A Practice for Everyday Life

Name: A Practice for Everyday Life
Address: 37 Temple Street, London, E26QQ, GB
Telephone: +442077399975

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A Practice for Everyday Life

Creative direction, design and type for culture since 2003.

A Practice for Everyday Life (APFEL) is a design agency which investigates, explores, collects, experiments and creates design. The APFEL Shop offers products, publications and prints available for sale from our retail space in Bethnal Green (temporarily closed due to Covid-19), and through our online store. The APFEL Type Foundry publishes a growing library of typefaces developed through visual, textual and experiential research. The Foundry also offers a bespoke type design service, through which the studio accepts commissions for typeface design, logotype design and custom cuts of APFEL typefaces for context-specific use.

22/09/2026

Now open at Offer Waterman, ‘Lucie Rie/Hans Coper: Life at the Wheel’ is the first major exhibition in almost three decades to bring the work of both artists together.

The accompanying catalogue’s cover features sgraffito designs by each artist, screen-printed on book cloth. This exploration of texture continues inside the book, with tip-ins in a range of papers throughout. These present archival imagery, some published here for the first time, with layouts that emphasise the connection between the artists. The typeface, Self Modern, is a contemporary reference to typefaces from the era in which Rie and Coper worked together, while the essay layouts are inspired by the column-like forms of Coper’s work.

Photography: Ed Park

15/09/2026

Identity and website for VeneKlasen, a modern and contemporary art gallery with locations in New York and London.

Our identity foregrounds the work of the international artists and major estates represented by the gallery. It brings together a flexible typographic system and colour palette, designed to work across the website, digital communications and printed applications.

It is built around GT Era, a grotesque sans serif that draws on pre-modern grotesk typefaces, reworked for contemporary use. The idiosyncratic, playful details of these pre-modern precedents and its functional, contemporary application create a restrained identity with warmth in its details.

Photography: Ed Park
Website build: Kieran Startup

27/08/2026

Erik Madigan Heck is an artist and photographer whose painterly approach blends photographic traditions with art historical references. Working closely with Heck, we developed a new identity and website that brings together 25 years of his work.

The identity reinterprets historical ephemera through its materials and motifs. The letterpress-printed stationery features surprising and playful details, from bespoke hand ornaments inspired by tarot cards to black ink with red highlights referencing medieval rubrics.

This same approach extends to Per Calvaria, a bespoke typeface whose proportions draw on sixteenth-century Garamond. From this historical starting point, the letterforms introduce idiosyncratic details that echo Heck’s process of manipulation and layering.

apracticeforeverydaylife.com/case-studies/erik-madigan-heck

Photography: Ed Park

26/08/2026

Custom typeface for Erik Madigan Heck

Erik Madigan Heck is an artist and photographer whose painterly approach blends photographic traditions with art historical references. Working closely with Heck, we developed a custom typeface, Per Calvaria, alongside a new identity and website.

Rooted in the proportions of sixteenth-century Garamond, Per Calvaria's forms introduce idiosyncratic details that echo Heck’s process of manipulation and layering. Ink-bled corners, and unexpected serif placements suggest traces of the hand, while tall ascenders, raised tittles and an extended set of ligatures create a distinctive rhythm across text.

apracticeforeverydaylife.com/case-studies/erik-madigan-heck

06/08/2026

We’ve evolved the identity for Tom Stuart-Smith Studio, building on the original identity we created for the practice in 2012. The updated system introduces a new colour palette, refined typography and website.

Led by Tom Stuart-Smith, the landscape design practice is known for an approach that combines naturalism with modernity. The identity echoes the restraint and texture of the landscapes the practice creates.

Across printed communications and presentation folders, information is anchored to the bottom edge of the page, creating a ground from which each layout can build. The website extends this approach online, with a single typeface and natural palette giving precedence to photography and drawing.

Website Build: Simon Rogers
Photography: Ed Park

02/07/2026

‘The Making of V&A East’ explores the story behind the development of V&A East Museum and Storehouse, and celebrate their home in east London.

The book’s production emphasises its own making, with flush-cut edges exposing the board beneath. We used the large-format proofing sheets, produced to check the colour of images within the book (and are often discarded during the process), to form the base layer of the covers. Photography of the museums makes up four distinct covers, each screen-printed with yellow typography.

Inside, sections begin with vibrant dividers and end with visual interludes offering a new perspective on the making of both east London sites. Illustrations by Nina Chakrabarti accompany a series of letters from residents, while a visual essay of collaged imagery reveals the materiality and typography of V&A East Museum’s permanent galleries, designed by JA Projects, A Practice for Everyday Life and Larry Achiampong.

Photography: Ed Park

23/06/2026

We have developed a new identity and website for Faye Toogood, a British artist working at the boundary between functional object and sculpture.

The identity draws on the friction between the practical and the poetic, using classical book references as a refined framework for Toogood's work. The website reflects a more holistic view of Toogood’s practice, bringing together her artworks and exhibitions with the studio’s furniture and collaborations for the first time. Imagery and hand-drawn lettering add a more tactile, intuitive quality, encouraging closer connections between these interconnected areas.

fayetoogood.com

08/06/2026

Nakagawa × Carl Hansen & Søn

‘Crafting the Everyday’ is an exhibition by Nakagawa and Carl Hansen & Søn, bringing together Japanese objects and Danish furniture through a shared approach to craftsmanship.

Building on the graphic language we developed for Nakagawa’s first European store, the exhibition features a series of paper backdrops with illustrations of Nakagawa’s objects. The simplicity of the illustrated forms emphasises the refined character of each piece, while the tactile textures nod to the human hands behind them.

The exhibition runs until 16 June at Carl Hansen & Søn’s showroom in Clerkenwell, London.

Photo: Tomo Yasuda, Andy Barnham

28/05/2026

'Drawing: Antony Gormley' Book Design

'Drawing' explores how drawing is a vital process that shapes Antony Gormley’s practice. The book brings together over 400 works, including many previously unseen drawings, alongside writings by Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Iversen, Daisy Hildyard, WJT Mitchell and Merlin Sheldrake.

Published by Thames & Hudson, it offers a forensic catalogue of the works, meticulously reproduced on uncoated paper. Gormley’s own writings are woven throughout, adding context and reflection alongside the series of works. Essays are anchored to the bottom of the page, and together with the book’s weight and scale, give it a grounded, tactile presence.

Photography: Ed Park

05/05/2026

We have developed the graphic identity for the French Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, which opens this week.

The pavilion presents a new body of work by Yto Barrada, titled ‘Comme Saturne’ (‘Like Saturn’). Curated by Myriam Ben Salah, the installation draws on the figure of Saturn to experiment with time, textile, colour and wordplay.

Address

37 Temple Street
London
E26QQ

Telephone

+442077399975

Website

http://www.apracticeforeverydaylife.com/

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