Hermann Zapf's Alphabet Stories Now Available in Embellished Second Edition

Theresa Stone

“If anyone can be considered to be a household name in calligraphy it is Hermann Zapf. Or in type design. Or in digital technology. Here is a book devoted to all of those special areas, and the special place of honor Zapf occupies in all of them…. Reserve a well-deserved place on your bookshelf for this volume.”
–Alphabet, Friends of Calligraphy, Fall 2007, on “Alphabet Stories”
After a complete sell-out of the American edition, RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press is releasing a second edition of Alphabet Stories: A Chronicle of Technical Developments by famed German calligrapher and typographer, Hermann Zapf. This new edition is enhanced by the addition of a letterpress-printed broadside designed by Zapf. The insert was typeset and printed at the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection using its collection of rare metal “Virtuosa” type–Zapf’s elegant script face originally released by Stempel Typefounders in 1952.
This book is the first Hermann Zapf monograph to be typeset in the “Palatino Nova” and “Palatino Sans” digital typefaces issued by Linotype. Written as an anecdotal first-person account, the reader is treated to Zapf’s personal recollections of technical breakthroughs. Zapf reveals milestones tracing his education in 1930s Germany, to his work on forefront of computer-aided typesetting in the 1970s, to the tour de force design of a complex calligraphic font–Zapfino in the late ’90s. Vivid reproductions of Zapf’s calligraphy, production proofs, typographic specimens, and photographs complete the portrait of one of the most prolific designers of our time.
Alphabet Stories, masterfully printed in color on an uncoated cream-colored paper, includes the illustrated narrative, a plate section, a selected bibliography, and a postscript by David Pankow, curator of the Melbert B. Cary, Jr. Graphic Arts Collection, which maintains one of the most comprehensive American archives of Zapf’s work.
Alphabet Stories: A Chronicle of Technical Developments, second edition
https://library.rit.edu/cary/CP_publications/CP_Zapf2.html
By Hermann Zapf
RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2008
Case-bound in wine-colored cloth with foil-stamping, 150 pages; 96 color illustrations, 7.25 x 11 in.
Letterpress-printed broadside on Kitakata Japanese paper
ISBN 978-1-933360-29-4, $65.00