Monogrammi

Name: Monogrammi
SKU: 9788898030538
Price: 26.50 EUR
Availability: InStock

Author: James Clough

Language: IT

-5% Off

Original price was: € 28,00.Current price is: € 26,50.

Descrizione

The book is available to pre-order and will ship from 15 October 2026.

The book has been realized in collaboration with Fabrizio Falcone.

Monograms, the most elementary of letter combinations, paradoxically offer great opportunities for expressive creativity. Just two well-drawn letters can have more appeal and communicative power than a logotype made up of six.

Legibility is sometimes replaced by a visual puzzle: the image created by the letters is so compelling that the viewer accepts the challenge of deciphering them, and is “rewarded” with the satisfaction of having solved an enigma. This balance between complexity and seduction runs through almost two and a half thousand years of history and distinguishes the monogram from the logo, a marketing tool that emerged only at the end of the nineteenth century.

The book traces the history, design and applications of monograms over more than two millennia: from ancient Greek coins to medieval and Renaissance documents, from architecture to embroidery, and on to contemporary graphics and animated monograms. The first part of the book investigates the historical developments from ancient Greece to the modernism of the 1930s; the second examines five very different genres from the Second World War to 2024, a mere eighty years that count for as much as the previous two thousand, thanks to the creativity unleashed by the demands of consumer society and the rise of the graphic designer.

With over five hundred illustrations accompanied by critical analysis and the designers’ own words, this is the first volume to offer a serious historical and critical treatment of the subject: a resource for design historians and a source of inspiration for graphic designers, type designers and calligraphers.

Text
James Clough

With the collaboration of
Fabrizio Falcone

Foreword
Steven Heller

Book design
Bunker, Fabrizio Falcone

16.5 × 23.5 cm
256 pages
Paperback
Language: Italian

ISBN 978-88-98030-53-8
First edition October 2026

Description

Monogrammi offers a systematic account of the history, design and applications of monograms, from their origins to the present day. It is the very first study to approach the subject with a methodological framework and a critical perspective, and it gives those who work with letters an overview that has not been available until now.

The author, James Clough, studied typographic design at the London College of Printing. Since 1971 he has worked in Milan as a lettering designer and calligrapher, also designing logos and monograms. He has taught typography and the history of typography at universities in Italy, Europe and the United States, has lectured in Great Britain and the United States, and writes for Italian and international publications. His books include Alfabeti di legno (Tipoteca Fondazione, 2014) and L’Italia insegna (Lazy Dog Press, 2015). He is joined by Fabrizio Falcone, a type designer and custom lettering designer who has received awards for typographic excellence from the Type Directors Club of New York in 2019 and of Tokyo in 2022. Falcone teaches at two design schools in Milan, founded the book series “Tazi Zine” and curates the digital archive “Lettere urbane”.

The volume contains hundreds of colour images, which allow readers to compare graphic solutions, historical periods and styles. For those who deal with monograms professionally or academically, the book works as an annotated compendium, in which the examples are selected and commented on, not simply listed.

It is intended for designers, students, teachers and historians of design and typography. For professionals and students it is a reference tool, for scholars a bibliographical resource that was previously missing, and for teachers a reliable teaching aid. Anyone who wants to understand why two well-designed letters are often more memorable than a full name will find in the monograms analysed here a documented answer, built on concrete examples.