The covers: Confessions of a Sinner (series I)
(right) * Linotype Vere Dignum:
Regular (top) and Decorative.
Designed by Phil Baines.
(left) Confessions of a Sinner, 2004.
Cover design by Catherine
Dixon.
There is no early Christian font revival contemporary with St Augustine,
so designer Catherine Dixon decided on a more lateral approach for Confessions of a Sinner (Great Idea no. 3):
‘… my work focused instead on ideas about how lettering could be used in a certain celebratory and decorative sense. I also wanted to retain a crudeness in the letterforms used. The Vere Dignum font offered both these things. It also reflected ideas about visual excess and restraint as it has an over indulgent, curly variant of the plain base font*.
I have to say, though, that it bothered me quite a lot at first that the letterforms were not historically legitimate. But that is to miss the point of the series idea, I think. That has far more to do with a way of looking at aspects of past practice and extracting the ideas informing that practice, as much as it is about copying the visual manifestations of different styles.’
