Books

During the first decades of my activities as a writer I wrote articles – reviews, interviews, essays – for newspapers, weeklies, monthlies, and trade magazines. It wasn’t until I was in my early 40s that I first published a book – Moving Minds (1999), an assignment from the travelling theatre academy MAPA. All subsequent books, which followed in quick succession until 2012, were about graphic design, typography and, most importantly, type design.

There have been no new books I wrote or edited since mid-2012, although I did continue to contribute to other people’s publications writing short articles and introductions, a well as doing some editing – see the section Books Contributed To.

Over the years, I’ve been invited to contribute to quite a few books on design, typography, art, theatre, and cultural speculation. Here’s a selection of books containing one or more articles I wrote. In some cases, I also gave editorial advice.

I have translated numerous articles, but complete book translations were only four or five.
• Kritak, Leuven (with Catherine Dal, French>Dutch): Calvi, Het Europa van de Peetvaders (Godfathers’ Europe, 1993). Carpentier–Moser, De staatsveiligheid (State security, 1994)
• BIS, Amsterdam (including typesetting, by Catherine Dal): Twemlow, Grafisch ontwerpen, waar is het goed voor?, 2006 (Adaptation of What is Graphic Design For), Shaughnessy. Handboek voor een leven als grafisch ontwerper, 2010 (How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul). And to be complete, also the Dutch & English versions of my book De vorm van tekst / Shaping Text, 2012, written and designed simultaneously.