4 posts tagged “typography”
From Cool Hunting | by Doug Black
The 26 letters of the Roman alphabet operate almost subconsciously once ingrained in young minds. The resulting familiarity proves invaluable in life, but also makes it difficult to step back and examine letters as standalone objects. In "Letter by Letter", designer/calligrapher/artist Laurent Pflughaupt aims to do just that with an exhaustive overview of each letter in the alphabet.
He begins with a historical look at the creation of early alphabets,
starting with ancient hieroglyphics and proceeding to our current
Latin-based system. Next, he takes a formal analysis of their physical
structure using base-level observations while regarding letters as
simple combinations of straight and curved lines. The third and final
section occupies the bulk of the book. As the subtitle suggests,
Pflughaupt looks at each letter alphabetically, tracing their evolution
and noting their acute significance in various cultures. He borrows
from many different fields, looking at structure through the lens of
paleography, phonetics and graphic design. (Note below variations on
the modern "Q" and "R.") Though necessarily rudimentary at times,
"Letter by Letter" is an exemplary reference for those interested in
typography or language in general.
"Letter by Letter" will be available through Princeton Architectural Press when it's released on 1 May 2008. You can also order it now from Amazon.
“It began with the Q,” Lisa Rienermann tells Slanted. “I was in a kind of courtyard in Barcelona. I looked upward and saw houses, the blue sky and clouds. The more I looked, I saw that the houses formed a letter Q.”
Translated from Slanted’s original German: “She then set out to find more letter forms, spending weeks only looking upward."
Rienermann, a student at the University of Duisburg-Essen, created the Type the Sky alphabet after sky-gazing from the narrow streets between the buildings of Barcelona. The collection is packaged as a type face and book.
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