|
 | The ECAL MATD Keepsake, for us by us. January 2025 |
| |  | | On January 20th 2025, you will find a book on our evaluation table. It is the result of our collaboration, and we called it “The Seed Branching Apples”. This title sums up three different moments of our semester working together. We planted a seed in the beginning, watched it grow through conversations and objects and then picked up the apples that grew from those branches. In this book you will find our thought process, our research entries, our inside jokes. It is beautifully chaotic, but also very linear in our heads. It is one of the apples that we will share with you as a witness of what can happen when two brains — and of course two friends — come together to create something. |
| | | A type release and manifesting
new adventures 🔮 |
| |  | Vee released his first typeface on FutureFonts! Everybody go check it out and do a little V-knee dance to celebrate 🪩🍾 |
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| | Canon Grotesque is a playful type family distinguished by its round-sided sans-serif design with slightly closed terminals reminiscent of the grotesques from the early 20th century.
Its compressed form and tight spacing make Canon Grotesque ideal for use in posters, billboards, headers, and logos. The type family also includes wide alternates for round-shaped characters, introducing a dynamic change in tempo within compositions and creating a fresh reading experience. |
|  | | | I'm still not sure if this is really happening or not, but I feel like it could fit into this category and I want to manifest the idea: as you probably already know, my friend Joshua from Cologne (who was also in Laus'angeles during my bday) and I have unofficially started an official studio to collaborate on visual communication for everything cinema related (press kits, props, posters, websites, title design, etc.). While I am a bit more trained in making graphics, he is a pro at (actually product design, but also) socialising and networking, and he may have already found a position as guest lecturers for us at the Art Academy in Münster for the cinema department in the field of title design and typography in moving images. So maybe we'll be professors in the summer after ECAL lol. If that happens, I invite y’all for a round of drinks! |
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| | From September on I am looking for a job as a Creative Director/Graphic Designer in a Type Foundry or Graphic Design Studio type focused lol. U want to see ur typefaces shine in the brightest light, Call me via +41786295888! |
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| |  | |  | Thinking of an interpretation of this “Steile Futura” |
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| | | | | The chefs suggest Coriander Sauce Noodles, Huran Kukli, a Celery Thingy and grandma’s pie. |
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| | | Coriander Sauce Noodles ✨ |
|  | Ingredients (perfect for 1 serving) |
|  | Garlic: 3 cloves, finely chopped (or as much as you like) Tomato: 1, chopped and boiled into a paste (add a little water while cooking) Coriander: as much as you like Soy Sauce Rice Vinegar
Instructions In a bowl, combine soy sauce, vinegar, chopped garlic, and coriander. Boil the chopped tomato with a little water until it reduces into a paste. Once the tomato is ready, mix it into the bowl with the other ingredients. Adjust the ratio of soy sauce to vinegar based on your preference. A 3:1 ratio is a good starting point, but feel free to add more vinegar if you prefer a tangy flavor. Toss the sauce with the cooked noodles and enjoy!
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| | Huran Kukli (Chuvash traditional dish) |
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| Ingredients • Wheat flour — 100 g. • Eggs — 4 pcs. • Boiled drinking water for dough. • Cream butter — 1 tbsp. • Sour cream — 100 g. • Salt to taste
Filling • Green onions — 150 g • Cottage cheese — 800 g. • Cream butter — 50 g.
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| Preparation
1) Knead the dough, add salt to taste and 1 spoonful of butter, leave to rest for 40 minutes.
2) For the filling, peel, wash and chop the spring onions, mix with grated cottage cheese and add 50 g of melted butter.
3) Shape the dumplings in the same way as for 10g of dough, 10g of filling for 1 piece.
4) Drop into boiling salted water and cook on a low heat for 7 minutes.
5) Serve with sour cream. |
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| | |  | Here’s the recipe to do the celery thingy that Pai and I improvised for my bday dinner. It takes a bit but is actually super easy to do. Estimated overall time 3 h 15 min (3 h baking time and 15 min preparation). |
| Ingredients What you need for 2 people: |
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| How to do Preheat the oven to 170° C. Wash the celery and cut in half (no need to peel it in any way I guess). Softly massage the two halves with olive oil and salt and throw them with the cutted side on a baking pan/baking tray into the oven for 3h. From time to time see if your kitchen did not burn down but trust the process. Then after 2h 50min you can slowly prepare the yoghurt base layer. Therefore you just need to mix yoghurt with the tahin, sumak, olive oil and salt. Spread the mixed yoghurt on a deep dish and add a few random drops of chili oil. Get the celery and cut the halves into stripes and put them on the dish on top of the yoghurt layer.
