Frankenstein meets Frankenfont

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, reinvented from fragments of PDF fonts by the team at Fathom Information Design in Boston.
A team of visual storytellers from Fathom lead by data-viz wiz Ben Fry, recently recreated the entire text of Frankenstein using characters and glyphs from over 64,000 PDF documents obtained through internet searches. Precisely 55,382 different glyph shapes were extracted from 347,565 fonts in the PDFs, which were then coded and sequenced to fill all of the 342,889 individual letters found in the Frankenstein text. What emerges from this DNA-like sequencing is a new Frankenfont creation formed from font fragments by Fathoms' Fry and friends.
      The story opens with the display of the most common characters such as Arial, Helvetica and Times New Roman. As the story of the Frankenstein monster evolves, so does the text which is coded to completely devolve into grotesque shapes near the end. Familiar glyphs and fonts merge into obscure scripts; non-Roman fonts begin to appear; and even typefaces morph into pictograms. This Frankenfont transformation becomes the perfect metaphor for Shelley's classic tale of the deformed monster Frankenstein. 

While most books are typically designed to interpret the authors' words with little fanfare and with an obedience to convention as Stanley Morrison once put it, Fry's new Frankenfont edition plays with our sense of order, and the traditional design principles such as consistency, navigation and readability go entirely out the window. As a teacher of book design and typography for many years, I strongly advocate these principles of convention to my students. Afterall, books have been successfully published in this manner for over 500 years. Despite this endorsement, I'm also a big fan of innovation and experimentation in books. In Fry's edition of Frankenstein, a hallmark of book design and innovation has been reached with this conceptual approach to text layout.
      As a timely sidenote to this story, the topic of a frankenfont came up in my classroom just 2 weeks ago when Kevin Larson from the Advanced Reading Technologies Department at Microsoft, was speaking to my students about readability studies of various typefonts and individual characters. Larson is a text enthusiast and has published many studies on the science of word recognition and legibility of characters. The suggestion of a frankenfont was mentioned in jest as one which could build upon the best characters of many fonts in order to achieve greater legibility. The next day, my student Susan Schumacher added a post on our class Facebook page with a link to Fathom's new Frankenfont edition of Frankenstein.
      Copies of the Frankenfont project can be purchased in paperback or hardback editions on Blurb with all profits given to Donors Choose to buy books for students. Incidently, Ben Fry was recently awarded a National Design Award in Interaction Design in June from the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. 

All of the nearly 5500 unique words to be found in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. (Click image to expand). The key to any great novel is to put them all in the right place ; )
:: Thanks to James Gaddy of Co.Design for packaging this story so nicely.

The Printer's Devil

With Halloween in the wings, I thought it was prime time to share a clip from an early Twilight Zone episode from 1963 about a printer's devil who offers to save the collapse of a town newspaper in exchange for the soul of Douglas Winter, the editor of The Courier. Burgess Meredith plays Mr. Smith, a devious old linotype operator who takes the job of a printer's devil far too seriously. As the prince of darkness, he generates scoops by creating carnage with his keyboard. Sorry to leave you with a cliffhanger, but this edited clip is all I could find of this episode. Still worth a watch however, just to see Meredith in the role as the satanic linotype operator with the crooked cigar—all in glorious black and white. Kind of reminds me of Dick Cheney, with exception to the full colorization. Here is host Rod Serling's soft-spoken introduction to the Printer's Devil episode from the Twilight Zone season 4 episode: 
      Take away a man's dream, fill him with whiskey and despair, send him to a lonely bridge, let him stand there all by himself looking down at the black water, and try to imagine the thoughts that are in his mind. You can't, I can't. But there's someone who can—and that someone is seated next to Douglas Winter right now. The car is headed back toward town, but its real destination is the Twilight Zone...Da da da dahhh, da da da dahhh...

Chip Kidd on New Murakami Book

The fewer books published, the better the content. When the book publishing and design bar continue to steadily rise, we all win.

Subtext: The Reading Experience Explained

:: Thanks for the link Matt Sowecke!

