Schrift Ecriture Lettering: The Development of European Letter Types Carved in Wood (Adrian Frutiger)

Picture it: A 23-year-old Adrian Frutiger needs to graduate from Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich (University of the Arts in Zurich). So what does he do? He used five short paragraphs about the history of occidental lettering written by one of his professors (because he was, apparently, a suck-up) and cut in nine beechwood blocks fifteen approaches to lettering, from the Greek Lapidary Style to the Humanistic Cursive. Then he had that text printed from metal type in German, French, and English along with the woodcuts. It’s bound in such a way as to allow one to see the whole history of lettering (in the West) at one time in a an almost-9-foot-wide spread. A beautiful thing and a nice little manmade miracle of carving, lettering, and printing.