L'effet Gutenberg
Date
Credits
- Fernand Baudin (1918-2005) Author
- Fernand Baudin (1918-2005) Designer
Format
- Book Cover 174
Type of Work
- Finished work 5123
Publishers
Media
- paper 1052
Techniques
Locations Made
- Paris 8
L'effet Gutenberg was written and designed by the Belgian typographer-historian Fernand Baudin. It is the visual and intellectual sum of his conception of typography. Fernand Baudin was a working typographical designer or, more precisely, a book designer, an English term which, curiously, for most of his life did not really have an exact equivalent in French. Baudin translated it simply as ‘dessinateur de livres’. Nowadays in France it is classed as part of 'design éditorial', or editorial design. Baudin had a prodigious memory and a very wide ranging knowledge of, and strong ideas about writing and typography and was very attentive to the evolution of the means of typographical production. Hence the total control which he exerted over the editorial structure and visual form of L'effet Gutenberg, down to the last minute detail. The result is a scholarly and very personal statement about letterforms and book design since Gutenberg.
