Eye Magazine

Luca Lattuga’s Alfabeti Modernisti Italiani (Lazy Dog Press, 2025, €70) displays 124 long-forgotten sans serif types – mostly wood, but also metal – produced by fifteen Italian firms from 1928 to 1945. This enticing tome is the fruit of Lattuga’s travels all over Italy to acquire types, letterpress equipment and specimen books from old print shops. It includes spreads for each typeface (see Etna, above, and Suez) with colour photos of original specimens and ads, fine reproductions of prints taken from the original types and dual texts in Italian and English. Modernist intellectuals dismissed the vernacular typefaces shown in the book as ‘bastard Modernism’ but the fake adverts for touristic hotspots set in such types, especially by the Xilografia di Verona, were an effective marketing device and a ‘printers’ playground’ ...

James Clough, designer, teacher and author, Milan

Read the full version in Eye no. 110 vol. 28, 2026