2024
Art Direction
A printed specimen exploring how far a single typeface stretches before it breaks.
Details
A self-initiated study: take one typeface and push it from six point to two metres, documenting where it stops working. The result is part specimen, part argument about the limits of optical sizing, printed in an edition of 200.
Client
Self-initiated
year
2024
Premise
The same sentence, forty times
Most specimens flatter the typeface. This one tries to break it.
Each spread holds the same sentence at a different size, printed on the same stock, so the failure is the subject rather than a side effect.
The sentence runs from six point to just under two metres. At the small end it fills with ink and the counters close; at the large end the curves stop reading as curves and resolve into the straight segments they were always drawn from.
Neither end is a fault. A typeface is cut for a range, and a specimen that shows only the range it flatters is marketing rather than information.
Self-initiated work earns its keep by being allowed to fail. Nobody was waiting for this, which is precisely why it could take a position.
My Process
Research
We collected thirty type specimens and found almost all of them flatter the typeface. None showed where it stops working, which is the thing a designer actually needs to know.
Brainstorming
The format came quickly once we fixed the rule: same sentence, same stock, one size per spread. The failure becomes the subject rather than something to hide.
Proofing
Press proofs at six point showed the counters filling in sooner than the screen suggested. We reset the small end twice to find the real floor.
Production
An edition of 200, offset on uncoated stock, sewn and deliberately left unbound at the spine. The two-metre setting ships folded.
Production
Two hundred, sewn and unbound
Edition of 200, offset on uncoated stock, sewn and left unbound at the spine.
The two-metre setting ships folded, which turned out to be the most-photographed part of the book.
Uncoated stock was the whole argument. Coated paper holds the small sizes and hides the thing we were trying to show, so dot gain at six point was accepted as evidence rather than treated as a printing error — a position that cost us one press check and a very patient printer.
Leaving the spine unbound was practical before it was decorative. The fold-out needs the book to lie flat, and sewing without a case was the cheapest way to get there.
The edition sold through in four months, almost entirely to type designers, which was both gratifying and completely predictable.
