From Spazio:

Casa Maria Bottero is an apartment designed by Umberto Riva for his family on the top floor of an eight-story housing cooperative on Via Paravia, in Milan, Italy. Riva worked on the project from 1965 to 1967 and Giorgio Casali photographed the completed work in 1969 for publication in the architecture magazine Domus and, a few months later, in Zodiac.

In the fall of 2023, Maria Bottero showed us around her home. Her words highlight some of the most poetic elements of Riva’s design and accompany the photographs of Allegra Martin and Francesco Paleari who, for the first time since 1969, have fully documented the home’s interiors and objects collected over the years. The building and Casa Maria Bottero are considered Umberto Riva’s first major project.

The design of the book was created by zoll, with texts written by Maria Bottero, and drawings by Sara Merlotti. The editorial coordination was made by Elisa Di Nofa, the photolithography by Francesco Paleari, and the translations by Maka Language Consulting.

Jakob Nonnen's And the leaves that are green turn to brown was designed by Finn Reduhn and set in HAL Timezone, published by HAL Typefaces.

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The New Walden is a collectible, hardcover edition of Thoreau’s masterpiece, annotated for modern readers. Beautifully designed, illustrated and printed to last for generations.

The preorder for this limited edition is now live and will run until August 5, 2022. As this is a crowdfunded project, the book has not yet been produced. All images shown here are renderings.

Thoreau’s ideas about consumerism, busyness, and humankind’s place in the natural world are uncannily relevant to the problems we face today. When I (Matt Steel) first read Walden, I shared my enthusiasm for the book with anyone willing to listen. But I kept having to couch my recommendations: “This is a wonderful book, but the 19th-century language can be hard to digest. It’s full of beauty and wisdom, but the first chapter is a tough hill to climb. But stick with it, and you’ll be glad you did!” The bevy of buts bothered me. I didn't want to keep telling people they should read Walden – BUT ...

While Walden has always been a challenging book, the evolution of language over the past two centuries has made it harder for modern readers to get into the text. What’s more, there seemed to be a design gap among the many editions of Walden. After first reading the book on a tablet, I went hunting for an archival edition to keep near my other favorite books. Given Walden’s status as a classic, I was sure someone somewhere had made an edition that looked and felt like a genuine reflection of the story. An heirloom that could last for hundreds of years. To my surprise, I couldn’t find one still in print.

Steel Brothers. License: All Rights Reserved.

Steel Brothers. License: All Rights Reserved.

Hopefully, this newly annotated and illustrated edition will help Walden remain evergreen.

Annotated editions of Walden already exist, some of which include abundant commentary. That’s great for academic study, but a delightful reading experience for both newcomers and longtime fans is our primary goal.

Our annotations are relatively sparse. We don’t want to create a study companion as much as an unobtrusive guide for newcomers and longtime fans alike. The goal is to leave you alone with the text as much as possible while offering enough insight so you can keep that smartphone in your pocket.

Much of Walden remains accessible by today’s standards. We’ve simply elucidated the archaic words and idioms in the book, as well as the cultural, historical and literary references that Thoreau used to embellish and connect his thoughts. And when untranslated Latin and Greek appear in the text, we’ve included the English translation in the margins.

We’ve also created a brand-new section of prose poems selected from some of Thoreau’s most arresting sentences in Walden.

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Lastly, typography is central to this book’s design. After extensive research and testing, I decided against using fonts based on those from Thoreau’s day. Most of them felt either too stiff or too ornate for this project. I wanted something that was not only effortless to read but also crisp, energetic and timeless in its design.

Thoreau had French Huguenot ancestry on his father’s side. I wanted a typeface that felt efficient and relatively anonymous, with just a little Gallic flair. Lyon Display and Lyon Text, from Commercial Type, fit the bill. Type designer Kai Bernau created the Lyon Collection as a contemporary rendition of serif typefaces created by the 16th-century French designer and printer Robert Granjon. Furthermore, Lyon’s optical variations allowed me to use a single font family – ideal for a book about simplicity.

