If you want to publish a magazine in Germany, you need a publishing house, so the team at Grafikmagazin founded one and called it Phoenix Verlag für Grafikdesign. The name was of course a bit of a sideswipe, as the four founders had previously produced novum, which was discontinued as an independent magazine in 2020. Something new was to emerge from the ashes of the 96-year-old traditional magazine: Grafikmagazin.
While the plan for the magazine was a success, Phoenix Verlag has long led a shadowy existence. Now Tobias Holzmann, Christian Meier, Christine Moosmann and Sonja Pham have repositioned their publishing house and are now offering a range of additional services. The four are now making their many years of experience as magazine makers and organizers of design events available to a wider circle of people and advising companies and other interested parties on the design and conception of magazines and the organization of events.
A passion for quality, craftsmanship and good design is paramount at Phoenix Verlag, so it was only logical to communicate this in the corporate design. Instead of relying on standard fonts, the team was able to recruit the great calligrapher Rainer Menschik to draw the Phoenix lettering by hand. This was no easy task, because at the beginning it was not clear in which direction the publishing house would develop. However, the pen-drawn wordmark shows how timeless real quality work is. "Rainer Menschik has impressed us with his skills for a long time," says Christine Moosmann, "I am always delighted with the beautiful form he has given the word Phoenix, and I am fascinated by how appealing and self-confident the calligraphed wordmark looks in combination with the new communication design of our publishing house."
To the website: www.phoenixverlag.de