Cadetten-almanak 1903

This Cadetten-almanak, printed in 1903 by Naamloze Vennootschap Bredasche Boekh, is a peek into the past. I think of the hand, or maybe the machine, pressing those letters onto the page, each one an effort to fix time, to document. I can imagine the designer thinking, how to arrange these words, how to make them look important, or official. Maybe they were thinking about other almanacs they had seen, or about the function of this book for military cadets. What were their lives like? Were they hoping to be war heroes? There is something human about this, that act of placing letters onto a page, to give some form to what is written. The conversation between now and then carries on, artists and designers borrowing and riffing off each other's ideas across time. It’s a physical echo of voices, isn’t it?