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|  | Thanks GiuGiu for the process pics :* |
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|  | Beautifully plated by XXL next to Jboy’s Gyoza and V’s scrambled egg with rice. If you don’t have them boys around cooking for you, you can enjoy the dish with a nice bread like baguette and dip it in the saaauce. |
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| | Tarte aux mûres de Rosie la Douce |
|  | | Weird party vibes and insecure ninj…..cool kids 🥷 |
| | My cringe of december: that one concert during Les Urbaines at the Theatre Sévelin next to Arsenic by a Zurich DJ who sang along her pre-recorded songs and the audience that stood in a way too small circle around her DJ booth. She tried to create a party atmosphere but no one was prepared, yet ready for it and just stood there (as I did). The image from the insecure cool kid performing next to all the insecure cool kids just watching, not even nodding, who didn’t catch the vibe and didn’t dance at all. Woaaaahh…. I still get the creeps thinking of that – I still hear and fear the echoes of the unreal (the title of her concert). |
| | I played a game on New Year’s Eve. It’s called “Think about it”. Basically there are 3 groups of people: 2 groups of conspiracy theorists and one of fake experts, and the goal is to win the debate. Two topics are chosen in the beginning, completely not related to each other, for example “carrots” and “ancient Egypt”. The 2 groups have to create an absurd conspiracy theory around the 2 topics and give a convincing speech that ends with the sentence “just think about it” — the name of the game.
So, each group invents weird stuff to build their conspiracy theory and the experts can ask them questions to give them a hard time. The experts can be experts of anything. We had “carrots expert”, “ancient Egypt” expert and “clandestine immigration” expert.
It doesn’t have specific rules, the goal is to say silly and absurd things to make other people laugh — I guess. In the end, the experts decide which one of the two theories was the best.
I think it maybe could be fun to play if you study theatrical improvisation or if you are really really friends with the people you are playing with, which was not my case. Racist jokes are around the corner, maybe don’t play in your family gatherings. Or maybe just don’t play in general. My group invented a story about aliens that built pyramids as secret laboratories to synthetize carrots that in some way help them to conquer the world. There was also something related to the changing colour of carrots from purple to orange and immigration, but I wanted to forget that moment so bad that I don’t remember what was the logic behind it. |
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| | Sometimes we even get paid 😮💨 |
| |  | Earlier this year, Lucid was used (among other super nice fonts) for the Zhao Dai On Leave festival in China, where I would have loved to go 🥲 It is also actually my first typeface that I “sold”. The person (Pan Haojun aka badpreacher on instagram) sent me 80€ through PayPal for it even though I didn’t ask for it. Also I’m super happy with how he used Lucid which is why I want to give a shoutout to Pan ! Our DM conversation was a nice example for me of getting to know people through Instagram, but it was also my only longer interaction after sending some OTFs 🙁 . |
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| | (I think I have to add a case sensitive feature for the right dashes in between numbers I guess haha :D) |
| | This summer a good friend of mine asked me to design a book with her as a new step in her writing practice. Josephine had already been doing installations and paintings, but had only just started doing illustrations as well as writing. For this project I wanted to use some fonts from the closest people I know (you guys haha :D) and ended up using Saunter by V and Typa by Hofi. It was super nice to use the typefaces for the book, but it was also a bit challenging because working with WIP fonts includes asking for the design of missing characters. While I always offer to do that when I send someone my OTFs, I found it much more challenging to ask for it (thank you V for designing the capital "ß"for me <3 which ended up just being the lowercase on the cover 🥲). |
