Mi little red book
Hi guys,
A while ago I mentioned a little book I designed for an MA project on the history of writing. Here is the finished thing (which unfortunately I could not complete in time for the final assessment). The idea, originally, was to design a map to guide type designers through the British Museum to every piece of writing in order for them to get inspiration for typefaces based on historical records. To get it into context:
The project was about the evolution of writing from the very beginnings up until the present days. I mapped the location and characteristics of all the pieces in the British Museum (the ones I could find) that had some for of writing on them. Once I had all the information, I produced a catalogue, which showed the location, characteristics (origin, description of the subject, classification of the object itself, etc) and chronological order. These lists were then divided accordingly in different scripts. The end result was a 20 chapter book listing all the pieces in the Museum, their location and characteristics and a brief introduction to show the reader how every script works/ed (how the characters evolved, where they came from, the culture they developed from, etc.)
Ok, enough rambling.
After the MA, I went back to the British Museum to see what I had learned and went to visit my favourite pieces, copying one character from each. I had LOTS of favourites, but limited myself to five for reasons I won’t go into.
Hope you like it:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| FiveLetters.pdf | 76.64 KB |
17.Jan.2008 5.06pm
Thanks for that. I enjoyed reading it.
17.Jan.2008 6.43pm
Yes, thank you! It was very nicely done.
Sharon
17.Jan.2008 7.08pm
Cool. I like that a lot.
pbc
18.Jan.2008 3.11am
Thank you all. I had a blast making it and I’m really glad fellow typophiles like it!
18.Jan.2008 6.30am
Nice. A typo on line 7 of U (related), in case you want a clear copy.
18.Jan.2008 7.22am
Well spotted Don, Thanks.
18.Jan.2008 4.59pm
I really like that ’A’. Interesting studies.
19.Jan.2008 7.03am
I’ve only had a chance to scan it Antonio, but it looks a marvellous piece and I’ll enjoy reading it a little later.
Thanking you kindly for making it available.
19.Jan.2008 8.21am
Interesting stuff indeed. Thanks.
Regards,
Ernie
20.Jan.2008 10.07am
My pleasure guys, sadly it looks better once it’s printed. I had it done in an off-white, slightly textured paper, hand bound, and I used a dark red thicker card for the cover, with gold stamps.
Obviously, if you go to (are in) London, take it to the British Museum and look for the pieces themselves, as nothing compares to the real things. Also, a trip to the Roman and Greek inscriptions is well worth it!
20.Jan.2008 1.37pm
I enjoyed reading your booklet; and I’m glad that someone else out there likes “The Triumphant Arch”!
The remainder of your project must have taken an impressive amount of effort. Pretty much every object in the museum has writing on it in one form or another and some of it is quite obscure (the deliberately antiquated cuneiform particularly comes to mind)!
-Jacob
21.Jan.2008 3.27am
I think the Arch is my favorite piece, just because of the beautiful letters!
And yeah, Cuneiform and Hieroglyphs were especially extensive. Although there are LOTS of objects with writing on them in the Museum, there are some rooms without a single one (a nice surprise while I was cataloguing) and some rooms were closed for refurbishment during the project, so I had to skip those, luckily.
21.Jan.2008 6.09am
An interesting project. I have one picky comment/question about your typesetting. All of the f-ligatures in your text look like long s-ligatures were employed instead.
One particularly extreme example is the beginning of the ’o’ entry:
This says “sisteenth,” not fifteenth.
I’m quite curious; I just judged a book show and there was one entry that also had this strange behavior (also Adobe Caslon), and I was just wondering: How does something like this happen?!
— K.
21.Jan.2008 1.27pm
Hmmm...interesting. I can only say it was human error… I guess I did not pay as much attention to it as I should have; for most ligatures I used the alternates, which worked fine for the “ct” and “st” ligatures, but the “fi” one should appear on its own; not sure about the “ft”. Great eye for detail Kent! I’ll fix right away.
Cheers!