puzzle

great dust heap

story of
events,
with
praise or
blame

one
one
damned
damned
thing
thing
after
after
another
another

propaganda

sudden
stagetrick

gallery of pictures
in which there are
few originals and
many copies

collection
of crimes,
follies, and
misfortunes
among
which we
have now
and then
met with a
few virtues,
and some
happy times

sum total
sum
total of
of the
the
things that
things
that could
could
have been
have
been avoided
avoided

argument
without end
that little sewer where
man loves to wallow

dirty politics cleaned up for

the consumption of children
and other innocents

of the victors

living whole.
If one organ
be removed, it
is nothing but
a lifeless mass

electric motor, and Edison

with his incandescent light
bulb did not have it as their
goal to contribute to a
fuel shortage some day that
would place their countries
at the mercy of Arab oil.

action and

jigsaw

relay race
relay
race

trash bag of random coincidences

Surely, Watt with his steam
torn open in a wind engine, Faraday with his

pattern-book of fossilized ideologies

reaction

distillation of rumor

gossips who
gossips
who tease
tease the
the dead
dead

discipline closest

sound
sound
of silken
of
silken
slippers
slippers
going
going
downdownstairs
stairs
and
and
woodwooden shoes
en
shoes
coming
coming
up
up

Nightmare from which

I am trying to awake

to life

excitable and
unreliable old
lady

an aggregation of truths, half-truths, semi-truths, fables,

myths, rumors, prejudices, personal narratives, gossip, and
official prevarications. It isa canvas uponwhichthousands of
artists throughout the ages have splashed their conceptions
and interpretations of a day and an era. Some motifs are
grotesque and some are magnificent.

collection
of epitaphs

transformation
of events into
footnotes

lesson

vast early warning system

History is the longest project that Typotheque has

undertaken. Its begginings trace to mid 1990s when
Peter Bilak experimented with decorative layering
systems inspired by 19th century Tuscan types.
History goes a step forward and based on a skeleton
of Roman inscriptional capitals creates 21 layers,
21 independent typefaces which share widths and
other metric information, so they can be recombined.
Potentially thousands of different unique styles can

be created by superimposition of layers, ranging from

conventional rennaisance, transitional, baroque, script
like, commercial accidental, to digital types. Since they
can share different all elements, the most interesting
is when various seamingly incompatible elements are
combines. Just try putting on pixel letters the Didotlike serifs, or put 19th century slab serifs on top of a
rennaisance construction. Happy accidents are not only
amusing but suprisingly fresh and usable.

Realising that controling 21 different layers can be a

daunting task, Typotheque delivers history not only as
a set of OpenType fonts, but provides an application
entitled History Remixer. This web based application
uses single text input, and familiar PhotoShop-like
interface, where users select which layers should be
on, layer order, colour and luminosity, and application
generates an open PDF files.

Designed by Peter Bilak

Published by Typotheque, 2008