90 | thinking with type
the telephone book:
technology, schizo-
phrenia, electric speech
Book, 1989. Designer:
Richard Eckersley. Author:
Avital Ronell. Compositor:
Michael Jensen. Publisher:
University of Nebraska Press.
Photograph: Dan Meyers.
This book, a philosophical study
of writing as a material
technology, uses typography
to emphasize the rhetorical
argument of the text. This
spread, for example, is fractured
by typographic “rivers,” spaces
that connect vertically through
the page. Rivers violate the
even, unified texture that is a
sacred goal within traditional
typographic design.
flaws, faults, rivers