The making of the book Hermann Zapf and His Design Philosophy. Selected Articles and Lectures on Calligraphy and Contemporary Developments in Type Design

We start by typesetting a cover letter to Hermann Zapf.

Art director: Why are we using German quotation marks instead of French?

Typesetter: In Germany, the primary quotation marks are the German ones, while reversed French ones are used as secondary. We use German marks in the letter since it’s written in German.

Art director: The primary quotation marks used in Germany are the French ones. Prove me wrong.

Typesetter: Book Das Buch der Schrift: Enthaltend die Schriftzeichen und Alphabete aller Zeiten und aller Völker des Erdkreises by Carl Faulmann, 1880 reprint:

A poster by Jan Tschichold:

And a brochure by Rudolf Koch for his Norm Kabel typeface that demonstrates the use of the alternative reversed German quotes:

Art director: That I believe.

Obtaining a beautiful signature of the author on a letterhead.

Scanning illustrations of the original edition.

Starting the typesetting process.

The art director offers to add half titles. Adding them.

Meanwhile, working on illustrations. Converting images to bitmap requires breaking up each image into several files according to the number of colors used.

We didn’t have to ponder much about the cover: the design of the original edition fits well in the studio’s style.

Excerpt from correspondence with the art director (The art director inquires about using the Sator Square on the cover):

The illustrator works on the endpaper pattern.

Proofreading and making corrections, including remarks by our type designer.

Preparing everything for print, running InDesign Preflight several times over, uploading the files to the print shop server.