Alessandro Segalini

The task challenges students to explore type specima as a form of commercial art, cultural and historical research. With printed examples from my personal collection, and online digital ones, students are instructed to design a 28- to 40-page specimen booklet (cover included) for one of the selected typefaces. The content used in the text samples must be part of the concept for the specimen, it must be originally researched and creative. The structure of the publication includes: table of contents, history and usage, character set, special characters, weights (styles or cuts), characteristics, samples, faux graphics, copy variations.

The objectives of the projects are:
• Explore a renown type family;
• Apply advanced paragraph setting;
• Establish typographic brand consistency;
• Structure editorial design.

Part of the learning experience comes from making a correct .ps (PostScript) booklet file with imposed pages for printing; this component is still useful in online classes.

Material: InDesign, font data, digital printer, basic saddle stitch binding material

More specimen outcomes:

• American Typewriter
• Bauer Bodoni
• Baskerville
• Bilo
• Brandon Grotesque
• Broadway
• Cholla
• Courier Prime
• Didot
• Eurostile
• Fedra Sans
• Franklin Gothic
• Futura
• Galliard
• Garamond Premier
• Georgia
• Gill Sans
• Grenadine
• IBM Plex
• Interstate
• Kinesis
• Mrs Eaves
• Myriad
• Optima
• Omnes
• Pragmata
• Roboto
• STIX
• Swear
• Univers