Dictionary Story

This is a wonderful little story about the power of words and a celebration of their meaning. Sam Winston originally produced A Dictionary Story as a handmade artist book in a limited edition of 100. The finished product was a sumptuous experiment in empowering words with their own meanings, both within the narrative itself and the typographical page layout. Needless to say, these lovelies are collector's items nowadays. You can see copies of the original at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the British Library, Tate Gallery or Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Biblioteque Nationale de France in Paris or the Getty Research Institute in LA.
Then the spirit of the dictionary (a resource for all) arose and a new edition of the book was proposed and posted on Kickstarter for public funding. Not surprisingly, it was a roaring success and the copies are now available for purchase.

What makes this project so interesting and so much fun is the way Winston has created a world that graphically illustrates the balance between the safe-but-boring and high-risk-excitement... all with text and the exploration of its meaning and typographical form.

The words themselves go on an adventure and break free on the pages, with letters spilling out every which way. Chaos reigns until Alphabet calls them all back to order... so cute :)

Sam Winston says: "Initially A Dictionary Story started as a short narrative in which certain words from the dictionary became living characters that met each other –

'Spring's next victim was Lawless who was rejoicing in being knocked away from such a boring neighbour as Lawful. Lawless landed straight on top of Lawn which suddenly became very unruly. After some time Lawn was no longer and in its place sat Jungle, happily spreading its creepers across the page.'

From exploring the meaning in writing it was then applied it to its design. As I came to set the type I realised, by creating two columns, you could have the story running in one whilst the definitions of the words made images in the other."

If you'd like to have a look yourself, you can find Sam Winston's site here and his shop here. You can also see a video of Winston explaining the project on Kickstarter here.

Ed note: I have the images a bit mixed up here, but basically, the A4 sized edition is the new one and the long slim format is the original handmade artist book.

via here