|  | | Two very good friends of mine used this old spiky serif I did before I went to ECAL, called Nerv. They used it for a film festival in Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week, which they also organised themselves - a crazy productive couple. Even though I would have loved to go and see it in the biggest application I can think of (on a giant cinema screen), I'm also a bit glad I didn't see it up close, because I see a lot of things I would do differently now. Crazy how much we all learned and developed our eyes in 1 year at MATD. |
| | | |  | | | As you already know, Jamie collaborated with Takumi from MA Product Design for his Contained Wild exhibition. Pictures by Daniel Martinez from MA Photography, and typeface in use by Vee — Saunter! |
| | | | | | | | ⚠️🔨🚧 Work in progress ⚠️🔨🚧 |
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| | | | | Hidden spots in the city center 🕵️ |
| | If you're in Lausanne and get the chance to go to an event at the Ex-Cinema Eldorado, don't think twice and just go, just to be amazed by the fact that there's such an off-space in the middle of Lausanne. It is located next to that one building with the orange round windows, right on Chauderon, inside the "Maison du Peuple". The ex-cinema is completely empty, like a raw building with bare walls. To get there, you have to go through this super-bright golden entrance next to the Migrolino, to then probably pass some communal rooms with children playing and eating on your way downstairs. During les urbaines, after two floors down, we stood in front of a door with a roaring bass behind it that made the whole building vibrate. Such a contrast to the life in front of the building. It felt like going into the hidden underground batcave. That was a crazy experience. |
|  | Even though I wasn't a fan of musicals nor Ariana Grande, I enjoyed Wicked quite a bit, haha :D The climax didn't stop climaxing with the end coming surprisingly a bit too sudden. I think I saw a few people crying in a couple of scenes. Me? During the dancing scene I just had something in my eye, I promise. |
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| | 💿 MATD Radio is currently playing….. 💿 |
| | | | | 1. Nujabes - Luv (Sic) pt1 - Grand Finale My favorite songs, they bring back so many memories. Nujabes = Legend. This is the story of Luv (sic)
2. Doja Cat - Paint The Town Red I usually listen to this on my way to school, I need to feel like a queen while walking in Renens.
3. A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It? Also to encourage me to walk and work.
4. The Pharcyde - Runnin’ Another favorite walking song that keeps me motivated.
5. Dounia, Kehlani - Rich Girl Mood To manifest (?)
6. Slum Village - Fall In Love (Instrumental Mix) I really like the beats.
7. Alfa Mist - Keep On Went to his concert once, he’s genius.
8. Ryuichi Sakamoto - 1996 (the whole album) “Rain” is my favorite My favorite musician. I highly recommend you to watch this documentary: “Ryuichi Sakamoto: CODA”. It’s a close look at the life of Mr. Sakamoto, with interviews and perspectives from his daily life. It captures the final chapter of his life, despite battling cancer, he never ceased to create with the curiosity of a child. Through his experimental compositions, he continued to care for and connect with the world through music and this documentary was released not long before he left this world.
9. Sunset Rollercoaster - My Jinji + Sunset Rollercoaster - 我是一隻魚 I'm a Fish
One of the best bands from Taiwan.
10. No Party For Cao Dong 草東沒有派對 - 大風吹（Simon Says） + No Party For Cao Dong 草東沒有派對 - 山海 （Mountain Sea) No Party For Cao Dong 草東沒有派對 - 爛泥 （Mud) Also one of the best bands from Taiwan.
11. 林強 Lim Giong - A Pure Person (OST of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s movie “Millennium Mambo”) Lim Giong is a legendary musician and collaborator with Hou Hsiao-hsien. This song blends contemporary electronic sounds with Taiwanese culture, drawing inspiration from the everyday sounds of Taiwan. Sung in Taiwanese, it captures the urban atmosphere and spirit of that era.
