TYPOGRAPHY

Though the previous Waterland covers featured serif fonts, and I agreed with their use for a serious, literary look, I wanted a title font with more of a tailored character. I produced a series of quick title sketches using black ink, using both dip pen and the eyedropper straight from the bottle, and these were the results; I hoped to achieve something spontaneous and liquid-looking, not as staid as a plain serif font but not reductive of the book's tone.

The right-hand one, above, was my final choice for the title text, with some digital refinement (see below). This left the matter of the author's name; again, I shied away from using fonts similar to those done before, and anything too clean-cut looked at odds with the inky hand-made title. I thought a typewriter typeface would befit both the narrative (a history teacher relaying notes and biographical stories to his students) and the historical period of the book (the early 1940s). At first I chose the typeface 1942 Report, but its faded upper sections did not sit well under the heavy title, and was not clearly legible; my second choice, HammerKeys, was clearer and darker, and also featured a decorative broken dash effect that served as a subtle dividing line between the title and the author.