Visit our preorder page to find out more about this project.

Editor’s note: A first version of this post was published on February 24, 2016. It was updated in May 2022 with new text and images coinciding with a renewed crowdfunding campaign for this book.

Steel Brothers. License: All Rights Reserved.

Steel Brothers. License: All Rights Reserved.

The unconventional arrangement of the title typography on the book jacket nicely integrates with the chosen detail of one of Manet’s paintings – and adds a contemporary touch along the way.

Manet and Modern Beauty: The Artist’s Last Years is a book on the French painter Édouard Manet (1832–1883), featuring his work and correspondence as well as a chronology of his life. It uses the Halyard Text typeface family extensively from the cover to the smallest text inside.

The publication goes with an exhibition given at the Getty Center in Los Angeles from October 8, 2019 to January 12, 2020. It was edited by Scott Allan, Emily A. Beeny, and Gloria Groom, and published by J. Paul Getty Museum.

400 pages
, 9⅝×11⅜ inches, 206 color and 97 b/w illustrations, 1 table.

ISBN 978-1-60606-604-1

The title is repeated on the inner flap, shown reversed in a light weight from Halyard Text.

The Halyard superfamily comprises three optical sizes. Book designer Jeffrey Cohen decided to go exclusively with Halyard Text and its more open shapes. Halyard Text also appears for titles, skillfully set with reduced tracking and hanging punctuation.

The headings are set with a short line measure, leaving opening pages with a generous amount of white space. Halyard Text is specified in roman and italic styles, with non-ligning numerals.

Image captions are enlivened by the use of two contrasting weights.

Running titles are set vertically in the outer margins, echoing the rotated “Manet” on the book jacket. The inline headings are highlighted by the use of bold small caps.

The nominator and denominator glyphs included in Halyard Text come in handy for setting arbitrary fractions.

By working with various distinctive styles, clarity is achieved even on dense pages. By keeping everything within one family, the page looks calm and harmonious.

A small series of film/photography zines from my first trip to Japan. Four covers for small collections of photos from Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto & Nara. Each cover has the same number of elements and information, including an asterisk from Monarch that works surprisingly well with the Japanese theme of the series.

Visione Oggettiva. L'oggetto della raffigurazione tra la Neue Sachlichkeit e la Scuola di Düsseldorf traces the visual research of the Neue Sachlichkeit in Germany in the 1920s. It then examines the influence that the artistic movement had on photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. The photographer couple took research of objectivity to an other level. This was done first through their works, and then through the Düsseldorf School.

This book was developed at ISIA Urbino for the History of Photography and History of Illustration courses, with the supervision of Lucia Miodini and Silvana Sola. LL Unica77 is used throughout.

In its first issue, feeels tackles the concept of “fuzzy” from a myriad of critical perspectives. Written and visual pieces explore timely and timeless topics including fuzzy politics, foggy memories, language shifts, playful interactions between strangers, and clashes between modernism and cultural traditions. Contributors hail from a range of professional backgrounds—art, design, medicine, history, and sports mascots—and seven different countries, coming together in conversation through a common lens.

In its multi-faceted framework, feeeels highlights established and rising thinkers and makers, with often surprising interjections. At a moment when tactility is disregarded in pursuit of sleek, supposedly immaterial, digital interactions, we foreground it as a necessary foundation for understanding the 21st century.

See also the “Fuzzy Buzzy” insert.

Footnotes is a type design periodical published yearly by La Police. The third issue opens with the second part of an article by Alice Savoie about Ladislas Mandel, initiated in issue B. Following this link with the second issue, issue C includes contributions by Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé, Nicolien van der Keur, Alaric Garnier, and Dan Reynolds.

In order for the reader to discover the typeface(s) presented in each contribution, every essay is typeset with the related typeface(s). Some are unreleased, here’s their detailed list in order of appearance:
LP Jung is an in-progress typeface by La Police.
Minuscule by Thomas Huot-Marchand, released by 205TF.
LARA & BALI by Coline Sunier & Charles Mazé, two in-progress typefaces at CAC Brétigny.
Marcin Antique & Typewriter by Mário Feliciano, available at Feliciano Type Foundry.
Antique No 525 Expanded by Alaric Garnier, an unreleased revival.
Akzidenz-Grotesk, sold by Berthold Types.