12. toe - For Long Tomorrow (the whole album) It feels like having a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning and just chilling |
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| | Ave Verum Corpus (KV 618)
A motet in D major composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791 – less than six months before his death at age 35. It foreshadows "aspects of the Requiem such as declamatory gesture, textures, and integration of forward- and backward-looking stylistic elements" (Wolff, Christoph 1998). While the Requiem is a dramatic composition, the motet expresses the Eucharistic thoughts with simple means, suited for the church choir in a small town. |
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| | BIRKIN RUNTZ - Zeu, Epektase, Pandrezz, j’san La que puede, puede - Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso - Tiny Desk Concert REPLIC44 - Hologram Lo’, Huntrill In The Air Tonight - Phil Collins
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| | Ma Meilleure Ennemie - Stromae, Pomme, Arcane Au revoir BB - Gringe Told You So - Martin Garrix, Jex
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| | | | Lately I’ve been listening to Macabre Plaza to chill while pushing pixels. Enjoy. Macabre Plaza - A Devil’s Touch in the Midwest Macabre Plaza - A Bird’s Last Look
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| | | Meetups, Live-Locations & Travel diary |
| | Just before our trip to Nancy, Pai and I will go to Paris and wander around. Do you have some tips for Paris? |
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| | 28th December 2024
Okay, I must say I feel really lucky. This is the second time I meet some MATD buddies in Torino (shoutout to Jamie for being the first — or should I say the OG? — visiting in July, and this time there were four people. Vee, Mint, Mim and Oak in Torino! We had the pleasure to be in the company of my best friend, Lorenzo. He enjoys talking to new people, practicing English and telling several stories about the city, which I always forget about (I am destroying his romanticism here). Also, he took a bunch of pictures of us. |
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|  | Vee asked me to bring them to a local OG Piemontese restaurant a few days ago. And if you know me well, I took this as a freaking serious quest (not gonna lie, I was pretty nervous. I wanted to give a good impression!). |
| The group already experienced a lot of southern Italian restaurants in Milan (always my first choice) and that already put me at a disadvantage (imho southern food >>>>> everything else) so I had to choose the right place. It was quite challenging, but after asking a lot of relatives and friends during my long family gatherings, and cross-analyzing Tripadvisor, The Fork and Google Maps, I chose to book a reservation for Il porto di Savona. It looked old enough to be OG – boiserie and all that jazz – super traditional dishes, located in one of the main squares and with nice reviews. |
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|  | Lunch at Porto di Savona
What we ordered, along with my ratings: Vitello tonnato (Veal in tuna sauce) – ★★★★ just because I eat a lot during the holidays, nothing special for me) Mushroom flan with cheese fondue – ★★★★★ crazy Tartare Raw veal meat with caramelized pears and robiola cheese – no rating, I’m not a fan of raw meat Homemade pasta Tajarin with Castelmagno cheese – ★★★★★+++ never gonna be able to replicate such a simple dish by myself. This. Cheese. Tagliatelle with boar ragout – ★★★★ nice, but not vegetarian, so easier to achieve a tasty result in my opinion Finanziera (veal and chicken offal blended with vinegar or Marsala, and mushrooms) – ★★★ interesting mushroom flavour, but not a fan of offal) Sliced veal with Robespierre sauce – no rating, didn’t taste it!
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| | Everything was super, I would describe it as creamy and warm flavours, buttery and silky, perfect for winter time. Shoutout to the big baskets of crispy bread and breadsticks.
Snack n°1, La Romana crêpes and ice cream
Craving for a dessert, we headed to La Romana. One of the best gelaterie, that also does crêpes, hot chocolate, zabaione etc. There are a lot of flavours, and Vee could taste a nice vegan gelato, made with water instead of milk, lactose-proof. And yes, you just pay €3 for the cone, scoops are not a unit of measurement here. The area around La Romana is super crowded because the main university and the Mole Antonelliana, the symbol of the city, are located there. A lot of people were queuing in front of the tower, trying to get a spot for the Cinema Museum. |
|  | Looking for Calvino
Chatting with Oak, we discovered he is a writer and is pretty interested in Italo Calvino’s work, one of the most important italian writers of the last century. You might have heard about Il Barone Rampante (The Baron in the Trees), Le Città Invisibili (Invisible Cities), Il Sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Nest of Spiders), or Il Visconte Dimezzato (The Cloven Viscount), which are few of his most famous novels. Thanks to Oak I discovered that Calvino lived part of his life in Torino, mostly in connection with the Einaudi publisher. We decided to go and look for the place where he lived, in a neighborhood near the city center called Santa Giulia. It appears to be right in front of river Po. No wonder Calvino could get inspiration with such an amazing view — Renens, take notes please. |
