ECAL: A Typographic Atlas
James Langdon, Alexis Georgacopoulos, Matthieu Cortat-Roller
ECAL & Empire Books, 2026
€48,00
A vast illustrated compilation of type specimens produced by ECAL’s Bachelor’s and Master’s students over the past ten years. A type specimen is a document used by printers and type founders to present their catalogs. Initially produced on individual sheets and rarely dated, they evolved into bound volumes as the Industrial Revolution, technological advancements, and the rise of literacy multiplied typographic styles. Today, type specimens exist primarily in digital form. This is a type specimen. But not only that. It is also an atlas: a collection of letterforms tracing ten years of typographic creation at ECAL / École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne, Switzerland. Through two programs—its Bachelor of Graphic Design and its Master of Type Design—ECAL has trained more than four hundred graduates in drawing, spacing, coding, and mastering typeforms. The result is a vast panorama: from classic, easy-to-read texts intended for everyday small print to the most daring display formats; from experimental, barely legible forms to revisited classic models—covering all genres of the contemporary typographic spectrum. Typography is truly global today. Welcoming students from over thirty countries, ECAL forges cultural links across the globe and within the typographic industry. Following in the footsteps of early type specimens juxtaposing the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin alphabets, the Typographic Atlas presents alphabets, abugidas, abjads, and hanzi/kanji from a rich variety of writing systems, as well as letterforms used in logos of diverse genres, because typographic creation is the very foundation of all graphic work. By bringing together these varied approaches, ECAL affirms its role as an international hub for typographic creation, where teaching, research and practice mutually enrich each other.
ISBN: 9791095991885
