Thoughtful composition and colour blocking in Martin Steiner’s sleek portfolio 

Germany-based graphic designer Martin Steiner has worked on numerous books, magazines, exhibitions and websites in the arts and culture world. His style of simple, minimalist typography with block colours and stark imagery is popular with many designers but Martin executes his projects in a way that shows real knowledge of composition, layout and awareness of his clients’ requirements. 

His publication for Flyeralarm, a German printing company based is a perfect example of this as the company’s development over 12 years is set out in four slick volumes. The philosophy behind the company is to “make it easy”, and Martin has followed suit by breaking up blocks of text with clean, stripped-back pages of one or two images overlaid with large sans serif type, which creates some breathing space in the books. As a publication essentially about a company’s values it could easily have become a corporate tome, but Martin injects a coolness and sophistication into the project.

Other stand-out work includes his ongoing involvement with Fotodoks, a documentary photography festival in Munich, for which he’s designed the identity for the last few years. His use of colour each year seemingly harks back to film packaging of yesteryear in a playful way. Showing more of his light-hearted side, is this identity for a series of TED talks in Munich, where Martin has created an ambiguous character using a combination of eyes and thick graphic lines.