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Motifs is a perfect bound book (cold glue) showcasing a “typeface” I designed that experiments with forms mapped to upper and lowercase glyphs (A-Z). It presents images, the glyphs and then the glyphs being used to describe the images in three sequential chapters. Printed and bound at Imprimerie Launay in Paris. Photography in the book is by Alexa Nikol Curran.
The idea of the glyphs later being used to describe the very images that inspired their forms is such a tight conceptual loop. What made you land on cold glue binding specifically, was it about how flat the pages needed to lay for that image-to-glyph sequence to read well?
Thanks man! Yeah cold glue just allows for the pages to lay much flatter which helps especially for viewing the images and making sure they don't get lost in the gutter. Usually if I can opt for a cold glue perfect-bound book I definitely got for it because of that. Just a better reading experience imo!
Designing a typeface around imagery rather than pure letterforms is an unusual brief. Did the glyph shapes come from tracing the images directly, or did you design the letters first and go hunting for images that matched?
Great question! A bit of a long story but the glyph shapes come from a system I designed in glyphs where I mapped a shape to each glyphs (A–Z uc, lc) to create those radial patterns and shapes. I started there. After I made the "typeface" I enjoyed seeing the shapes change and...
Really neat looking book design Cameron! 🙌
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