Tipi di Torino, Giulia Garbin (Ed. Archivio Tipografico + Print About Me micro press)

The project was conceived as a continuation of Street of Ink, Giulia Garbin’s master’s thesis in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art in London, which collected the stories of former newspaper printers from the Fleet Street area.

For Tipi di Torino, Print About Me and Archivio Tipografico guided Giulia through the stories of the Turin printing scene, both past and present.
The result is a 26-page book, printed entirely by letterpress in a limited edition of 300 numbered copies, illustrated with linocut engravings and texts composed with hand-set metal type.

It tells the stories of five figures who embody the splendour, decline, and rebirth of letterpress printing in Turin — a collection of local tales and legends rediscovering the city’s typographic and book-art heritage.

Among them: Enrico Tallone and the publishing house founded by his father Alberto in France in 1938 and moved to Alpignano in 1960; Felice Vadda, teacher and former student of the Salesian Technical Institute of Valdocco; Giuseppe Brachino and Sergio Saviolo, type engravers at Fonderia Nebiolo; Mr. Carlino, printer and secret maker of counterfeit noble diplomas; and Graziella Marchisio, owner of the eponymous printshop that, for three generations until 2003, stood next to the Egyptian Museum.

All texts were hand-composed with Nebiolo metal type in various sizes and styles: Semplicità, Nova Augustea, Bodoni, Recta, Garaldus, Juliet, and Inkunabula.
The book was two-colour letterpress printed on a 1952 Heidelberg OHZ cylinder press at Archivio Tipografico.
Sheets were printed flat, folded with the print facing outward, and perfect bound.

The edition received second prize at the Fedrigoni Top Award 2017.

Press review: It’s nice that / FrizziFrizzi