It seems every week we bang on about how soulless and cheap the digital world is compared to what can be accomplished on the printed page. Yet there is much to like in the digital realm…some of its typefaces, for instance.
Hankering to use digital font Vista Sans for real-world print projects, designers Tricia Treacy and Ashley John Pigford used a CNC router to carve wood type blocks of Vista Sans. They then sent five of those blocks – spelling out “TOUCH” – to 20 letterpress studios worldwide to see what they would create from them.
They’ve now come out with a 132-page book – “Touch: The Vista Sans Wood Type Project Book” – documenting the various artworks created from those simple letters. (The effort was funded by a Kickstarter campaign that raised $18,000 from 225 backers.)
The book itself is a work of art in its own right, hand sewn, boasting a letterpress cover and an offset wraparound belly band. Inside: high-quality photos of the various uses to which the letterpress artists have put their Vista Sans letters.
…And that’s how Vista Sans got its soul back.
