Civic City Cahier series

Bedford Press:

The Civic City Cahier series intends to provide material for a critical discussion about the role of design for a new social city. It publishes short monographic texts by authors who specialise in urban and design theory and practice.

The first issue from September 2010 starts out with off-the-shelf (Linotype) Times. Civic City Cahier 2 not only introduces a different color, but also a number of slight — almost inconspicuous — modifications to the typeface: the ‘i’ dot is enlarged and diamond-shaped, the diagonals of ‘w’ overlap, ‘W’ has a low center vertex, ‘A’ gets a bent crossbar (as one can find in Romanesque inscriptions). Issue 3 picks up from there and adds several stencil-like letterforms. The typographical metamorphosis continues: For issue 4, ubiquituous Times has been turned into an odd hybrid with Latin (i.e. triangular) serifs. Civic City Cahier 5 interrupts the linear degradation and returns to the third stage, but not without implanting a new typographical interference: ‘wy’ is merged into an unignorable ligature. The last issue from September 2013 resumes the triangular serifs and throws in a ‘z’ with crossbar as well as an alien ampersand.