Hasta La Ideas

“This is one of the strangest items I’ve ever seen entered into a typography competition….It’s a beautiful book with a blue cover. The title of the book has a blank space for you to fill in. The only typography inside the entire book is some standard text in small print on the copyright page. That’s it. Instead, every page has a grid in light non-photo blue lines. Every few pages the grid changes to another pattern. This goes on for a hundred or more pages. What is going on here?

This is a book about the hidden structure of typography. The blue lines are collected from available empty notebook pages from all over the world–fully 47 different ruling styles, from traditional grade-school line-spacing to music staves and mathematical grid styles. These represent the underpinning structure of all writing and typography, a structure too often ignored today by fashionable high-flying digital designers (who can do literally anything–and constantly do). This little book is a comfortable reminder of the bedrock rules underlying all typography. It’s waiting for you to add the text along the guidelines required. It’s a essentially a typographic ‘Book of Rules.’ (Duh!)”

–Art Chantry on Rimini Berlin‘s Notebook, designed by Till Beckmann, Jenny Hasselbach, and Franziska Morlok. The book, published by Revolver, was Chantry’s Judge’s Choice pick for the 57th annual Type Director’s Club competition. Check out this year’s TDC winners in communication design and typeface design.

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