Alphabetical diversions that amuse, inform, and impress Survival notes for graffiti artists. Handwriting research. Artistic letterforms. Therapy for post-traumatic stress, stroke, and dementia. Bitmap editing for CRT computer typesetting. The exuberance of Vietnamese calligraphy. Needlework. Entries by 83 theorists and practitioners in 24 countries.

Lenses for Design describes and explains the unique, creative process of American industrial designer and educator, Josh Owen. Project by project, Owen illustrates and decodes his philosophy and approach to design invention and problem solving. His designs combine clarity of purpose and functional efficacy with emotive and tactile qualities that will prove instructive and inspirational. JOSH OWEN is a designer and professor of Industrial Design at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. His work has been featured at the Venice Biennale and is in the permanent design collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Chicago Athenaeum, Mus e des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Taiwan Design Museum, among others. Significant manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe produce his home/design, furniture, and office products.

"Spend Your Alphabets Lavishly,"¿a quote from Victor Hugo¿s Les Misérables¿aptly describes the lifework of two principal figures in contemporary graphic arts: Hermann and Gudrun Zapf. The Zapfs' 50-year relationship with Rochester Institute of Technology is feted in this exhibition and catalogue, sponsored by RIT¿s Melbert B. Cary, Jr. Graphic Arts Collection. The show presents rare holdings of Zapf materials held at the Cary Collection¿the foremost Zapf archive outside of Germany.

Typophile Chapbook, New Series, 3. "Letterforms are things that nearly all of us in the Western world have learned to take for granted. We treat them much like door knobs, water taps, thermostats, and hinges. We evidently think (in defiance of all logic) that what we read or write matters far more than how it's read or written, and that letterforms are just a way to get there, as a door knob is a way to open a door," writes Robert Bringhurst in the Foreword to About More Alphabets. This book hopes to bring attention to a neglected topic by focusing on the letterforms of Hermann Zapf. From metal type to the digital characters, Hermann Zapf has composed exceptional type designs for seventy years. He can be considered one of the most important calligraphers of all time, as well as a most notable book designer and typographer. His typefaces are among the most beautiful and familiar in the world. This book, a companion volume to the Typophile Chapbook About Alphabets (1960, updated 1970), describes Zapfs post-1970 type designs and provides new research on many of the earlier types. In this volume, typographer and calligrapher Jerry Kelly describes the origins and history of numerous Hermann Zapf typefaces including Marconi, ITC Zapf International, Linotype Zapfino, and Zapf Civilité. Kelly also includes new information on the Palatino nova and Optima nova families. This new Typophiles Chapbook is profusely illustrated with type specimens and drawings, many of which have never before been reproduced. Illustrations include drawings by Zapf, comparisons of various types, early sketches, typefaces never issued, and a twenty-eight page image section of type specimens. Other types described include Hallmark Textura, AMS Euler fraktur bold, Zapf Renaissance italic swash, Medici script, Aurelia, AMS Euler, Zapf Renaissance, ITC Zapf Chancery, and Zapf Civilité. Robert Bringhurst calls Zapf one of historys greatest two-dimensional architects. He says, "Hermann Zapf has made letters so subtle, so lovely they bring tears to knowledgeable eyes. And there are very few people who know Zapfs work as well as Jerry Kelly. Read him and weep."

In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth. Goodbye to a River is his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river’s people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changing natural environment.

Written as an anecdotal first-person account, the reader is treated to famed German calligrapher and typographer Hermann Zapf's personal recollections of technical breakthroughs. Zapf reveals milestones tracing his education in 1930s Germany, to his work on forefront of computer-aided typesetting in the 1970s, to the tour de force design of a complex calligraphic font-Zapfino in the late '90s. Vivid reproductions of Zapf's calligraphy, production proofs, typographic specimens, and photographs complete the portrait of one of the most prolific designers of our time. After a complete sell-out of the American edition, RIT Press is releasing a second edition of Alphabet Stories: A Chronicle of Technical Developments. This new edition is enhanced by the addition of a letterpress-printed broadside designed by Zapf. The insert was typeset and printed at the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection using its collection of rare metal "Virtuosa" type - Zapf's elegant script face originally released by Stempel Typefounders in 1952. This book is the first Hermann Zapf monograph to be typeset in the new Palatino Nova and Palatino Sans digital typefaces issued by Linotype.

This stunning collection of poems opens up an entire world: the rich, virile, and highly literate Moslem culture of medieval Spain. This pioneering volume spans the full range of poetic emotion and enterprise, making this lost world of a millennium ago marvellously tangible, vivid and palpable. It pays special attention to the female poets, and to the evolution and meaning of the verse structures and songforms. This is a work of scholarly importance as well as a straightforward poetic pleasure.