Benign Duplicates is a limited edition publication, presenting twelve days from the diaries (1962) and photographs (1954–1993) from the archive of Nikolai Kozakov. Under the moniker of publishing House Gluschenkoizdat, Kozakov’s notes and images were processed in various productions including this English edition, an audio drama and a website with the same diary excerpts as used for this booklet.

(...) In writing down his every step, Kozakov remains unknowable, like outer space — the conquest of which he devotes so much attention to in his notes. Who is he? A man of the ‘60s? An intellectual wretch? Your father’s older brother? Anti-Semite? Loser? Poet? Extraterrestrial? The diary is clearly not intended for anyone else to read: Kozakov writes it for himself and remains hermitically sealed within its text, exposing the reader to the principal and tragic impenetrability of “the Other.” Kozakov’s peculiar relationship with reality has no parallel in today’s world. It is like a message in a bottle that he sent not 50, but 500 years ago. (...) — book cover text by Maria Kuvshinova

1962, Soviet Union. On the brink of inevitable coming of communism, Nikolai Kozakov, a truck driver from the Gorky region, steals from the collective farm property, goes to Kazakhstan to work on the gas pipeline construction and is treated for stuttering by hypnosis in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. Behind the ostentatious masculinity — he hunts, rides a motorcycle and is constantly drunk — Kozakov hides a secret life of a man with developed taste, a subtle observer, a student of ancient mythology. He writes poetry, takes photographs, pities himself and falls in love, perhaps too often. — Grigor Atanesian, Gluschenkoizdat publishers

Text and headlines are set with Journal (Paratype), and Akzidenz Grotesk is used for the introduction paragraph on the book cover and for captions. A few numerals use Journal Sans.

Edited by K. Gluschenko
Translated from Russian, by B. McGarr and M. Shipley.
200×260 mm, 128 pages, first edition of 10 copies
Order № 184.

Tigr in use for a work that started at the seminar “l'ordre compliqué” lead by Anton Stuckardt at HfG Karlsruhe, Germany. The book documents my attempt to put Herman Melvilles text “The Whiteness of the Whale” (taken from his novel Moby Dick) in a new order. By confronting Melvilles worded descriptions of the color white with associative images I tried to restructure the narrative of the text as a catalogue of words and pictures.

The publication accompanying the exhibition Planet B – 100 ideas for a new world is a collection of different ideas for a new world – a Planet B. The most visionary artists, designers, architects, writers and futurologists in the world present their political, poetic, odd and radical ideas for a new world. — NRW-Forum

The use of changing layouts, typefaces and font sizes creates a never boring reading experience—almost every page turn surprises. Still, the “navigation bars” on the pages’ sides keep everything together, so the reader won’t get lost. All used fonts are listed in the book’s colophon. Several of them are shown here, and are identified in the respective image captions. The book additionally uses Aileron, Arimo, Astloch, and Junicode (not pictured). See more images on the website of designer Matthias Hübner.

Contributions by Rachel Armstrong, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Ernst Bloch, Stewart Brand, Brad Downey, Kevin Kelly, Ray Kurzweil, Chusz Martínez, Niklas Maak, Lucy McRae, Philippe Rahm, raumlaborberlin, Tomás Saraceno, Space Caviar, Jakob Tigges, Friedrich von Borries and many more.

Published in January 2016 by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König
Editors: Alain Bieber & Lukas Feireiss
17.5×24 cm, 240 pages, softcover
Texts in English and German

The text on the cover and the spine is set in Sporting Grotesque.

Body text set in Sporting Grotesque, with italics from Chivo. The headlines are set in caps from Reglo. The serif used for page numbers and subheads is Old Standard.

The big type on the left page is Autopia.

Steps Mono is used for page references (“N on p. 18 / DE S. 19”).

