Per vederci chiaro – Gli occhiali e l'inventore inesistente (“Seeing clearly – Glasses and the non-existent inventor”) is an essay published by Nomos Edizioni. It investigates the origins of one of the most common objects in everyday life: glasses. The author, Renzo Dionigi, reconstructs the history of an invention that responded to a need for social and economic progress, revealing its multiple and sometimes controversial origins.

From the history of reading to the first lenses, from frames to the lexicography of the term “eyeglass”, the volume spans centuries of inventions, disputes and symbolic representations. With a preface by Luciano Perondi and Raimonda Riccini , the theme of legibility is intertwined with that of reading tools, while engravings and prints from 1400 to 1700 bring to light what was invisible or forgotten, between utility, art and memory.

The graphic design focuses on a typographic composition rich in detail and peculiarities, enhanced by the characteristics of the Sorella font – designed by Luis Castellón and published by CAST – which recalls the writing of the 18th-century calligrapher Angela Baroni. Scotus Sans, designed by Giulio Galli, Riccardo Olocco and Luciano Perondi, is used for footnotes and a few other minor details.

The logo uses Swordfish with its alternate script capitals.

Aaltoo Festival is a three-day international event about graphic design, illustration, comics, photography, and self-publishing. The festival is organized by Aaltoo ASP in Cupramontana (AN), Italy. It takes place in the local theater – recently renovated – and offers a wide range of activities like workshops, talks, concerts, exhibitions, wall painting performances, and a market area.

For the visual identity of the third edition, I (Marco Goran Romano) worked as an art director and event curator, and decided to work almost exclusively with typography, thus creating a versatile identity system capable of adapting to multiple applications. To achieve this, I combined two fonts that seem difficult to pair: Swordfish and Sempione Grotesk, both from Cast Type Foundry.

Swordfish is an all-caps geometric sans inspired by the 1920s and 30s avant-garde typefaces and jazz record covers of the 1940–50s; Sempione, instead, is a spanking sans serif family suitable for publishing and advertising that looks great in small and large sizes. Together, they create an interesting contrast that fits perfectly with Aaltoo Festival’s core values of inclusivity and open-mindedness.

Every year an ‘Italian Capital of Culture’ is chosen for its special cultural and urban heritage. And this year is the turn of the city of Pesaro. Under the theme “La natura della cultura” (“The nature of culture”), Pesaro 2024 explores the interaction of art, nature and technology by promoting collective work aimed at rethinking urban and rural space and revamping cultural heritage in situ. A broad programme of five themes has been devised which include 45 projects involving 50 municipalities, two regional parks and one protected area.

The visual identity of this complex event was worked out by Paper Paper studio. For continuous printed and on-screen text, they chose Giulio Galli’s Capraia, a seriffed book face in seven weights and matching italics. Among them, Book and Regular are specifically designed for long reading. Capraia is used alongside Aeonik.

Illustrations by Cristina Spanò.

President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, during the opening

Capraia in a very massive size

Giù nel blu. Dalla superficie agli abissi: viaggio sottomarino sfogliabile (Down in the blue. From the surface to the depths: a browsable submarine journey) is an illustrated book on the underwater world. Published by the Italian publisher Nomos, the book is written by Gianumberto Accinelli and illustrated by Giulia Zaffaroni.

The book is leafed through vertically and this action together with a metric scale and the color of the pages, gradually darker, gives the readers the idea of descending into the depths, encountering many animals especially in the first pages, leaving room for emptiness and darkness as you go further down, to the depths of the ocean.

The editor also published a sequel called Su nel blu (Up in the blue) which applies the same idea with a different navigation direction: you'll go from the ground up to the space.

Table of contents is organized as a preview of the descent into the sea

Some animal have a small presentation text

The final animal index

The cover of the sequel: Su nel Blu (Up in the blue)

An A5 print course and workshop booklet for Spike Print Studio in Bristol, UK, detailing all of the educational print programs they run year-round.

Regular process inks were swapped out for their fluorescent equivalents, resulting in a brightness that cannot be matched with regular inks. It was printed by Taylor Brothers Bristol Ltd.

The titles are set in Common Demibold by Si Billam and feature a gradient fade. The body copy is set in Capraia by CAST Foundry.

Artica Writings is a collection of essays on the theme of oceans, inspired by the UN’s Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, commissioned by Artica Svalbard:

We are very pleased to share a new printed version of the Artica Writings 2021 essay commissions.

Last year’s series looked to the ocean for inspiration, inviting writers, artists, poets and scientists to share their thoughts on our oceans. This limited edition publication has been designed by City Edition Studio, the book’s jacket is made from plastic recovered from the Andaman Sea in South East Asia, where fisherman are trained and paid to collect, sort, wash and shred plastic waste which is used to make book cloth.

