A type specimen is a document used by printers and type founders to present their catalogues. Initially produced as single sheets and rarely dated, they evolved into books as the Industrial Revolution, technical advances, and the rise of literacy multiplied typographic styles. Today, type specimens mostly exist in digital form.
This is a type specimen. But not only that.
It is also an Atlas: a collection of letterforms mapping ten years of typographic creation at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, Switzerland. Through two programs—its Bachelor in Graphic Design and Master Type Design—ECAL has trained more than 400 students, graduates in the drawing, spacing, coding, and mastering of letterforms. The result is a wide map: from classical, easy-to-read text intended for small-size running copy, to wild display shapes, experimental, barely readable forms to revisited classical models, across every genre of the contemporary typographic spectrum.
Typography today is truly global. With students from more than forty countries, ECAL captures cultural connections across the world and within the type design industry. Following the footsteps of early type specimens that juxtaposed Greek, Hebrew, and Latin scripts, the Typographic Atlas presents alphabets, abugidas, abjads, and hanzi/kanji across a rich variety of writing systems, alongside letterforms in use in logos across multiple genres, since type design forms the very foundation of all graphic work.
By juxtaposing these diverse approaches, ECAL affirms its role as an international crossroads for typographic design—where teaching, research, and practice continuously inform one another.