In 2006, invited by Giovanni Lussu and his colleagues on the editorial board of the journal ‘Progetto grafico’ (published by Aiap, the association of Italian graphic designers), I wrote a consideration of Beatrice Warde’s ‘Crystal goblet’ essay.¹ This became part of a symposium on Warde’s view of typography, which was published in ‘Progetto grafico’, no. 8. Other components of the symposium were an Italian translation of the ‘Crystal goblet’, published as a booklet that came free with that issue of Pg, and essays by Alessandro Colizzi, Sergio Polano, and by Giovanni Lussu writing together with his colleagues Antonio Perri and Daniele Turchi. The essay by Lussu, Perri, and Turchi, has just been published in English translation. This has prompted the publication of the text (in its English original) that follows here. Read more

From today we have reduced the price of a number of books: At, Autonomy, Jazzpaths, and Modern typography in Britain (Typography papers 8).

The Hyphen Press office is closed this week. Orders for books or music CDs will be processed and sent out on Monday 18 December.

This article follows on from the more general considerations on copyright in Isotype published here. Read more

Isotype is now the generally used name for the work in visual communication carried out by groups under the direction of Otto Neurath and, after his death in 1945, by Marie (Reidemeister) Neurath. The institutions that produced this work were the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien [GeWiMu] (1925–34), the International Foundation for Visual Education [IFVE] (1934–40), and the Isotype Institute (1942–71). We have published three books on Isotype: From hieroglyphics to Isotype, The transformer: principles of making Isotype charts, and Isotype: design and contexts, 1925–1971. The question of where copyright in the Isotype work lies has been a persistent one. The notes here provide an answer to it. Read more