Jost Hochuli, author of Designing books and Detail in typography, is responsible for an exhibition of the remarkable book production of his home town of St Gallen. While his own work is also shown, Hochuli insists that ‘Buchgestaltung in St Gallen’ is an exhibition of, as he puts it, work by his close friends Rudolf Hostettler and Max Koller, by his former students and other colleagues. ‘Buchgestaltung in St Gallen’ opened in April at the book fair in Geneva, but will be shown in St Gallen itself from 7 to 29 June 2008.

The recent flourish of interest in the visual work of Otto Neurath – let’s call it Isotype – may be seen as a second wave, coming after a first period of discovery, which included exhibitions of the work in Reading (1975) and Vienna (1982), and an exhibition of the work of the Neurath group’s main artist, Gerd Arntz, in The Hague (1976). From this writer’s point of view, this phase of research culminated in a collection of all Neurath’s writings on the matter (1991).[1] Significant contributions of the second wave include the book Bildersprache by Frank Hartmann and Erwin K. Bauer (2002), an exhibition shown in Brno, Prague, Vienna and finally at the Triennale in Milan (2002–3), and now (2008) the book Otto Neurath: the language of the global polis by Nader Vossoughian, with an associated exhibition and events at the Stroom gallery in The Hague. This book and exhibition have indeed been part of a veritable stream of happenings in the Netherlands, which includes a website of Gerd Arntz’s graphic work and a book Lovely language. Hyphen Press is due to contribute to this second wave later this year, with a book titled The transformer. By way of a warm-up for that book, and some clearing of the ground, here are a few thoughts prompted by the most recent publications.

We are opening a new music department of Hyphen Press. Later this year the first of a series of CDs by The Bach Players will be issued on the label of Hyphen Press Music. There may be connections between this group and its approach to performance, and Hyphen Press and its approach to making books. But rather than try to spell this out in the abstract, it should be enough to say that the CDs will be enjoyable, and rather special. As a starter we are selling an already available CD from another area of music: Morton Feldman jazz tributes, published by Chris Villars, editor of Morton Feldman says. This too is a special production, and a very enjoyable one.

We have just received finished copies of our new catalogue of books. This is the first full printed catalogue we have made. Every in-print title is represented, in specially made photographs, and there is a retrospective display of the covers of all the titles we have produced. Bound into the booklet is an ‘almanack’ of short texts.

Among the speakers at the Friends of St Bride Library Conference on 15 and 16 May is Karel Martens. He will show some of his (very) short movies and then engage in unpremeditated dialogue with Robin Kinross.

We are present at the London Book Fair (14–16 April) c/o our new UK distributor, Publishers Group UK. Go to stand i205 to see some books and the new catalogue.

From the beginning of April our books will be distributed in the UK by Publishers Group UK. After many years with Central Books we are sad to be leaving them. But PGUK will provide a combined sales and warehousing service: the books should get into the shops more.

We are announcing some new titles for publication in the course of 2008, which will add more than just numbers to the list.

Alastair Johnston, printer & publisher in Berkeley CA, but of UK origins, has collected more than twenty years’ worth of his occasional writings. The central theme of the pieces is the small press poetry scene on the West Coast and in the UK since the 1960s, with a sprinkling of articles on typography and publishing elsewhere, including a few that come from another of Johnston’s spheres: serious printing history.

Compare and contrast these two good books published by Verso in London and New York.