The Sixth Extinction

For the book jacket TOC art director Susanna Dulkinys sat down to express what we considered the lesson Elizabeth Kolbert wants to get across. Each element of the pattern is a life form in all its perfection, but underneath, in acid green color, these characters are distorted and exploded, representing change and destruction. Inside the pattern repeat randomly on full pages, printed letterpress.
The typeface is FF Hertz, named after Heinrich Hertz, a German physicist, who proved the existence of electromagnetic waves. FF Hertz is a uni-width typeface, meaning that each letter occupies the same width in all weights. If you change the weight of a word or a whole line, the text will not reflow. We particularly like the figures: they remind us of our 70’s typewriters. For titles, chapter headings and other places requiring a louder voice, we picked a typeface by a good friend, Christoph Koeberlin, who describes his Fabrikat thus: “It is a geometric typeface which is based on 20th century German engineers’ typefaces. Due to its constructed architecture it works well in headlines and other display use.”