The Hyphen Press catalogue for 2009–2010 was ready (as is traditional) just in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair. New books are announced here, and every in-print title is shown too. As with last year’s catalogue, at the centre is an ‘almanack’ of texts and images that relate to our new publications.

During the present postal strike in the UK supply of books and CDs ordered from the website may be slow. The action has, so far, been limited to short periods, and mail is still being collected and delivered.

On Thursday 5 November (while the English are busy letting off fireworks), if you are in Zurich there is a chance to learn more about E.C. Large. Roland Früh will be at the Corner College, to present our books by and about Large. The mycologist Patrick Romanens will also be talking. Our books will be on sale, and those attending will have a rare chance to see some of Large’s paintings of British toadstools.

An exhibition of the work of the English printer Desmond Jeffery opens at the St Bride Library in London tonight. This is the first chance for the public to see something of his production.

The Helvetic Centre in London is again organizing a show of the ‘most beautiful Swiss books’. The exhibition opens this Sunday with a party – guest speaker Laurenz Brunner – and runs for just four days at Cafe Oto in Dalston. On Thursday 29th, the last evening, there will be a round-table discussion of questions raised by the show. Also on display will be some of the best British books of the year. They should offer instructive contrasts with the Swiss books; certainly this will provide a very rare sighting of a cultural phenomenon once discussed on this website.

Anthony Froshaug’s article ‘Typography is a grid’, which we posted here in August 2000, has proved to be the most popular page on this website, with numbers boosted recently by a link from a website about grids in typography. One suspects that the meaning of Froshaug’s text eludes many of these visitors (he thought that grids were self-evident and inevitable; not something to make a song and dance about). As a counterweight to – and in part a confirmation of – the ideas in ‘Typography is a grid’, it is worth reading more of what he wrote. The piece given below was written in 1947, but published only in 2000, in the book that gathers all of his writings: Anthony Froshaug: Typography & texts. The social-political dimension, which is always evident in his work, is strikingly present here. And, as Paul Stiff remarks of Froshaug in his very recently published essay ‘Austerity, optimism: modern typography in Britain after the war’ (in the book Modern typography in Britain): ‘what sharpens his praxis is phosphoric writing, better theoretically informed than any contemporary designer’.

A report of the launch of HPM 002 for subscribers and friends.

Through this month and next, some of our core books are on display and for sale at the Kunstverein in Amsterdam.