‘… meticulously researched, splendidly illustrated, and very nicely designed – without doubt the new standard work on Tschichold … even experts will find new and surprising things in it.’ Thus Florian G in Zurich, writing today in the German-language TypoForum on Christopher Burke’s Active literature.

The latest New Left Review leads with a dazzling article by Régis Debray, lamenting the end of print, and of socialism: the one death implies and necessitates the other. Debray discerns three stages of communication history: the logosphere (from the invention of writing to the coming of the printing press; the graphosphere (from 1448 to around 1968); and the videosphere, the realm of the image – which we now inhabit.

To coincide with the launch of Christopher Burke’s new book, we have put a new jacket on the remaining copies of his first book, Paul Renner. This allows us to give its revised price (on the back), and to change the design. The picture of Renner on the old jacket was frequently misunderstood, and we have replaced it with a relatively uncontentious image. The new colour is perhaps more suited to this dignified and upstanding Prussian.

Terry Pitts’s blog about these books: interesting, and not just for the Sebald content.

Two demon constituents of capsule English-language biographies (for book-flaps, catalogues, CVs, and so on) are ‘currently’ and ‘based in’. ‘Cormac Wrathbone is a freelance writer and critic, currently based in London.’ What’s wrong here? It’s not just the tiredness of the phrasing.