Book review ROGER – NEVER BE LATE published @Hitzerot

Finally, a book about the Berlin writer ROGER, who has been active since the 90s, is coming out. Writing the same name for over 25 years seems to lead to two possible scenarios, writes the publisher Hitzerot: “The writers achieve a kind of individual peak of style and piecing, which is now constantly repeated with minor changes. Or the second, and by far more rare occurring one: writers who continuously work on their never-changing letters, facing the challenge to let their name look new, surprising and vivid with every latest piece.”

And this is exactly what the Berlin writer ROGER does, as can be discovered in the new book ROGER-NEVER BE LATE, published by Hitzerot.

Active since the 1990s, ROGER presents in his book a selection of 55 pieces and many sketches made in between 2006 and 2020. The photographs of the pieces are intentionally not chronologically ordered and also without any details. Thus they show in a neutral way the incredible variety of his styles in 14 years painted on various surfaces. Whether on trains or walls, like colored panels in Vienna, Hall of Fame burners in Berlin, black and white pieces in abandoned industrial wastelands or colorful pieces on the S-Bahn line or on dirty subways, ROGER always shows himself innovative and surprising.

The illustrated sketches of his name and crew names are an important part of this high-quality hardcover book. Here you can follow his work on form ideas of the lettering, sometimes you have to turn the book to look at the many drawings, which step by step lead to final drafts. These personal sketches ensure a more intimate look into ROGER’s artistic work.

Again and again, ROGER stylizes the letter forms of his name or crew names to bring them into slightly defamiliarized, reduced forms. Whether with angular or rounded shapes ROGER’s pieces are always balanced. Mostly the letters are connected by beams or tubes/cords, sometimes they are slightly interlaced, or seem to be cast from one piece. With volumes, planes and spaces, he incorporates perspective in some works, so that the letters become objects/sculptures in the picture. Some works look like architectural structures, whose letters have been reduced to differently shaped blocks and stand close together. Some of his works are minimalist, seem a bit futuristic and also somehow humorous, because you can also see stylized characters in the letter forms. Other pieces are, despite stylization, more classical in form and writing dynamics and are, despite their exact construction, swingingly painted on walls or on iron. In the last years ROGER also used solely the painting technique with roll and color and shows his talent here as well. He makes use of various stylistic possibilities of lettering to transform and alienate his name letters, but they still remain relatively easy to decipher and can therefore always be assigned to the author – despite multiple stylistic variations.

The publication ROGER – NEVER BE LATE with exclusive photographs and sketches from ROGER’s archive as well as from five photographers is a successful excerpt of the writer’s skills, an intermediate state and photographic document of his work, which ROGER has compiled for us in cooperation with Hitzerot. The book is designed to make you want to leaf back and forth to better understand the stylistic developments of ROGER. Works from the early years, as well as from the middle/end of the 90s, when ROGER in Berlin already stood out stylistically and strove for renewal in style writing, are unfortunately not shown in this publication. It is not a monograph, it doesn’ cover his entire oeuvre, nor is it a final status, but an exclusive selection of his work between 2006 and today, that shows variety of style. Always in search of renewal of form and originality in pure lettering, ROGER remains one of the most exciting style writers in the city, who is not afraid to break with previous styles, not committing himself to a single style, and always bringing out new surprises in his letters. And this without making the letters difficult to decipher or even wanting to dissolve them completely, as some individual writers in Berlin have done since the 2000s.

ROGER – NEVER BE LATE, Hitzerot