Alessandro Segalini

Typesetting details:

A 6×9" 290-page book with single-line composition and lineation (33 lines per page max). The first English translation, and the first of three volumes of Dix's letters originally published in German as Briefe (2014). The articulation of the texts — headings, body, commentaries, image captions, and footnotes — is rendered in my first ever unjustified setting in which I sought to achieve finely-crafted rags with lines running at 50 characters average length. This visual style element was used as a homage to the original German publication, which is also not justified. To use in the "[letter/date]" headings, I digitized Otto Dix's signature into a font. I optimized all the images (illustrations, artworks, postcards, etc.) for greater sharpness and set them at 20% gray value background for uniform page coloring. The volume was reviewed by Steven Heller in Printmag in 2019. Typesetting time: 20 weeks in 74 design sessions; 19 proofing files.

Cover design details:

6×9", spine size 0.688" (290 pp.).
The virtual cover features a historical, stark portrait of the author holding a brush (the image on the inside cover of the German edition), yet the physical cover is “no cover,” minimal, just a dark blue clothbound hard cover, with gold letterpress type on the spine.

Review: @printmag @thedailyheller