Johanna Drucker: Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination (1995–) [EN, SR]

“The alphabet is at once familiar and mysterious. Its letters have been the object of speculation since their invention almost four thousand years ago; the symbols represent sounds, yet they exist in their own right, often invested with quasi-magical power. Johanna Drucker, who teaches art history at Yale University, examines the imaginative and idiosyncratic ways in which the letters of the alphabet have been assigned value in political, spiritual, or religious belief systems over two millennia. The first book to explore fully this colorful, poetic, and frequently eccentric realm, The Alphabetic Labyrinth is richly complemented by images that have rarely or never before been reproduced. Drawing on a wide variety of little-known sources, both literary and artistic, the author adds a new and exciting chapter to the history of ideas which will prove fascinating to cultural historians, art historians, and anyone interested in the history of writing.”

Publisher Thames and Hudson, London, 1995
ISBN 0500016089, 9780500016084
315 pages

Reviews: Ellen Lupton (Eye, 1995), Cliff Pickover (Leonardo, 1999).

WorldCat

The Alphabetic Labyrinth (English, 1995, 18 MB)
Alfabetski lavirint (Serbian, trans. Branislav Kovačević, 2006)

Emigre, 11: Graphic Designers and the Macintosh Computer (1989)

“Emigre magazine’s eleventh issue, ‘Ambition/Fear: Graphic Designers and the Macintosh Computer’, contains vivid artifacts of a discipline’s first encounter with digital tools. From the aesthetics of bitmaps to the expressive interventions made possible by new access to typesetting controls, not to mention the self-publishing venture of the magazine itself, this issue combines modernist and postmodern agendas in a model construction of text-based community.”

Release of the digitized issue “coincides with the publication of “Inflection Point” a rigorously researched essay about Emigre #11 by writer/designer Emily McVarish. The essay takes a close look at Emigre #11, analyzing the technical, critical, and cultural production that would shape Emigre as a medium for typographic demonstration and discussion among peers.”

Design and production: Rudy VanderLans
Typeface designs: Zuzana Licko
Publisher Emigre Graphics, Berkeley, CA, 1989
32 pages, 11.25 x 16.75 in
via Letterform Archive

Commentary: Emily McVarnish (2017, 59 pp).

Publisher

PDF (23 MB)
JPG

Bauhaus Photography (1982/1985)

“These five hundred photographs are a record of Bauhaus activities and experiments during the 1920s and early 1930s. Most of the photographs were taken by artists-painters like Fritz Kuhr and Werner Siedhoff, designers Heinz Loew and Herbert Bayer, Bauhaus masters Hannes Meyer and Joosst Schmidt – who were not self-conscious photographers but who wanted to work with a new technology.

The book supplements visual material already published in Hans Wingler’s monumental Bauhaus and presents the school’s more human side. Some of these photographs have never been published before, while others have not been published since the period in which they were made.

Part I consists of over 100 ‘artistic’ images, a listing of Bauhaus photography exhibits, an example of a Dessau Bauhaus lesson plan, including photography, and essays on various aspects of photography by Peterhans, Moholy, Vordemberge-Gildewart, Ernst Kallai, Fritz Kuhr, Willi Baumeister, Adolf Behne, Max Burchartz, Will Grohmann, and Ludwig Kassack. There is also a section on the use of photography with typography.

Part II is a Bauhaus album – nearly 400 illustrations of applied photography documenting the Bauhaus buildings, classroom projects, or day-today activities of students and faculty.”

First published as Bauhaus Fotografie, Marzona, Düsseldorf, 1982

Edited by Egidio Marzona and Roswitha Fricke
Translated by Harvey Mendelsohn and Frederick Samson
Foreword by Eugene Prakapas
Publisher MIT Press, 1985
ISBN 0262132028, 9780262132022
xi+315 pages
via x

Review: Clark V. Poling (Design Issues, 1986).

WorldCat

PDF (32 MB)