Il tratto (The stroke) constitutes the fundamental element of the written word, whether handwritten or printed. The qualities of voids and solids are explained in this fundamental text by typographer Gerrit Noordzij.
First published in Dutch in 1982, in English in 1985 and in a later updated edition in Italian in 2007, Il tratto presents a careful and organic synthesis of his theory of writing. The method of line drawing developed here stems from the author’s innovative contribution during his teaching period at the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague, where fundamental concepts such as expansion and contrast took shape. They made it possible, on the one hand, to revolutionise the teaching of writing and its history and, on the other hand, to approach the Dutch typographic tradition in a concrete way. With extraordinary precision, Noordzij analyses the morphology of writing in a happy interweaving of diachronic and synchronic dimensions, while at the same time restoring its proper prominence, certainly in the field of calligraphy but also in typography and design.
A not-to-be-missed text, now available in a new edition, to delve deeper into a figure who is still not sufficiently known in Italy, but also very influential in the international typographic panorama.
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Text and illustrations by Gerrit Noordzij
Translation by Alessandro Colizzi
12.5 × 19 cm
88 pages
Paperback
Italian
Isbn 978-88-98030-29-3
First published July 2020