From top to bottom: Sporting Grotesque Gras (running head), the Latin part of Ume Mincho (underlined), Autopia (headline), Steps Mono (subheading), Sporting Grotesque Normal (body text).

The serif used for the texts on this spread is Bagnard.

Demain l’École d’Art (Tomorrow the Art School) is a book reproducing the full proceedings of the 2015 National conference of the French Schools of Arts.

Alaric Garnier, the designer of the book used a super early version of Temeraire typeface (being the first one to ever use it) for body text alongside two of his own creations: Kessler plus the two styles of Mars for the titles and paratext. He has played with many of the features and alternates from these typefaces, some of them being eventually discarded before the commercial releases of the fonts.

Garnier has designed an alternate R, with a curvy leg, for Mars specifically for the book, matching Temeraire’s and Kessler’s shapes.

The alternate italic s used in the caption didn’t make it to the release.

The design of Kessler question mark has eventually been changed to a simpler shape.

Note the use of the alternate loopless ‘g’.

From Kehrer Verlag:

Helen Levitt (1913–2009) numbers among the foremost exponents of street photography. As a passionate observer and chronicler of everyday street life in New York, she spent decades documenting residents of the city’s poorer neighbourhoods such as Lower East Side and Harlem. Levitt’s oeuvre stands out for her sense of dynamics and surrealistic sense of humour, and her employment of color photography was revolutionary: Levitt numbers among those photographers who pioneered and established color as a means of artistic expression. The book accompanying the retrospective of the Albertina Museum features around 130 of her iconic works. Many of these photos come from Helen Levitt’s personal estate, and this exhibition represents their first-ever public showing.

Mathieu Asselin’s meticulous investigation into the long history of the global biotechnology corporation Monsanto brings together hundreds of documents and photographs depicting the devastating human, ecological and economical impact of the company’s long and reckless story of growth, and their cynical efforts to change their negative public image.
Over five years Asselin conducted extensive research and travelled through Vietnam and the United States of America to find the people and places dramatically affected by Monsanto's past and current practices. His determined approach resulted in an overwhelming depiction that also aims to portray what Monanto's near future might look like. — Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation

Ricardo Báez presents Asselin's research – spanning from text and photographs to a collection of Monsanto advertisements – in a book that counts 156 pages, measures 27×30×2 cm and weighs 1.2 kilograms. Published by Verlag Kettler (English) and Actes Sud (French). This publication won the first prize at the Dummy Award Kassel 2016 and a Honorary Appreciation at Best Book Design from all over the World 2018, and was followed up by an (updated) newsprint edition in 2018.

With Louize Display (designed by Matthieu Cortat) Atelier AAAAA designed the layout and illustrated the cover of the poem “Un monde en fragments” by Pierre Barré, the first publication of the young publisher L’Atteinte in Metz. The publisher’s logo uses Totentanz by Yoann Minet.

Bureau 205 has designed these Bibles in 2010. There are two Bibles, one in French and one in Malagasy. Shown here is the copy in Malagasy. Texts are composed with Alcalá and titles with Maax. The numbers have been specially drawn for chapters and verses.

Reinstate is an experimental typography zine by Juan Duque that explores lyrics of contemporary R&B music popular in modern day culture. Its purpose is to reinstate lyrics that are often overlooked or dismissed, restoring them back to their former condition — simple words and phrases. By disconnecting and disassociating the lyrics from their tracks, these words have a chance to speak to the same crowd in its raw form.

Artists featured in this issue include:
Drake / 6LACK / Tory Lanez / Banks / Sabrina Claudio / Ella Mai

Only 10 numbered copies of Reinstate Issue 0 were printed.

This poster series was created to promote an exhibition of work from TestLab Berlin / Californication. The project looked through European eyes at the myths and narratives of Los Angeles. Bell Gothic, as a utilitarian and industrial typeface for the Bell Telephone phone book, was a good contrast to the ‘glamorous Southern California’ myth.

