In the context of the BDMG Cultural Institute’s 30th anniversary, this book compiles studies about a diversity of subjects into two sections: the first revolving around the city of Belo Horizonte, printed on gray paper stock; and the second around the state of Minas Gerais, printed on yellowish paper. While each article is introduced by a different kind of ruled paper, content originally written as footnotes was instead treated as sidenotes, making a subtle allusion to marginalia. A plastic dust jacket commonly used on notebooks underlines the book’s nature and protects the object produced to be freely distributed.

Self Modern in use In this beautiful monograph about Frans Masereel, master of modern wood engraving and precursor of the graphic novel.

Foreword by Eric Drooker. With contributions by Samuel Dégardin and Joris van Parys. Design: Agathe Joubert. Bilingual edition (French / German). Published by Éditions Martin de Halleux in October 2018.

Epokhé is a fictional magazine about culture and critical thinking.

Each issue talks about one concept. The idea is to discover different ways how to approach this concrete concept and to feed ourselves with different points of view and comprehension.

The name was chosen as reference to an ancient Greek term which, in its philosophical usage, describes the state where all judgments about non-evident matters are suspended.

Project done by Gerard Sierra in 2016.

The Contemporary Theatre Collection is a growing series created by the publishing house Javali with the goal of publishing affordable paperbacks that celebrates contemporary authors.

The very specific theatre script structure was broken down into a system that uses two different typefaces, one acting as the passive voice that describes the scenes (Lacrima Serif) and the other as what is being spoken by the characters (National), creating an efficient structure for both conventional readers and rehearsing actors.

Keeping the red as the series brand, each book cover features a different typeface that reflects the book’s content and that permeates the interior whenever possible. For the first book in the series, Trilogia Abnegação by Alexandre Dal Farra, an obnoxious stacked all-caps Akzidenz-Grotesk echoes the author’s simple but rather strong use of language.

12,25 × 18,5cm, offset print paperback

Park Books:

An exploration of the role of narrative, history, appropriation and craft in the work of London based 6a Architects.

D&AD:

The design, developed by John Morgan, is inspired by the processes of bricolage, which is also a prominent influence on the work featured in the book. The large type size, combined with black and white photographs, focuses the images on the ideas, drawing new connections between them and allowing chapters to be read as independent pieces or as parts of a larger discussion.

This exhibition catalog, designed by French duo Michelines (Clémence Michon & Line Célo), is the result of various excavations in the Brumath area during the last decade. The many found objects are perfect testimonies of the whole spectrum of a typical Gallo-Roman city life: urban topography, daily lifestyle, production and exchanges, beliefs and religion, necropolis and death ceremonies.

Full of pictures, the catalog is aimed at enthusiasts and curious people willing to discover the life of ancient men and women who inhabited the land around Strasbourg and, by their craft and commercial trades, contributed to the development of this region.

Echoing rough handicraftsman work, titles are set in the curveless Minotaur (whose name is also a nod to the Roman mythology), while the main text is set with a more refined Novel.

Éditions des musées de la Ville de Strasbourg / 252 pages / 24 × 26 cm

From Stefan Thorsteinsson:

Lettre Internationale is one of the leading cultural and political publications in Europe, with independent offices in Copenhagen, Budapest, Berlin, Madrid, Bucharest, Moscow and Rome. The design uses a lot of expressive type to serve as illustrations and set the tone for the individual articles.

The magazine uses two typeface families from František Štorm — Baskerville Original (in a few different optical sizes), and the underused DynaGrotesk. The latter in particular stands out, especially in the massive all-caps uses. With its agressive diagonal cuts and off-kilter flared stems, it carries the design and the note in a fantastic way.

The work designed by Bureau 205 is based on an exceptional collection of drawings that Tomi Ungerer, artist, author, illustrator, realized from 1935 to 1953 (from 4 to 22 years old), and which is composed of several hundred sketches.

The editorial project that accompanies the exhibition at Musée Tomi Ungerer in Strasbourg responded to two complementary visions allowing it to become a tool of documentation and research but also to reveal the spontaneity and the freedom that one can find in his child drawings.

Intuitively arranged, so that curiosities and influences can be glimpsed without restricting their reading, the reproductions are punctuated by an interview with the illustrator who evokes his years of formation.

The objective was to obtain an object that lies between the seriousness of a scientific catalog and a modest form that is more reminiscent of the artist's notebooks: soft binding, apparent back, multiple papers, etc.

Gingko Press:

In December 1913, Ezra Pound wrote to William Carlos Williams calling the London art/literary scene “The Vortex.” Wyndham Lewis in turn appropriated the term to christen his budding movement in the arts, “Vorticism.” Vorticism was baptized on June 20, 1914 in the first issue of BLAST, A Review of the Great English Vortex — Lewis’s revolutionary magazine. […] Described by Lewis as “violent pink,” but by some others as the “puce monster,” the large format magazine displays radical typography and design, features a “Vorticist Manifesto,” and bares eye-popping lists of items to be “Blessed” and “Blasted.”

