The type for the first stage in the project for Kevin Brainard’s Advanced Typography class, entitled “Multiplicity I”, was set in Fournier, a typeface published by Monotype in 1924. The original cut from which Fournier was drawn comes from Pierre Simon Fournier circa 1742 when he published the typeface as St Augustin Ordinaire in his Manuel Typographique. This was amongst the first Transitional type-faces of the 18th century.

Titles, running footers, and folios were set in a variation of Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Knockout, called No. 31, Junior Middle-Weight, a typeface in a 32-member font family that was conceived with Modernist principles of universal and fluid function in mind. It is inspired by the first American advertisements feauturing woodcut sans-serifs.

The entirety of the type for this second stage in the project for Kevin Brainard’s Advanced Typography class was set in Univers, a sans-serif typeface published by Adrian Frutiger in 1954. Classified as a neo-grotesque typeface, one based on the model of the 1898 typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk, Univers was notable on its launch for its availability in a comprehensive but consistent range of weights and styles. It was also one of the first typefaces to fulfill the Modernist idea that a typeface should form a family of consistent, similar—if not universal—designs.

The type for this last stage in the project for Kevin Brainard’s Advanced Typography class, was set in three unique typefaces. The German text is set in varying weights of Milieu Grotesque’s Maison Neue, a refined and redrawn design by Timo Gaessner inspired by Modernist typefaces. The running English text is set in Alan Dague-Greene’s Courier Prime, which was designed for John August and Quote-Unquote Apps and is inspired by the true typefaces of mid-century typewriters and their coexistence with screenwriters. As for the French text, it was set predominantly in the italic style of Adobe’s Caslon Pro, a digital serif font adapted from the original first designed by William Caslon in 1722 and used historically by the British Empire and Benjamin Franklin alike.

The reason for this book running with three texts comes in two folds in that 1) as the third and last installment of The Metamorphosis, this iteration would increase the running texts from the second book (which count two appropriately) to three, and 2) as a Postmodernist rendition, it was paramount to include a sense of pluralism and then information overload as a result. For choosing the three languages this book would read in, German was obvious for its role in telling the original story, but English and French were chosen based on their respective cultures’ proximity to Germany as well as their relationship with German as an historical agent in the conversations of literature and philosophy, which are both clearly reflected by the source material.