This design is inspired by the symbolic and formal language of travel. A letter makes a journey and the attention of its recipient turns, inevitably, to the postmark and the stamp. The form deviates very consciously from tradition: the rejection of decoration and of any nostalgia for the Austrian postage stamp tradition is complete. And yet the viewer instantly recognises the country of origin of the stamp due to the international abbreviation and the red and white colour scheme. Such radical abstraction is a symbol, in international terms, of modern and yet, at the same time, classic design. Nine square centimetres as ambassadors for a modern and future-oriented nation.
(Herbert Winkler)
Herbert Winkler (*1967)
The 1967-born designer Herbert Winkler specialises in the conception of magazines for Austrian and international publishers and corporations. His works achieve mass circulation status and receive international design prizes – often at one and the same time. Winkler is experienced in employing his dynamic visual style as a means of guaranteeing order and design quality – even in the most commercial context – and the range of his work stretches from the exclusive house magazine for the luxury Beau Rivage Hotel in Geneva to programmes for Vienna’s Burgtheater and the customer magazine for the Billa supermarket chain. Winkler is also famous for his role as co-initiator of the British design magazine “Wallpaper” of which he was Art Director from the first edition to 2003. Such work was an early embodiment of the features which mark his work to this day: a clear line, a richly contrasting, precise interplay between photography and typology and a use of illustrations which give the results a certain timeless elegance, regardless of all their topicality.