The main typeface used for most of the manifesto part is Grotesque No. 9. The text typeface is similar to De Vinne Condensed as cast by Stephenson Blake, but it’s not a match. The (wood?) typefaces used for the title and some headings (“MANIFESTO.”, ”ENEMY OF THE STARS.”, not pictured) are yet unidentified, too. Both the framed and the roman numerals are in Latin Bold. Furthermore, there are several tertiary typefaces, like Caslon’s Atlas (for “THE EGOIST”, not pictured) in the ad section. Printed by Leveridge & Co. (T.U.), St. Thomas’ Road, Harlesden.

In Wyndham Lewis: A Critical Guide, Andrzej Gąsiorek and Nathan Waddell note:

The words are Lewis’s, but it is probable that some or all of the design was done by William Henry Leveridge, head of Leveridge & Co., who printed both numbers of BLAST. The structure BLAST / BLESS is not original, but is taken from Guillaume Apollinaire’s (possibly pastiche) Futurist manifesto L'Antitradition Futuriste: Manifeste=synthese, first published in French (dated ‘29 Juin 1913’, p. 3). This uses two antitheses, ‘Destruction’ against ‘Construction’ and 'Merde Aux’ against ‘Rose Aux’. Destruction is urged upon ‘l’harmonie typographique’ (p. 1), a hint that Lewis may have taken.

A facsimile edition was published by Gingko Press, but is currently out of stock. A pdf edition of both the first issue and the second (and final) one from July 1915 is available from the Modernist Journals Project, a joint project by Brown University and The University of Tulsa.

Dom Casmurro is an 1899 novel written by Brazilian author Machado de Assis and it is widely regarded as one of the most important books ever written in Portuguese language. It is written as a fictional memoir by a distrusting, jealous husband, the narrator, however, is not a reliable conveyor of the story as it is a dark comedy.

This special edition published by Carambaia is an attempt to honour this important book. It brings illustrations by Brazilian artist Carlos Issa who made interventions on photographs of Rio de Janeiro in the 19th century.

Designers often justify their typographic choices with the era the novel was written. It is a way to connect readers to a certain time. However, the purpose in this case went through a different way. Should this (obvious) connection be important in this case and even desirable? It would make sense if the character's voices couldn't be upgraded.

Stanley, apart from being a beautiful typeface — with all the resources needed for text composition — has some joints and abrupt endings that relates with Issa's work.

From left to right: regular edition cover, two exclusive special covers with original drawings by Carlos Issa on internal printed pages.

Footnotes and titles printed in Pantone 876 U

Hidden city/nature: Rio de Janeiro is a permanent character in mostly all Machado de Assis works. A double fore-edge painting on both sides of the page margin shows two different landmarks of Rio: Sugarloaf Mountain and The Carioca Aqueduct.

Catalog for an exhibition at the Consorci de Museus de la Comunitat Valenciana, 2016

A book about Socovos, a municipality in Albacete, Castile-La Mancha, Spain.

Irma Boom’s design for this Sheila Hicks monograph breaks the sober typographic conventions typically found in artist catalogs. The opening essay begins with huge Plantin (one of her favorite typefaces), paired with a coarse weaving by Hicks, that gets progressively smaller with each page, ending with a tight, refined tapestry. The unusual but accessible approach invites readers of all kinds to jump right in and learn about the artist, a nice departure from the common impenetrability of academic texts.

The book was named “The Most Beautiful Book In the World” at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2006.

From Modernism 101:

Originally conceived at the Composing Room by Dr. Robert Leslie and Aaron Burns, ABOUT U. S. was a series of experimental typographic inserts published in DER DRUCKSPIEGEL to showcase both the skills of the Composing Rooms' typesetters and the creative muscles of Americans BC+G, Lester Beall, Herb Lubalin, and Gene Federico. Spare sheets from DER DRUCKSPIEGEL were assembled in plain letterpressed wrappers for distribution to friends of the Composing Room.

From the AIGA:

"I wanted to try something where I used metal type in extreme ways without having to cut it—without cutting up proofs or playing with stats," explains Federico about this masterpiece of descriptive typography. "For some time, I had known that if you stacked Title Gothics they would have a different look than traditional types. So the whole book was based on that simple idea." But the aesthetics of type were not his only concern, as he says, "The message of the book was that nature’s beauty is being radically altered. There's a line that reads 'When we, in business, industrial America began to get smart about apples, we packaged them and packaged them and packaged them until the apple itself became a package.' I illustrated that point with a photograph of an apple with a string tied around it.