This is “Giselle”, a type specimen book for Centennial. The function of this book is to display the Centennial font family, which includes five different styles, 55 Roman, 56 Italic, 75 Bold, 76 Bold Italic, and 95 Black. For each style, the letterforms, punctuation, alignment, and scale are displayed. Adrian Frutiger is the creator of the Linotype Centennial font family, which was inspired by the very-similar, Century. Century was designed in the 1800s, during the Romantic Period of art, and at this time, one of the most popular ballets was called, Giselle. Movement, emotion, and elegance were sought after even more so than technique in the ballerina's movements, which I aimed to emulate in the style. Frutiger claimed that Centennial kept the elegance and improved the legibility of Century. The type specimen book is embellished with hand-drawn charcoal figures and watercolor paintings. It is inspired by Swiss design uses a limited color palette, which I found to complement the tragic story of Giselle.