“Knick-, Senk-,…” — front cover

We (MM, M) have been working with Georg Winter and his friends/students/colleagues for quite some time now. Their latest installment Knick-, Senk-, Spreizfuß — Angewandte Spaziergangswissenschaften is a 168-page book that documents their artist exchange with Bauhaus Universität Weimar and presents a contemporary view on the state of “Angewandte Spaziergangswissenschaften” (applied strollology). The book is published by both S_A_R Projektbüro of HBKsaar and Bauhaus Universität Weimar.

So what exactly is strollology?

It’s a field of science that deals with all kinds of promenades and walks. Basically, strollologists research about environment perception. Prominent researchers in this field are Lucius Burckhardt and Martin Schmitz, among others.
“Knick-, Senk-, …” illustrates the field with two works by Burckhardt himself:
— a conversation he held with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Annemarie Burckhardt
— an essay of his about the neccesity of the World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte
It should be noted here that the Völklinger Hütte serves as the S_A_R Projektbüro headquarters as well.

Early in the project, we translated strollological ideas into book design parameters: We wanted a smallish book, we wanted to subtly change the book’s atmosphere, we wanted to evoke a feeling of “being neither here nor there” and, of course, we wanted to have a nice walk together.
So two papers, similar in color but different in haptics, take turns every 16 pages and are bound with a spiral binding. The books are then flipped open randomly. Every page may be a cover, and you are in for a walk. Be aware of stumbling though, as there are three screenprinted bookboards: one right up front, and two in front of the crucial artist exchange chapters (one for projects in Saarbrücken and one for those in Weimar). Their job is to provide a little orientation, to make the book more sturdy (due to the lack of a “normal” hardcover) and to serve as bookmarks for the exchange parts.

Additional information is provided by pictograms (they are explained on each bookboard) and a tab index — one tab for each of the five chapters.
If you look very closely though, the type itself may give orientation, as well:

The running titles and covers are set in our very own Promenadologie Grotesk. The typeface was designed with Prototypo as a (not technically, but in looks) variable font morphing in twelve cuts between angular (Knick-), sunken (Senk-) and stretched (Spreizfuß) styles — and the combination of them. Throughout the book, Promenadologie Grotesk iterates through its variants and then back again, so that the book ends with the same font as it starts with. Prototypo provided fantastic support when we imported our design-space values from a CSV file with exact values.
In contrast to the Promenadologie Grotesk, our body copy is set in robust and snappy Stanley by Ludovic Balland, headlines (albeit not in Poster size) in Stanley Poster.

The pictograms in use were drawn by Andreas Brandolini.

“Knick-, Senk-,…” — Lucius Burckhardt essay

“Knick-, Senk-,…” — first color block: “Insel” (Saarbrücken)

“Knick-, Senk-,…” — second color block: “Flaneum” (Weimar)

Detail of Promenadologie Grotesk in action (bottom right corner)

Chap and Maison Neue in use for exhibition design and the accompanying book of Senses: Design Beyond Vision.

Sensory design recognizes that we understand and navigate the world with all five of our senses. Organized into nine thematic sections, The Sensesdemonstrates that by opening up to multiple sensory dimensions, designers reach a greater diversity of users. Maps that can be touched as well as seen facilitate mobility and knowledge for sighted, low-vision, and blind users. Audio devices translate sound into vibrations that can be felt on the skin. Tableware and kitchen tools use color and form to guide people living with dementia or vision loss. These innovations are beneficial to all users as sensory design enhances awareness of the body and creates new emotional terrain through its stimulation of our visceral responses. — Cooper Hewitt

The Senses: Design Beyond Vision invites visitors to encounter design with all their senses through several interactive installations. The Senses is curated by Ellen Lupton & Andrea Lipps and currently on show at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, exhibition design by Studio Joseph.

The accompanying book by Andrea Lipps & Ellen Lupton is a manifesto celebrating the sensory richness of design. A must-read and powerful reminder to anyone who thinks design is primarily a visual pursuit. Designed by David Genco and Ellen Lupton. Co-published by Princeton Architectural Press and Cooper Hewitt.