and still unorthodox in shape.

Austria.

The second typeface displayed here was intended as main text face for the same Afrikaans book, for which I also took care of the illustrations and page design.

Curriculum vitae

Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer:
Graphic and type designer, illustrator, photographer,
specialized on Mac OS based systems

Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer.

Born on 8 March 1977 in Vienna, Austria. For further questions, feel free to contact me via e-mail.

Letter of recommendation

I am one of the founding members of the Typographical Society Austria, established in 2002, and to me Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer is the leading Austrian specialist in the field of type technology.

His knowledge and skills in digitizing play an essential part in our attempt to compensate Austria’s historical deficit regarding typographic culture and type design. Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer is helping us to achieve our aims (the creation of a typographic tradition in Austria, internationality – as opposed to provinciality – through mutual non-competitive exchange of knowledge and experience, application and appreciation of typography, education in design and technology). He does so not only through his exceptional expertise in Unicode and both methods of and software for font generation, but also, crucially, by sharing and passing on his knowledge to the young generation and older and established people willing to learn.

In many courses and individual lessons he has worked with beginners and professionals, showing high personal commitment, patience and understanding. For beginners he uses simple, easy to follow methods, professionals are given crucial assistance with specific problems related to font design. His highly responsible teaching activities are based on an attitude of perpetual learning, a basic characteristic of his personality.

I have to confess that I am writing this reference with a heavy heart, because I would rather not let Rainer go.

With kindest regards,
Martin Tiefenthaler
Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt
Leyserstraße 6, 1140 Wien, Austria
T: +43 2235 42833

Recommendation by Martin Tiefenthaler.

Martin is the driving force behind the TGA, the Austrian Society for Typography, and a typography teacher at the Graphische, where he regularly organizes guest lectures by international type designers such as Gerard Unger, Luc de Groot, Jeremy Tankard and others.

Letter of recommendation

Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer, to me, is both a good friend and a trustworthy partner.

I like his slightly cerebral way, his way to address things, his journal comic mekka blue. A nice piece of satire — with a true background.

When it comes to computers, he is my first address. I always ask Rainer first — about software, news, and whenever I have problems with my G5, whatever it is. Without him, a lot would simply not work in my studio, computer-wise that is.

His black and white photography fascinates me, and his (occasionally very) eccentric humor keeps cracking me up.

His most important traits are his reliability and his endurance when dealing with problems — Rainer keeps working on it until it’s solved, when others would have given up a long time ago.

He is there when you need him, and he is good and amusing company, even though, for my taste, he is a bit too much into Woody Allen. ;-)

Rainer, I wish you all the best, and hope to keep you as a friend for a long time to come!

Ronnie Putzker, May 2005

Recommendation by Ronald Putzker.

Ronnie is an Austrian graphic designer and photographer, and one of the country’s leading sequential artists. He is internationally known for his bestselling graphic novels Anna Stein, Inspector Burnadz and Aglaya.

Testimonial

I got to know Erik via his delightful webcomic. When he hadn’t been updating for a while, I sent him a message, only to learn that he had temporarily moved to Rotterdam.

At that point in time, I was organising a debate for the Platform of Ethics and Technology at Delft University on the virtual world of Second Life. So we met over a cup of coffee and I asked if he would be interested in designing a poster for us.

Since the entire campus is swamped with posters trying to get the attention of the students, I wanted something really catching. So I asked Erik if he could think of something. And he did most successfully, capturing the concept of cyberethics and the digital world in a very creative way using Michelangelo’s hands of Adam and God.

Not long thereafter, I was involved with organising a two day workshop on The Ethics of Neuroimaging. Another concept that is not easy to make explicit in a single picture. Erik came up with several nice ideas. We discarded one of them because it was too much in the style of the Second Life debate poster, and this workshop was not organised by the same platform.

Erik supplied us not only with a design for the poster and flyers, but also added a lot of very useful variations on the logo we could use, for instance for the visitor badges, the booklet, the website, etc etc.

When one of our keynote speakers had to cancel and we found a replacement speaker, he provided us with overlays for the already printed posters and altered the designs without much ado.

It was a pleasure!

Testimonial by Saskia Polder.

Saskia Polder-Verkiel works at the Delft University of Technology in Delft, the Netherlands. More precisely, she is a representative of the Department of Philosophy, and as such, she is, amongst other things, organizing international conferences and workshops. By the way, she calls me “Erik”, since in Dutch (as in most languages besides my native German), I am usually referred to by my middle name. I enjoyed working with her and the people at her department a lot. Plus, I got free coffee at every meeting. :-)