The Alphabet Project

“The art is the newspaper + the newspaper is the art.”

This lettering project is part of the Anna Schuleit Haber’s public art project called “The Alphabet”. The Fitchburg Art Museum commissioned artist Anna Schuleit Haber to create a new work for the city of Fitchburg, MA, for which she proposed (and received the permission) to take over the front page of the city’s daily newspaper, the Sentinel & Enterprise, for 26 days. It is a project for the city of Fitchburg, MA (USA), revolving around the daily newspaper, a collaborative alphabet, an embedded visiting artist, a special group of reporters, and 26 typographers from around the world.

The concept of the “h”
Laura chose the letter “h” because it has no sound in the Spanish language and because of the graphic possibilities given by the two constructions. The lowercase h has a graceful and lively structure, the capital H is more serious and symmetric. Those opposites gave me a chance to make them speak to each other, instead of being silent, and also play around together visually, as a metaphor of communication. I decided to draw a lowercase h with a strong and dark outline but filled with two different, bright colors. When duplicated and reflected it creates an H, and this duplicated again. It is only discovered when the newspaper is unfolded, creating a magnificent and powerful capital H, but also a strong presence on the page. The paper has a weekday print run of 14,000 copies and many readers shared their photos of those covers as seen in their daily lives, fact that contributed even more to the purpose of the project.

The Alphabet ran from July 13 until August 11 and featured all 26 letters on the front page. Laura’s letter appeared on the 21st of July 2015 on the Sentinel & Enterprise. Laura was invited to participate in this project thanks to the recommendation of Cyrus Highsmith, one of her most admired type designers.

For the duration of The Alphabet, Anna Schuleit Haber will serve as an embedded artist at the Sentinel & Enterprise together with her interns taking the roles of reporters and designers for what is hoped is the paper’s most unusual run of front pages in its 177-year old history.

Each typographer was encouraged to make the letter as idiosyncratic and unusual, as legible or abstract, as colorful or monochromatic as is inherent to his or her style and wider creative approach. The aim is to assemble the most diverse and far-reaching collaborative alphabet ever created for the front pages of a daily newspaper.

The 26 Typographers:

A – Felix Salut, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
B – Andreas Schenk, Basel, Switzerland
C – Dan Keleher, South Hadley, MA
D – Matthew Carter, Cambridge, MA
E – Shoko Mugikura + Tim Ahrens, Garching, Germany
F – Nina Stoessinger, Den Haag, The Netherlands
G – Cyrus Highsmith, Providence, RI
H – Laura Meseguer, Barcelona, Spain
i – Therese Schuleit, Beirut, Lebanon
J – Joe Riedel, Northampton, MA
K – Francesca Bolognini, Cambridge, MA
L – Anna Schuleit Haber, New Orleans
M – Franz Werner, Providence, RI
N – Frank Grießhammer, CA
O – Russell Maret, New York, NY
P – Barry Moser, North Hatfield, MA
Q – Pam Glaven, Northampton, MA
R – Nick Benson, Newport, RI
S – Indra Kupferschmid, Saarbrücken, Germany
T – Geri McCormick, Rochester, NY
U – Catherine Griffiths, Auckland, New Zealand
V – Stephen Goldstein, Ipswich, MA
W – Nicole Dotin, Golden Valley, MN
X – Nico Bergmann, Cologne, Germany
Y – Esen Karol, Istanbul, Turkey
Z – Akira Kobayashi, Germany

Letters as big and bold as the entire newspaper page, reminiscent of illuminated letters, are intended to inspire a second and third glance from readers. After twenty-six days, any loyal reader of the paper will have a complete limited-edition set of front pages.

A limited edition of 100 sets of the 26 front pages are available for order here: http://annaschuleit.wordpress.com/contact

If you want to know more about this project visit the project website: fitchburgalphabet.wordpress.com

and watch this video “The Alphabet: Printing Process”