The Curwen News-Letters

A few choice selections of some rare editions of the Curwen Press News-Letters from various sources listed in captions. First published in 1932 as a twice yearly promotional magazine, and as a showcase for the Curwen's fine printing and illustration capabilities. The News-Letters included covers designs by some of the most accomplished British artists of their day; Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, Paul Nash, John Nash, Graham Sutherland, and John Piper. You can read a great deal more about the Curwen Press (1863 to 1983) in a recently published book by Brain Webb and Peyton Skipwith as part of their Design series. This book is about Harold Curwen and Oliver Simon, and it charts the golden years when the press was in their capable hands. The book is beautifully illustrated with images from many of the artists mentioned above.

1934 Curwen Press Newsletter 8 with cover design by Edward Bawden. The unicorn was the identifying mark and many variations of it had been designed over the years.
One of the more popular unicorns was designed by Eric Gill.
::Via Mikey Ashworth's Flickrstream

The 1938 Curwen Press News-Letter 15.
::Via Mikey Ashworth's Flickrstream

The 1939 Curwen Press News-Letter 16 with cover design by John Piper. Ian Beck added a wonderful feature on this piece earlier this Spring on his blog which you can find here. Lots more to explore while you are there. 

Copy of the cover design for the Curwen Press News-Letter 6 by Eric Ravilious in 1934.
::Via Mikey Ashworth's Flickrstream

Left: Actual cover design of the 1934 Curwen Press News-Letter 6. Printed in black and hand colored in blue. Right: A selection of Curwen Press borders, including a new one by Edward Bawden. As seen on eBay.

Advertisement in the 1939 Curwen Press News-Letter 16 for J.M. Richards and Eric Ravilious' High Street which was about to be published. Recently, Ian Beck reported in his blog, "A greater part of the printed stock of this wonderful book was lost in the Blitz making it a great rarity". Last November I added a short piece on Ravilious, High Street and the Curwen Press which you can find here. Thanks again go out to Ian Beck for sharing this great work and others.

Composing room at the Curwen Press circa 1900s.
::Via Hidden Histories

Culinary Classics Cover Countless Cultures

This simply gorgeous Great Food series makes me hungry for the entire collection from Penguin Books. They are brilliantly designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, senior cover designer at Penguin, with the lovely lettering of Stephen Raw. The paperback covers feature spot varnishes and embossing to enhance the lettering and patterned photos of the background images. The patterns, each based upon ceramic surface designs specific to the period of the book's text, spill over to the rainbow-colored spines. Old pottery marks were the inspiration for placing the title lettering inside the culinary containers. Penguin released the series in the UK in April, but those of us in the US will have to wait until late October to get our mitts upon them. 

:: Found here and here.

Alan Trotter of Greater Than or Equal to, interviewed Bickford-Smith recently about the Great Food series in this video below. Delightful!

A serious interview with designer Coralie Bickford-Smith about her Great Food series for Penguin from Alan Trotter on Vimeo.

The Dun Emer Press

Elizabeth "Lolly" Corbett Yeats (1868-1940) was the first commercial printer in Ireland to work exclusively on iron handpresses. She was also an art teacher and member of William Morris's circle in London and studied with the Women's Printing Society there. In 1902 she established a private press at the large home of Evelyn Gleeson in Dundrum near Dublin and was placed in charge of managing the new Dun Emer Press. With her sister Lily, a skilled needleworker, and Evelyn Gleeson they also began the Dun Emer Guild to train young women in bookbinding, printing and other craft trades so they might earn a living. In 1908, Elizabeth and her poet brother, William Butler Yeats started the Cuala Press, publishing over 70 fine edition books of Irish writers including 48 works by her brother William. After her death in 1940, her sister-in-law Georgina Yeats managed to keep the press running until 1946.
     The lovely photo at top from 1903 shows Elizabeth standing at the iron handpress, with Beatrice Cassidy rolling out ink and Esther Ryan correcting proofs at the table at Dun Emer Press. The 2nd image shows a collection of frontispieces and motifs from the Cuala Press, and the last image is a colophon for a 1904 William Yeat's book.

