Intentions
William Caxton is a legend of English graphic design – the first person to bring a printing press to England, and the first person to print a book there. In 1485 he published Le Morte d’Arthur, a chivalric romance detailing the life of King Arthur. The typesetting is beautiful in its clarity and refinement, as you can see on the right. Many appealing subsequent versions have been published, but often they focus on illustrations over typography. I wanted to make my own sculptural typographic version of the text, using a similarly limited typographic palette but in a contemporary way.
Execution
I used two fonts in one size throughout the entire publication; Univers Regular and Heavy. The text block constantly shifted within the grid, creating visual interest for each text page without relying on illustrations or decoration. Chapter headers were highlighted and inverted to create a strong typographic hierarchy that helped to structure each chapter on the page. I wanted to highlight Caxton rather than the author, Thomas Malory, so I used Caxton’s preface to the edition as its cover, carefully fitting it into two columns of text.