Books and other printed materials >> Folio Society The Hobbit Limited Edition illustrated by Alan Lee
And it was pointed out on Reddit of the inconsistent use of lower and upper case fonts as can be seen on the spines
Just seems when you look at photos of the spine, title page and slipcase text, the font usage for some letters (including upper- and lower-case) is inconsistent…by design or mistake? I don’t know.
LanceFormation wrote:
Just seems when you look at photos of the spine, title page and slipcase text, the font usage for some letters (including upper- and lower-case) is inconsistent…by design or mistake? I don’t know.
Yes, if one just looked at the spine, you could make the argument that it was just a design feature in which the uppercase "H" looks like a lowercase letter, as with the "F" in Fellowship. But then when you look at the title page, you see that the "H" in Hobbit is actually an uppercase H and different from the spine.
Also it is odd that the "T" at the end of "hobbit" on the spine, which should be lowercased does not match the lowercased "t" in "the" on the spine of Fellowship, but instead appears to be a small caps version of the capital "T" at the beginning of "The Hobbit" and "The Fellowship..." and to match the small caps "T" at the beginning of "TOLKIEN" on the spine. But then when one looks at the title page again, both "T's" (one at the beginning of "The" and one at the end of "Hobbit") match and neither are either uppercased or small caps, but instead match the lowercase "T" on the spine of Fellowship "of 't'he Ring"
Perhaps completely inconsistently cased letters are just part of the design of the font, but if so it's a weird design choice.
And the double B on the spine compared to the title page is different.
Oh well. Just odd. If it hadn’t been pointed out I may not have ever noticed.
Oh well. Just odd. If it hadn’t been pointed out I may not have ever noticed.
LanceFormation wrote:
And the double B on the spine compared to the title page is different.
Oh well. Just odd. If it hadn’t been pointed out I may not have ever noticed.
We discussed it over on Reddit a week or so back. It takes a keen eye to see that the "h" in Hobbit on the spine IS an uppercase "H" for that font (and is different than the lowercase 'h', just not by very much). They appear to be using two related fonts within the same typeface. It is a weird choice, and I can't see any sensible reason for it. Mixing too many fonts is a bit messy, but I'm not a consistency obsessive with editions (I actually find the endless consistency quite boring at this point - whackiness makes a change).
Tall Hobbit wrote:
Mine has arrived! They have used a different leather this time as you can clearly see.
Any quality problems? Heard reports of issues from two sources so far this morning. My LotR was an absolute ball-ache with replacement/remanufacturing by Smith-Settle -- not really 100% satisfactory in the end - they were clearly repairing some copies and just sending some back out, but they made you send them all back, so in my case I ended up with minor faults on a volume that had no problems on the set I sent back. I won't put up with imperfections a second time round.