Bram de Does is the designer of two highly esteemed and successful typefaces. At the beginning of the eighties he brought out the elegant Trinité, which grew to be the favourite typeface of Dutch museums. Ten years later came the more rugged Lexicon, which gained mass circulation in the ‘fat’ Van Dale dictionary of Dutch and the respected daily NRC Handelsblad. In Trinité & Lexicon the designer tells his own story of what lay behind the design of the two typefaces and how he tackled the technical problems. His narrative is followed by thirty pages of type specimen for each face.

The panel were unanimous in their praise for the generous classical type area and the beautiful tight typesetting. On the cover the letters have been turned into wallpaper, a successful move in the eyes of the majority of the panel.

More than in the type specimens, the two faces can be compared by studying the Trinité in the Trinité story and the Lexicon in the Lexicon story. Like it or not, the specimen pages turn into images. It is only on a page that is intended to be read that you can catch the type out in the wild. The paper is surprisingly creamy, the quality of printing adequate but not as perfect as one might expect given the subject matter.