The book is made from recycled paper and features a cloth wrap that is made from plastic recovered from the Andaman Sea. The typography reflects the sea’s depths by becoming darker as it gets further down the page through the use of variable font technology and JavaScript.

The body font is Capraia by Cast Foundry and the titles are set in Pyte Legacy Vulture by The Pyte Foundry.

Cover

Elogio del margine / Scrivere al buio (“Praise of the margin / Writing in the dark”) by bell hooks and Maria Nadotti is a publication by Tamu Edizioni.

In the essays “Elogio del margine”, bell hooks shows us “choices and places” where the resistance to the oppression of African American women took place in view of a liberation that involves everyone, women and men.

In “Scrivere al buio”, a critical and at the same time intimate dialogue with Maria Nadotti, the key themes of the thought of bell hooks, including the contestation of that white feminism that by representing women as a single “caste” denies the differences between women themselves, are tested on ordinary topics: family and couple relationships, education, the use of money, the practice of writing. Feminist thought arises from the personal experience of oppression and must therefore speak to women of less well-off status, not close in a language for the few that allows the maintenance of the status quo.

Flyleaf

Frontespiece

Internal pages

Back cover

Cover

Mediterraneo Blues by Iain Chambers was published by Tamu Edizioni in December 2020. It’s a book about “music, postcolonial melancholy and maritime thoughts”.

The Mediterranean blues is rap, electronic, raï, rebetiko and trap, and is the soundtrack in the metropolis of the south of the world, from Cairo to Nairobi passing through Naples, where there is no distinction between authentic music and imported music.
The sounds do not respect national borders and carry with them the traces of the destruction and at the same time of the survival of European colonialism, because that history is inscribed in the languages and rhythms of today.

The cover, with an illustration by Giulia Rizzi, pairs Program (Emigre, 2013) by Zuzana Licko with Aja, drawn in the early 1980s by Gustav Jäger and published by Berthold.

For the spine, back cover and the body text of the book interior, designer Greg Olla used a combination of Capraia by Giulio Galli and Arkit by Erasmo Ciufo. Both typefaces ara avalailable from CAST.

Flyleaf

Frontespiece

Internal spread

Internal spread

Backcover

The cover provides a table of contents, with an outlined letter a from each of the 16 featured typefaces.

CAST Foundry loves to spread the typographic word. This is why we have partnered with the independent Italian publishing house Lazy Dog Press to produce Cast It, a periodical publication that discusses the history and culture of type together with CAST’s digital fonts. Half magazine, half specimen.

Cast It #3, “Der Schriftgiesser” (“The typefounder”, by Johann Samuel Halle) is a description of typefounding included in Werkstäte der heutigen Künste oder die neue Kunsthistorie – a virtually encyclopedic series concerning crafts originally published in Leipzig between 1761 and 1779.

Thanks to Dan Reynolds, we now have Halle’s text for the first time in English. His translation comes with a foreword (also by Reynolds) which is also the only commentary on its contents ever published in any language.

The fonts used for the title page are, from top to bottom: Macho Modular, Rialto dF (“An Essay”), Voland Italic, Sempione Grotesk (“Typefounding”), Capraia Italic, Sole Sans, Saffran (“Werkstäte …”), Dic Sans, Valnera Italic (“Werkstäte”), Neon Nbl, Arzachel Italic, Voland (“Dan Reynolds”), Valnera Italic, Macho Moustache, and Rialto dF.

The opening page of the essay is set in Valnera Monster and a type weight gradient from Arkit.

Spread with Zenon, Gramma (left), and various styles from Neon Nbl (right).

Spread with cross-page text set in Macho Moustache.

Detail.

Sempione Grotesk and Sempione Modern.

English translation with two-column text set in Capraia, Gramma, Rialto dF, Divenire, Fulmar, and Arkit.

Magazzino is a six-monthly magazine, designed, managed, and self-produced by a team of designers and architects from the Scuola di Ateneo Architettura e Design “Eduardo Vittoria” (SAAD, School of Architecture and Design) based in Ascoli Piceno, Italy. Each issue refers a chosen theme from collective members to broadcast the culture of design and architecture projects. Included you will find a section dedicated to a collection of projects realised by both current and ex students, and another giving insight into the daily routine in the school.

Graphic designer Riccardo Mecozzi uses three typeface families from CAST. Headlines are set in the wide and black “Bomb” style of Arkit. Essays, quotes and other information pair Capraia with the squarish Brevier. The article “E allora il design?” has its title set in Harrington.

Editor-in-chief is Antonello Garaguso is assisted by Chiara De Angelis, Manuel Scortichini and Lorenzo di Gioacchino. Art direction by Antonello Garaguso, Raffaele Pierucci and Riccardo Mecozzi.