:: Top photo from the Princeton University Library exhibit, Unseen Hands: Women Printers, Binders and Book Designers. Last 2 images from the collection of the Boston College exhibit, Sixty Years of the Cuala Press.

Visual Language

This past weekend I had the pleasure to attend a small gathering at Seattle's Elliot Bay Bookstore for a book reading by typographer, linguist, poet and author Robert Bringhurst. Some of you may know him as author of one of the most influential books on typography, The Elements of Typographic Style. Often referred to as just Bringhurst, this classic book has gone into six revised editions since it was first printed in 1992. As a teacher, I consider this an essential book for designers of any stripe and recommend it to all of my students to purchase and read cover-to-cover. Bringhurst is a prolific and brilliant writer of prose, linguistics and typography. Even so, this particular book reading had little to do with typography, but centered on language. He read from his recently published, third book in the trilogy on the Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers, A Story as Sharp as a Knife, about the the first nation Haida culture in British Columbia and the reinterpretations of their storytelling into written language. 

Several years ago I had an opportunity to hear Robert Bringhurst speak specifically about typography at TypeCon in Seattle and was blown away by his eloquent presentation. He equated letters and text with musical scales and even particles of physical matter, just as he touches upon in Elements. This recent reading was all about language and storytelling, and how language is interpreted in different cultures. After the reading I had an opportunity to briefly speak to him and my first question was how he came to write Elements of Typographic Style since his life's work has been about the study of linguistics, literature, physics and philosophy. He replied in so many words that all of these studies revolved specifically around language. Typography is the greatest ingredient of written language and it's presentation has everything to do with communication and design. Bringhurst's books are a perfect example of this, as he has a hand in the design of each of them. Elements was originally published by Canadian publisher, Hartley & Marks in 1992 in a white hardback cover. Later revised editions were reversed and printed in black background covers. Also shown here is The Solid Form of Language, about the relationship of script and language. It is designed by Robert Bringhurst and Andrew Steeves and published by the Gaspereau Press of Nova Scotia in 2004.

Pre Texting

Click image to enlarge.

The printing press of the Royal Irish Rifles. This remarkable photograph of a military field print shop, complete with an iron handpress, appeared in The Navy and Army Illustrated in 1897. The copy accompanying the photo claims a good many of the regiments' monthly newspapers generally provided results for football and cricket matches, reports of dances, suppers, theatricals, notices of promotions and official regimental notices. What, no gossip column? This image gives new meaning to the term lead soldiers.
:: A great find via Typesticker's photostream.

A Short History of Desktop Publishing

French designer Xavier Antin is someone who is inspired by old printing technologies and the machine age. He printed a book about production line assembly work called, Just in Time, or A Short History of Production. It is entirely printed through a chain of four desktop printers using four different colors and technologies dating from 1880 to 1976. An 1880 stencil duplicator patented by Thomas Edison applied magenta; the stinky 1923 spirit duplicator (or Ditto machine) produced the cyan-like color; a laser printer, first developed in 1969, dropped in the black; and an inkjet printer, first introduced in 1976 supplied the yellow. Antin combined 100 years of desktop printing technology to produce his wonderful book in an edition of 100. A truly inspired piece of work!
::From Ministry of Type.

Victorian Idiot Guides

Before the Complete Idiot's Guides there was Hill's Manual of Social and Business Forms, Gaskell's Compendium of Forms, and The Peale Home Library of Useful Knowledge. They were each Victorian etiquette and reference books on everything from penmanship, sign painting, letter writing, accounting and to social behavior at dinner parties. These books were large, heavy and formidable. They looked like they were designed by trade printers who had no restraint when it came to adding decorative border treatments or headers. It became a competition amongst these publishers to see who could produce the most ornate and detailed compendium for the wealthy class in the late 1800s. They were printed on cheap paper with marbled endpapers and leather bindings which are now turning to dust on my bookshelves. You can preview an entire edition of the The Hill's Manual at Internet Archive. And if you are struggling with how to write those letters of thanks for that special Christmas sweater or a nice New Year's note, this might be a good place to start.