Visual Communications
Murray Aston Joseph Barnes Jodie Byrne Finan Callaghan Tom Campion Áine Coll Kate Doherty Lily Gartner Chris Hanna Aoibheann Hand Bartek Janczak Kayley Kemple Shauna Langtry Megan McDonnell Marianna Mooney Póilín Nic Géidigh Caitlín Ní Rabhartaigh Lana O'Kiersey Karolina Olkowicz Gary Price David Rogers Laura-Ann Ryan Stephen Sheehan Sun YuyuTom Campion
The Spy with No Name
The story of ‘The Spy with No Name’ is a true story which emerged after the Cold War. A Dutch mother travelled to Czechoslovakia to forcefully give her son up for adoption by her Father, during World War II. 33 years later she finally tracked down the son she lost through adoption, yet what follows is a story of deception and heartbreak. Her son Erwin Van Haarlem, was actually a Czech spy working for the StB. The morning the Czech spy was arrested for espionage, he was found in his kitchen tuned into an ominous radio transmission which was broadcasting a sequence of numbers. These broadcasts were later revealed to be a communication link to his superiors, lost in translation unbeknown to the average listener these mysterious number stations were a catalyst to espionage during the Cold War.
The publication is one full of intrigue and unexpected combination, it uses a French fold to create hidden pockets. Within some folds, pockets of information containing code can be found, which creates a level of intrigue and secrecy. The publication comes accompanied with original recordings of Number Stations, which are visualized through typographic animations. Frames of these animations are found throughout the book, yet together the audio and type exist on a website. This format was directly inspired by shortwave radio technology, which anyone can tune into once they have a shortwave receiver. Shortwave signals are bouncing, as they always do, around the globe, bouncing off a layer of the atmosphere a few hundred miles above the Earth and into antennas all over the world. The message and meaning of these broadcasts may be lost in a digital atmosphere, but they are there, explicitly constant yet covert.
This project was awarded a Merit by the International Society Of Typographic Designers.
The story of ‘The Spy with No Name’ is a true story which emerged after the Cold War. A Dutch mother travelled to Czechoslovakia to forcefully give her son up for adoption by her Father, during World War II. 33 years later she finally tracked down the son she lost through adoption, yet what follows is a story of deception and heartbreak. Her son Erwin Van Haarlem, was actually a Czech spy working for the StB. The morning the Czech spy was arrested for espionage, he was found in his kitchen tuned into an ominous radio transmission which was broadcasting a sequence of numbers. These broadcasts were later revealed to be a communication link to his superiors, lost in translation unbeknown to the average listener these mysterious number stations were a catalyst to espionage during the Cold War.
The publication is one full of intrigue and unexpected combination, it uses a French fold to create hidden pockets. Within some folds, pockets of information containing code can be found, which creates a level of intrigue and secrecy. The publication comes accompanied with original recordings of Number Stations, which are visualized through typographic animations. Frames of these animations are found throughout the book, yet together the audio and type exist on a website. This format was directly inspired by shortwave radio technology, which anyone can tune into once they have a shortwave receiver. Shortwave signals are bouncing, as they always do, around the globe, bouncing off a layer of the atmosphere a few hundred miles above the Earth and into antennas all over the world. The message and meaning of these broadcasts may be lost in a digital atmosphere, but they are there, explicitly constant yet covert.
This project was awarded a Merit by the International Society Of Typographic Designers.
