roberto arista – software developer and designer - graphics type tools – static animated interactive – mostly fonts and vectors, sometimes rasters
collect data / master fonts / build books / write code
python for designers – type]media 1516 - typotheque - robofont
working from home somewhere in the south side of milano - italy
Inhabitations Inhabitations Inhabitations Inhabitations Inhabitations Inhabitations Inhabitations Inhabitations

Inhabitations

During my studies in The Netherlands, my buddy and flatmate Alessio D’Ellena got in contact with Joel Katelnikoff. He is a PhD researcher in Oaxaca, Mexico. Joel started the @inhabitations Twitter account as a repository for quotes coming from different scholars related to his area of interest. In spring 2016 the Twitter account was completely dedicated to Johanna Drucker, a critic, author, and book artist.

Alessio thought that the material would have been good content to typeset with his most painful and demanding typeface: Background.

We started to discuss how to make such a book to be distributed on Lulu. The monospace typeface is perfect for Twitter data because it never exceeds 140 characters. We could build a 10x14 characters matrix on the layout.

A short Python script – combining the Twitter Python API and Drawbot – was enough to output the 740 pages in PDF. Meanwhile Alessio took good care of the cover, and then Joel put the book on sale through Lulu. You can buy a copy here.