Versus X - book review

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<< IMPROVE YOUR WRITING << GRAPHIC DESIGN << TYPOGRAPHY Versus X avant garde graphic design - plus free fonts This is a really curious book. It seems to hide its good qualities behind a willful obscurantism and a playful refusal to explain itself which on some pages leaves you scratching your head Essentially it's a collection of page designs and photographs put together as a showcase to illustrate some modern fonts. There's no explanatory text at all - just lots of glamorous pictures and graphic designs which use the fonts in ways which any modern designer might wish to do. Surprisingly light on content then - but there's a killer punch. The book comes complete with a CD-ROM that contains the complete collection of fonts, so you can put them to work on projects of your own. They are very avant garde - in the style of Émigré, Neville Brody and David Carson. Most of these are pixellated and distressed, the majority are quite readable, but some verge on the insanely unreadable. My favourites were one called Japanese which was based on Kanji letterforms but still quite legible, and two others called Kulli and Amebo which are freehand sketches outlining capital letterforms. This is a physically high quality product with an uncompromising content which will appeal to those people who are interested in font design at the cutting edge. There are no page numbers, and I had to use a magnifying glass to read the ISBN. © Roy Johnson 2004 [other TYPOGRAPHY books] Christian Ernst (ed) Versus X, Berlin: Die Gestalten Verlag, 2004, pp.xx, ISBN 3899550412 Discounts of 40% at Amazon!

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