“Waiting for Walter” No More: A Reprint of Lettering by Walter Käch
“Waiting for Walter” no more. Today we’re releasing our reprint of Walter Käch’s Lettering into the world, a classic type textbook first published in 1949 that our imprint Dinamo Editions has co-published with the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich.
This is the final puzzle piece of our Walter project, a long-standing, joint scholarly effort between us and our dear friends at Omnigroup. In 2022, we began by releasing our ABC Walter font family, an interpretation of the lessons found in Käch’s notoriously out of print textbook. And now, we’re republishing the manual ourselves, making its lessons available once again to a wider public.
For decades, Käch’s Lettering served as a vital handbook for practitioners and students of type design in Switzerland and beyond. It’s lessons helped shape the forms and ethos of mid-century design, leading to the development of typefaces like Univers and Helvetica. But — until today — the book has been near impossible to get hold of.
We ourselves learned a lot about letterform construction through tracing its pages. Käch taught designers to look for elements in the construction of letters that could be modified and built upon, allowing for the smooth development of typeface families. One of the richest places to find these elements, for Käch, was the history of writing itself, and he encouraged his students to recycle past motifs to unlock new design potential. You can read our editor Maddy’s essay on the history of the manual here.
Our reprint includes a new introduction by type historian and friend Dan Reynolds and a foreword by the MfG’s curator of the graphic collection Barbara Junod. All the new material is trilingual, just like the original.
For anyone in Zurich this month, a pop-up exhibition of Käch’s scripts and posters at the Museum für Gestaltung — on until May 25 — ties to this publication’s release.
We really—really—couldn’t have done this without Simon and Leo at Omnigroup: they designed and produced this perfect bound beauty, with its fresh yellow intro, Munken Print Cream and Arena Smooth Natural paper stocks, rounded corners, and Pantone offprint printing. Sticky-proof cloth protects the hardback from student fingers and repeated use.
We hope you love it as much as we do ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
PS. We’re giving students 25 percent off the book: Hit reply for more info :)
