Kenny’s Original Design Miscellany

In Waterstones yesterday I saw that The Economist has just published a Business Miscellany. It is obviously modelled on Ben Schott’s Meta-Miscellany, which appears to have spawned a whole publishing sub-category. While it seems that the authors at The Economist have gotten their book published well in advance of the Christmas gift book rush, it is probably now too late for me to rush out the first edition of ‘Kenny’s Original Design Miscellany’.

Given that designers will seemingly buy design books on any niche-niche topic (I am nearly sure I saw one on ‘Boring German Postcards’ recently), then there ought to be a market for something along these lines.

There could be minutely-detailed tables giving different pica, point, en, and em sizes. A list of all the various mis-quotings of that famous “Any designer who ...would steal sheep” line. Lovingly recreated faux-invoices for metal typefaces being bought by weight. A list of the most unusual typeface names. A list of typefaces named after people. A list of people named after typefaces! Arcane numerological co-incidences in the relationships between Pantone numbers, their associated process breakdowns and the Kaballah.

You know, that sort of thing.