nr.70 Johanna Himmelsbach & Theetat Thunkijjanukij | DIRECT ACTION | 15 Jul

We count ourselves lucky to have heard about this remarkable book and collaborative typeface project. The massive book DIRECT ACTION, published by Iris éditions, received the Forms of Printed Publication Award 2026 in Leipzig. The book gathers voices and handwritten letters from activists of the ZAD (zone à défendre), an autonomous zone resisting the construction of an airport. These letters were then developed into a typographic system, finding its final form inside desktop publishing software with the help of custom scripts. Book designer Johanna Himmelsbach collaborated with graphic & type designer Theetat Thunkijjanukij, with whom she had previously worked on Het Buurthuis at Het Nieuwe Instituut.

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Johanna Himmelsbach is a French-Swedish graphic designer based in Amsterdam. The notion of spatiality plays a central role in her practice, which operates at the intersection of graphic design, publishing, and photography. Through installations, workshops, and publications, she creates encounters between physical and mental spaces that question our perception of a given space, whether it is a studio, a gallery, or a landscape. Alongside commissioned work for artists, publishers, and cultural institutions, she develops self-initiated editorial research. She co-runs the publishing initiative Soft concern hard concern.
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Theetat Thunkijjanukij runs a copy business in Amsterdam, specializing in replicas of niche books. His work explores economies of scale and the meanings that emerge through replicas and the erasure of the original prints. Using limited machines and materials, he emphasizes meticulous reproduction within constraints. His pieces, often sold in subcultural, low-end markets, feature intentional inaccuracies resulting from his copying techniques. He is now building a conceptual shop as a publishing practice, in which selling replica books becomes a way of making public.
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DIRECT ACTION is a book about a film about a place about resistance, developed alongside the eponymous documentary by Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau. The film offers a contemplative portrait of the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, an occupied territory, the size of an international airport. The book, in turn, gathers the voices of its inhabitants and activists, offering commentary on the scenes of the film and testimony of life at the ZAD. Set in Philosophy Today, a typeface that merges the handwritings of its authors into a shared voice, the 460-page book is punctuated by inserts of film stills and enlarged quotations, echoing the collective and unruly life of the ZAD.
Starting from DIRECT ACTION and Het Buurthuis, Johanna Himmelsbach and Theetat Thunkijjanukij will present two custom typefaces: Philosophy Today and La Chinoise, both developed from the material and questions already present in each project.
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Hosted at:
De Lange Adem
Ruyschstraat 295
Amsterdam

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Supported by:

Typotheque & PICTORIGHT Fonds