Alphabet Travelogue

Travelogue Alphabet

Otto Kohler, graphic designer, (Switzerland). He presents in this book a collection of photographs from several decades of observations, reflections, wonders. This book wants to show the fabulous wealth, the inexhaustible inventiveness that man has created. 

Every culture has had a thousand reasons to invent its own way of writing, its aesthetic and its system. Mankind sometimes copied, often innovated, merged, simplified or complicated things. From sumerians to the mayans, egyptian hieroglyphs to the greek writing, our old Hermes typewriters to our iPad: it is a stunning creativity. Today, the handwriting is lost at the expense of SMS, tweets and Co.. 

This is what the presented photographs want to testify. The letters travel through time and age with men, some remain, others fade or disappear in a cemetery or on the front of a Guesthouse. The ink disappears on faded letters, maybe a scanner will reconstruct a word, a phrase and make a copy on a computer disc for later, or for another civilization on another planet, who knows ...

Most of the time we read the name of a street, the text of an ad, we read... but we do not see the letters. This is why this book aims to show the diversity of the letters in the broadest sense, through time, cultures and beliefs, needs or trivia, or vulgar graffiti, delicate psalms, naive devotion or political slogans. 

Imagine a world without letters ...