Eric Gill: An Essay on Typography, 2nd ed. (1931/1936)

An Essay on Typography was first published in 1931, instantly recognized as a classic. It represents Gill at his best: opinionated, fustian, and consistently humane. It is his only major work on typography and remains indispensable for anyone interested in the art of letter forms and the presentation of graphic information.

This manifesto, however, is not only about letters — their form, fit, and function — but also about man’s role in an industrial society. As Gill wrote later, it was his chief object “to describe two worlds — that of industrialism and that of the human workman — and to define their limits.”

His thinking about type is still provocative. Here are the seeds of modern advertising: unjustified lines, tight word and letter spacing, ample leading. Here is vintage Gill, as polemical as he is practical, as much concerned about the soul of man as the work of man; as much obsessed by the ends as by the means. (David R. Godine)

Publisher Sheed and Ward, London, 1931
Second edition, 1936
133 pages
via Araucaria

Commentary (Mark Thomson, Eye Magazine, 2006)
Planned 2014 reprint (David R. Godine)

PDF (updated to an OCR’d version on 2014-6-2 via Marcell Mars)

Johanna Drucker: Diagrammatic Writing (2013)

“This is a book that is as close as possible to being entirely about itself.”

Diagrammatic Writing is a poetic demonstration of the capacity of format to produce meaning. The articulation of the codex, as a space of semantically generative relations, has rarely (if ever) been subject to so highly focused and detailed a study. The text and graphical presentation are fully integrated, co-dependent, and mutually self-reflexive.

This small book work should be of interest to writers, bibliographers, designers, conceptual artists, and anyone interested in the meta-language of diagrammatic thought in graphic form.

Edited, written and designed by Johanna Drucker
Online edition: /ubu editions, Visual Writing series
Printed edition: Onomatopee, Eindhoven; Cabinet Project, 97
Creative Commons BY-NC License
32 pages
via UbuWeb

Commentary: Johanna Drucker (Iowa Review, 2014).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2018-12-31)

Vasilis Kostakis, Christos Giotitsas (eds.): Beyond the State and the Market: The Peer Perspetive (2014) [Greek]

«Η ιστορία τελείωσε», διαλαλούν μερικοί. Άραγε υπάρχει κάτι άλλο να αντιταχθεί στο παρόν καπιταλιστικό σύστημα και την οικονομία της «ελεύθερης» αγοράς;

Καθώς τα κηρύγματα περί αέναης οικονομικής ανάπτυξης έχουν οδηγήσει σε βαθιά περιβαλλοντική κρίση, υπάρχει βιώσιμη εναλλακτική που να κατανοεί το πεπερασμένο των φυσικών πόρων; Υπάρχει άλλος τρόπος κοινωνικής οργάνωσης που να συνειδητοποιεί το κοινωνικό όφελος που προκύπτει από το διαμοιρασμό της πληροφορίας, του πολιτισμού και της γνώσης;

Αν ο καπιταλισμός γεννήθηκε μέσα στο φεουδαρχικό σύστημα για να το υπερβεί στη συνέχεια, κατά παρόμοιο τρόπο υπάρχουν ενδείξεις για σπόρους ενός νέου παραδείγματος στη σημερινή συγκυρία;

A volume on the peer-to-peer theory and the commons with texts by the scholars and activists Michel Bauwens, David Bollier, Antonis Broumas, George Dafermos, Christos Giotitsas, Silke Hefric, Vasilis Kostakis, Jakob Rigi, Graham Seaman, Johan Söderberg and Raul Victor.

Πέρα από το κράτος και την αγορά: Η ομότιμη προοπτική
Publisher Voreiodytikes Publications, May 2014
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 GR License
144 pages

Editor
Publisher

PDF