as in queen (the abecedarium of a typophiliac) is an alphabet book of the letter Q, a reprint/reworking of a fine press artists’ book I published in 1997. The text is a series of praise poems to this letter. The words form mesostichs (similar to acrostics) in which a word is created by the vertical alignment of other words, in the middle of the text block. The words thus formed are the name of the typeface of the particular Q, in alphabetical order. So the first is Anna and the last is Zapf Book. The text forms a riff on gender and sexual identity since the capital letter Q, rarely used (closeted?), but often strange or ornate, has both female and male elements (the open circle and the protruding bar). The original fine press artists’ book was selected by the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) as one of the 50 outstanding examples of book design for the year 1997.
You can order this book online from my Blurb bookstore at this link. Blurb is having a FREE SHIPPING sale until Dec. 31 (free ground shipping in the USA). Use code FREESHIP2015 and order by Dec. 11 for delivery by December 24.
Image of the flat-open cover designThe first mesostich, for the letter A, the typeface is Anna.
With the creation of Celestial Bodies W–Z, this series is now complete, with all 26 letters of the alphabet represented, from Aldebaran to Zosma. Moreover, I have also created a photo book which includes all 26 images plus some text inspired by Galileo’s groundbreaking observations of the moon. He was the first one to publish observations of the moon using that newfangled technology, the telescope. He created an augmented version of the device and trained it on the heavens, applying his knowledge of phenomena close at hand to the things he saw above. He also looked at Jupiter and saw its moons for the first time, and figured out that they were moons. He was remarkably perceptive. He is one of my heroes. Here is the title page of his book, The Starry Messenger (1610), next to the title page of my book (2015). Now this book and the fine art prints it reproduces are available for sale online.
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