Bibliophile's Wonders — Typophile archive

Kon4 September 2006 · 12:54

I have some typophile-oriented wonders I would like to share.
So I wonder why:

- Some fine books are out of print for so many years (e.g. “The form of the book” by Tschichold).

- Some limited editions books have no ’cheaper version’, so that a non-millionaire could still buy them (e.g. “Pen and Graver” by Zapf). Should we start scanning? I was happy to find the scanned version of Zapf’s Manuale Typographicum at http://www.typogabor.com/manuale-hermann-zapf/index.html

- Some nice videos (like Zapf’s tutorial on Calligraphy for Hallmark Cards) are so hard to find. I think videos by great type designers would be really helpful although type design is not so momentary to be captured on film. TypeCulture has a nice sample of such movies at http://www.typeculture.com/academic_resource/movies/

- Most great books by Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz are not translated in English. Of course the german market is big but from what I can tell those books would be a great addition to non German speakers.

Dan Reynolds4 September 2006 · 13:25

The Zapf film that Hallmark made in the 1960s is still property of Hallmark. They hold the copyright to it, and handle its distribution, since it is their property. Linotype has a license to bundle the film on the Zapfino Extra CD. So, if you license Zapfino Extra, and order it via CD instead on download, you get this great film. But Linotype cannot distribute the film through other means; neither can anyone else that I know of, except Hallmark.

Some Verlag Hermann Schmidt books are translated into English; some are translations of books that first appeared in English. I’ve spoken with one of the publishing house’s authors. He told me that, in order for the books to be translated, a foreign publishing house has to sign on, produce the books, and take over distribution. If you want a specific Verlag Hermann Schmidt book translated, you need to convince the author that it should be transl