Typorama

Are you sitting down? This is possibly the most beautiful book on printing that we’ve encountered. Too bad it’s all in German. No matter. One can still learn a tremendous amount as it is a model of typography, printing, photography, and bookmaking. In 1964, the Basel printer Kirschgarten-Druckerei AG produced this monument to itself. And why shouldn’t they have? They move the world! The wheel, first created thousands of years ago, set the world in motion; the invention of the printing press did it a second time. Gospels, the words of poets, manifestos, proclamations, scientific treatises, or sober news—all of these have always occupied people, but only movable type accelerated things (before computers and the Internet), with good or bad consequences, but always with the intention of leading us towards a better future. A truly inspiring book—even if there’s not a word in it that can be read. (Because we’re guessing you can’t read German.) Also, Adrian Frutiger is listed as “staff“ on the copyright page, but we can’t say how he contributed.