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’.

The types appealed to provincial printers because they were cheap. The anonymous designers of the provincial wood type manufacturers lacked the refined professionalism of Giulio Da Milano’s Neon (Nebiolo) or Guido Modiano’s Triennale (Reggiani), but they more than made up for this with daring new ideas that caught on with local print shops.

Complementing Alfabeti Modernisti Italiani, Lazy Dog has also published CAST’s Alfabeti Modernisti Type specimens (€20) in the same generous format. The 25 digital revivals selected (some of which were reviewed in Eye 109) were carried out by nineteen type designers. The 1930s are nicely evoked, but – no mean achievement – in a style for modern eyes.

James Clough, designer, teacher and author, Milan

First published in Eye no. 110 vol. 29, 2026