About
The wonderful world of Cape Arcona
The Cape Arcona Type Foundry is a type foundry based in Mülheim/Essen, Germany, run by Stefan Claudius and Thomas Schostok. We started it in 2002 (2002-07-16, 14:24:44 CET) to publish fonts we designed for Beast, a legendary PDF magazine. Our goal: typefaces with a non-conformist personality.
Over the years, the field of business expanded from individual typeface design to custom font production, corporate, and logo design and complex text-font families. This is the kind of work we love: Thinking beyond the ordinary, imagining better worlds and better fonts.
The Cape Arcona Type Foundry Headquarter since 2002
The Arcona island offers dramatic cliffs and sweet beaches such as El Arcona, Puntarcona or Point d’Arcona. Besides fonts, tourism is one of the major resources of the little country.
A life between font and fun
The Cape Arcona Type Foundry has its headquarter at the wonderful Cape Arcona on the Arcona Island. It was hushed for hundreds of years until we settled in an imaginary country on an island between Europe and America, exactly where we feel home. To combine democracy with monarchy, we declared them King and President. Within the borders of the country, we abolished money and introduced the production of typefaces.
For hundreds of years Cape Arcona was a melting pot for the most different cultures, but the main influences came from England, America, Spain, Germany, and France. Wherever people felt dissatisfied with their countries, they immigrated to Cape Arcona and found a friendly climate, nice folks and a peaceful place to live.
The people behind
Stefan Claudius
The “President” of Cape Arcona. After studying in Wuppertal and Essen, he set up as an independent graphic designer in 2000. He runs the studio “Sichtvermerk”, working on typography and graphic design projects of all kinds. Since 2007, he has taught typography and graphic design at several design schools, including FH Dortmund, Folkwang University of the Arts, and HFBK Hamburg, as a lecturer and guest professor. When he’s not developing a new typeface, he can be found playing guitar, writing a book, or simply relaxing on a beach at Cape Arcona – or at least dreaming about it.
Check out his work: www.sichtvermerk.com
Thomas Schostok
The “King” of Cape Arcona. Thomas Schostok aka {ths} works at the crossroads of art and graphic design, moving fluidly between disciplines without ever settling comfortably into just one box. He is a graphic designer, artist, and type designer. He was the publisher of the legendary BEAST PDF magazine. It’s his fondness for Elvis Presley and Barry White records, continuously playing in the background while he works, that keeps him nice and merry, no matter how chaotic the project or how tight the deadline. Somewhere between the King's swagger and Barry's velvet baritone, {ths} finds the calm he needs to keep creating – one track, one layout, one glyph at a time.
Check out his work: www.ths.works
The Arcona Islands — a small archipelago of four islands, playfully named after Elvis Presley songs. The largest, Arcona, is home to the notorious Cape Arcona and the capital, Arcona City. It's followed by the smaller islands of “Aloha” and “See See Rider,” with the tiniest island, “Fever,” rounding out the chain.
We just love cruising around in the motorboat. It's electric, of course.
Source: Wikipedia
Historical awareness
For the sake of political correctness, we would like to state that we are NOT named after the luxury liner “Cap Arcona”. The ship was named after Cape Arkona on the island of Rügen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The thing is, this luxury liner was used by the Nazis for transports of war prisoners. In 1945, when WWII was nearly over, the RAF bombed the “Cap Arcona” together with two other ships and caused (together with the German soldiers who didn’t allow the prisoners to leave the ship) the death of hundreds of prisoners of their nationality.
This is a tragedy, and we would like to assure you that we didn’t have this in mind when giving our type foundry the name Cape Arcona.
Cape Television
The Cape Arcona Love Band
We are also on tour all the time with our Band. Please download our best song Hey Girl as MP3.
Declaration of Normality
The King and the President from the Cape Arcona Type Foundry giving their “Declaration of Normality”. 23-February-2009 http://vimeo.com/3334538
Coffee and Fonts
The King and the President from the Cape Arcona Type Foundry showing their secrets of how they develop new typefaces. Filmed in stunning ‘Cape Vision’. 30-January-2008 http://vimeo.com/1323241
