About Slanted

Slanted

Slanted is a German biannual print magazine devoted to typography, graphic design, illustration, and photography, published by the independent Slanted Publishers of Karlsruhe. Founded in 2005 as a print spin-off of the influential typography blog slanted.de, the magazine appears twice a year, with each issue dedicated to a specific typographic or country-specific theme and a custom-designed layout. It is complemented by a daily blog, video interviews, and an extensive book publishing program that has made Slanted Publishers one of Europe's most respected specialist houses for visual culture.

Overview

Slanted is published in English, twice a year, typically at the end of April and the end of October. The magazine focuses on international design and cultural production: every issue explores one theme, whether a typographic discipline such as experimental type or a design scene in a particular country, and the layout of the issue is redesigned from scratch to express that theme. This means no two issues look alike, and the magazine has become as much a design object in its own right as a reporting medium. As of May 2020, 35 regular issues had appeared, alongside four special editions published between 2013 and 2020, and the numbering has continued since, with issue 48 devoted to Seoul scheduled for 2026.

The magazine is the flagship of Slanted Publishers UG, an independent publishing house founded in 2014 by Lars Harmsen and Julia Kahl, and headquartered at Noerdliche Uferstrasse 4-6, 76189 Karlsruhe. Before 2014 the magazine was published under the auspices of MAGMA Brand Design, the Karlsruhe design agency in which the title originated. The publisher's program extends well beyond the magazine: Slanted Publishers produces books on typography, graphic design, illustration, photography, and contemporary art, including the Slanted Experimental Type series, whose fourth edition was contributed to the public record in October 2026. The publishing house operates an international distribution network with representatives in Australia and New Zealand, Austria, the United States and Canada, China and Hong Kong, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and other markets, and offers subscriptions directly from Karlsruhe.

Slanted has been recognized in national and international design competitions. Among its awards are the Silver Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2009 and the German Design Award in 2018. The magazine's ISSN for the print edition is 1867-6510.

History

The origin of Slanted lies in the Karlsruhe graphic design agency Magma, which in 2004 put the typography blog slanted.de online. The blog answered a clear community need: designers wanted a place to exchange news and observations about typography trends online, and the response was enormous. A year later, the first Slanted print editions appeared as live-printed small editions at trade fairs, selling out so quickly that the idea of a high-quality magazine arose. Since 2008 the rhythm has been steady: a new issue at the end of April and another at the end of October, published in English for an international readership, while the blog continues to publish daily news and announcements alongside free video interviews with designers from around the world.

In 2014 the publishers founded Slanted Publishers as an independent house, separating the magazine and its growing book program from the Magma agency. Lars Harmsen, a professor and designer, and Julia Kahl, art director, have led the house since. Over the following decade the publisher built one of the most extensive programs of design books in Europe, from monographs and type specimens to thematic anthologies, while the magazine accumulated its awards and its international following. The 2025 publishing catalog of Slanted Publishers lists the magazine, the book program, subscriptions, and distribution arrangements, documenting a mature small press with global reach. Recent activity confirms the operation's continuity: the Slanted Experimental Type 4.0 book, produced with students of the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences under Lars Harmsen and Andreas Ruhe, was presented in autumn 2026, and internship postings for the magazine's Seoul issue run through September 2026.

Coverage and Content

Each issue of Slanted is built around a single theme. Past issues have explored typographic territories such as grotesque typefaces (a celebrated double issue, numbers 13 and 14), experimental typography (issue 15, which included a 48-page special section on type experiments and whose cover was printed with an iris-printing technique on two different paper stocks), and national design scenes reported from cities and countries around the world. The content mixes commissioned type essays, interviews with designers and foundries, photo stories, and reports: issue 14's grotesque coverage, for example, included type essays by Flo Gaertner, Robert Schumann, and Anna Sinofzik, interviews with designers in Porto, Amsterdam, and Krakow, an article on Kiyoshi Awazu and a Tokyo report by Ian Lynam, and photo essays on subjects from the refugee situation in Melilla to a Munich beer hall evening.

The magazine's defining editorial principle is that form serves theme. The typeface of the body text, the grid, the paper, and the production techniques are chosen anew for each issue, so that reading Slanted is also an education in design possibility. Special editions have extended the concept further. The blog at slanted.de complements the print rhythm with daily news, keeping the community current between the April and October issues, and the publisher's video interviews give readers direct access to practitioners' voices.

Organization and Ownership

Slanted and Slanted Publishers are owned and operated by Lars Harmsen and Julia Kahl, who founded the publishing house in 2014. The company is registered as Slanted Publishers UG (limited liability), based in Karlsruhe. Julia Kahl serves as art director and publisher, while Lars Harmsen, a professor of design, contributes as publisher, editor, and creative lead. The publishing house's catalog lists subscription management under Julia Klose in Karlsruhe, and an international network of distribution representatives covering the major English-, German-, and Asian-language markets. The company also operates a press office and offers press downloads, and it runs a newsletter for announcements. Financial details of the company are not publicly disclosed.

Digital Presence

The blog slanted.de, founded in 2004, is the digital heart of the brand and predates the magazine. It publishes daily news and announcements from the design world and hosts a library of free video interviews with designers worldwide. The site's traffic has been reported at around 400,000 monthly views, and the brand's social media following includes more than 100,000 followers on Instagram at last public reporting, with additional presences on Facebook and the platform formerly known as Twitter. The publisher operates an online shop for the magazine, books, and subscriptions at slanted.de, and a newsletter distribution for new releases. The digital presence is thoroughly integrated with the print program: the blog announces issues, the shop sells them, and the video interviews extend the print interviews into moving image.

The Typographic Magazine as Object

Slanted has survived and grown in an era of print decline by making each issue indispensable as a designed artifact. Its themed, reinvented layout, its international community, and the publishing house's book program have given it a position no aggregator can replicate: the magazine is both a chronicle of contemporary typography and a demonstration of what typography can do. From the 2004 blog to the 2026 Seoul issue, it remains the Karlsruhe press's quiet manifesto that print is a medium of ideas.