Alessandro Segalini

Typesetting details:

A 6×9" 782-page book of single-line composition (32 lines per page). I have the copyright on typesetting for this volume, for its complexity (over 10 languages, visual poetry, complex indentations) and my creative solutions with rotated pages to retain proper original lineation and parallel translation in two to three languages. The book also received the Raiziss/dePalchi Award for outstanding translation into English of modern Italian poetry. The enterprise was reviewed in The Decadent Review by Paul F. Gehl (Curator Emeritus, The Newberry Library) in 2019. A detailed paper is published on Hyφen Journal, Vol. 12, № 18, 2019–20. Typesetting time: 13 weeks in 40 design sessions; 15 proofing files.

Cover design details:

6×9", spine size 1.556" (782pp.).
Cover design features a portion of Options, the experimental poem as printed in Villa’s artist’s book masterpiece in 1968 — a poem praised by Marcel Duchamp; layered on the striking image is Villa's signature, extracted from the cover of Le parole gelate (1980) and digitized in vector graphics for color application, scalability, and expressive use. The densely patterned textile of notes and computer code in several shades of green and ochre was the perfect image to express the deliberate linguistic obscurities of Villa’s œuvre. The cover (and the whole design) was reviewed in The Decadent Review by Paul F. Gehl (Curator Emeritus, The Newberry Library) in 2019.

Recognition: Newberry Library Special Collections