30 MUCCA DESIGN
Author Craig Conley has a literary mind and a designer’s reverence for individual letters, a secular devotion made manifest in Mucca Design’s work for his One Letter Words: A Dictionary. The pristine white volume has the proportions and gold foil embellishment of a child’s first Bible, while its uncoated jacket paper offers the tactile richness of leather.

Where Conley has unearthed the letters’ literary meanings, art director Matteo Bologna’s Decora and Infidelity typefaces showcase their forms with all the sensual flourish of an illuminated manuscript. The latter typeface’s name suggests sinful indulgence, and indeed the book’s design is not as pure as its sacred allusions suggest. Conley opens with the notion of “an entire alphabet of scarlet letters,” and Mucca’s color scheme is accordingly flush with the rosy hues of flesh. Designer Cristina Ottolini claims she simply set out to create “a handsome volume that would appeal to bibliophiles, the sort of person interested in the rarefied topic of one-letter words.” The result is sure to please even the most zealous lover of language. by Taylor Stapleton