The typography of this book was a lot of fun, though at first blush it might not look that way. I wanted to use type that was neutral but that also felt almost crude or clumsy, which seemed appropriate to the subject matter — and my first thought was to use Times New Roman. After wrestling with Times for probably longer than strictly necessary it became clear that there was no way to make the type look considered: it was just going to look ugly, rather than thoughtfully crude. My next thought was to use something from Storm Type, whose typefaces generally have idiosyncrasies that can seem simultaneously rough and elegant. (And whose Pentagraf I had used to good effect in a previous MFA,H book.) It didn't take me too long to discover Lido, which was conceived as a Times replacement for a Czech newspaper, but never used for that purpose. Perfect. Lido turned out to be exactly what I was looking for: neutral, maybe a little ungainly, but very readable in running text and possessing a surprisingly lyrical italic. Just to be safe, the captions are all set in the oh-so-refined Verlag, with the goal of reinforcing the intentionality of the rest of the type.

Posted in and tagged American art, French folds, Lido, Museum of Fine Art Houston, Verlag, Yale University Press