Acknowledgments
Thanks to all who generously shared their expertise and who helped me, on land as well as at sea:
Dr. Reinhard Böhm for the lively glacier tutorial
Kristina Dörlitz for the excellent research assistance
Alexandra Föderl-Schmid for the second commission
Petra Glardon for the wonderful iceberg photos
Prof. Dr. Wilfried Haeberli for his edifying encouragement
Christoph Hofbauer for his high-powered advice
Mijnheer Hans Huyssen for the music
Angelika Klammer for her inspired and inspiring editing
Freddy Langer for the friendly press service
Dr. Rudi Mair for the conversation about Alpine climate and Antarctic overwintering
Borrego Pedro Rosa Mendes for the days and nights at the Tejo
Compañero José F. A. Oliver for his empathetic reading of the manuscript
Papa Heinz Renk for showing me the Tyrolean glaciers
Dr. Miguel Rubio-Godoy for the avalanche of calamities
Dr. Christine Scholten for the medical review
Dorothée Stöbener for the first commission
Susann Urban for the gift of the title
Juli Zeh for the wielding the red pen
Hurtigruten Shipping for their double hospitality
The poems cited in the text are by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Klabund and Pablo Neruda
On the Typeface
This book is set in Electra, a typeface designed by William Addison Dwiggins for use on Linotype typesetting machines in 1935. Dwiggins, a mildly eccentric book designer, illustrator, calligrapher and creator of marionettes, is credited with coining the term “graphic design”.
Dwiggins’s foray into type design began with a challenge from the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, after he had criticized the dearth of usable san serifs. Electra was Dwiggins’s first type design for book setting and would be one of his most enduring.
While the popular book faces of his time were revivals of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century printing types, Dwiggins sought to create a typeface that reflected the modern environment. As his friend and fellow illustrator Rudolph Ruzicka commented, Electra was “the crystallization of [Dwiggins’s] own calligraphic hand.” Its unbracketed serifs, flat arches, and open counters make for a face mild in pretence but alive in personality. Dwiggins explained, “The weighted top serifs of the straight letters of the lower case: that is a thing that occurs when you are making formal letters with a pen, writing quickly. And the flat way the curves get away from the straight stems: that is a speed product.”