here & now

Time to pick up a thread that got lost along the way, in terms of presenting some of our valued contributors without whom mono.kultur would not be possible. Namely Bernd Kuchenbeiser, our designer and interviewer for our current issue featuring ECM’s founder Manfred Eicher. Bernd had been on our list of designers we’ve been wanting to work with for quite some time, and when ECM finally agreed to an issue, he seemed the perfect match: his use of minimalist typography, clear layouts and a perfect balance between proportions, material and imagery are perfectly in tune with ECM’s graphic universe. In fact, he’d already collaborated with them on their website.

Little did we know that he also knows ECM’s catalogue inside out and has a background in music and composition – slowly it emerged that he would also be more than capable to conduct a conversation with Manfred Eicher that was going to be different from all the interviews you can read elsewhere. His design work also often bears an unusually text-conscious element, for instance his proposal for a catalogue of the best-designed books of Germany, where as the main feature he asked a variety of critics to write a personal review of a given book, reintroducing the visual element of books back to the written word. In short: it’s conceptual, well-balanced and perfectionist work coming out of his atelier in Munich – and thus a perfect match for a conceptual, well-balanced and perfectionist record label such as ECM.