|  | Oak trying to absorb Calvino’s aura that probably touched the same doorbell many years ago. |
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| Snack n°2, il Bicerin
After dancing with the birds at sunset along the river, we decided to go back to the city center. The streets were packed with people and everyone was looking busy, but happy. The river breeze made us feel pretty cold, so we decided to try another cafe and ask for a bicerin, a traditional Torino wintery afternoon drink. It is made of coffee, hot chocolate and whipped fresh cream, layered one on top of the other in a big glass: the perfect mix of consistencies. After gelato it was a pretty hardcore choice, but YOLO. Also, it was my first time trying it. I don’t know where or how I lived until now. It’s like I took the red pill from Matrix and finally woke up. Thank you. Rating: ★ 100 stars out of five ★ |
|  | |  | The bartender said she is gonna post us on Instagram |
| Walking back to the station
Time flies when you have fun. It is already time to go back to the station, at platform 14 to get the 18:54 train back to Milano Centrale. On the way back, we stop at a few places we wanna show our friends to complete the OG condensed 5 hours Torino experience. While we walk along Via Po and Via Roma, two of the most important streets, we stop at: Piazza Castello, Palazzo Madama and Palazzo Reale. During winter time there’s also a cute tiny Christmas Trees spot where people take selfies. za San Carlo, where the two Twin Churches are (long story, ask Google or Lorenzo for details) and where you can find a big statue of Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia on a horse (two horse legs up = died in battle, one horse leg up = just injured, Lorenzo said)
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| Random fun facts about Torino I couldn’t fit in the storyline: We have a square entitled to Giambattista Bodoni, but nothing happens there. Apparently Bodoni was born in Saluzzo, a city near Torino, but I have to research more about it. I know for sure that there’s a typography-themed pizzeria there, called Alla Lettera. Maybe next trip we book there. can drink water from Turets, head of bulls that spit water, also symbol of the city. If you step on the golden balls of the golden bull in Piazza San Carlo, you will have good luck.
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| Reviews, insights& gossip |
| Reposted posts and type wars |
| | As I was posting my work from the studies on Instagram, some posts got reposted there as well as additionally on are.na and Pinterest. During a lecture in Mendrisio, Lynn showed me the post about Lucid on her Pinterest feed, which was crazy. I'm actually not sure what to think about the work being reposted, either by people or algorithms. On the one hand I felt very honoured that someone (or something) liked my post, and on the other I felt betrayed. By who? Meta? Lol. Of course, this is the way to get clout and fame nowadays, but I also find it a bit weird that no one asked me if it was OK to repost stuff of mine. Sometimes I didn't even get a notification about some reposts and only found out because a friend followed the blog and tagged me (thanks Mint <3).
Now, whenever there is a sudden small increase in followers, I feel like a post has been reposted somewhere without me knowing about it. I think it's super nice when 'blog profiles' or 'online magazines' like type01 and tomorrow.type.today share stuff, but somehow it also feels a bit like slanted magazine printing instagram posts in a book and selling it without asking the people who posted them. In that case they even make money from that book (so basically from our posts), WTF?! It feels like there is a lack of respect for the work and the people behind it, which creates a weird atmosphere for me.
Somehow I think it would feel more honest and I would be more proud if someone asked for my font on vk.com where it is officially shared illegally then. How do you feel about your typefaces ending up on “mood channels” and “inspirational boards”? Maybe this nature of communication on social media says a lot about itself missing the point of it in general, or maybe I'm just getting too old for it 😂. |
| | Feels like you need SPF 50 for this. Did you hear about Dinamo’s latest release, Solar? ☀️
Someone said he got burnt. At least that was the previous caption before it was changed to avoid drama — too late. To give you a little bit of context, LL Kristall is an unreleased typeface from Lineto and Laurenz Brunner, dated 2011-2021 and published in one of the Shoplifters Issues by Actual Source Books. And according what Laurenz posted, the two are quite similar. And you, what do you think? Are you a ABC Solar Girl or a LL Kristall Boy? |
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| | Interviews &Conversations |
| Learning from the masters |
| | “I believe in kerning. I pray to it everyday.”
— Radim answering Kai on if he likes kerning during Kai’s Kerning lecture, 16th December 2024 |
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| | Just a quick frustration: Why does spending time with family and friends – during Christmas HOLIDAYS – feel like a job that my typeface family doesn't understand I have to do. |
| |  | Kione Kochi, Clive Phillpot’s diagram updated to illustrate new complexities in the age of digital publishing, Half Letter Press, 2013.
Kione Kochi and Clive Phillpot’s updated diagram is more than a map of publishing practices; it is a reflection of the shifting dynamics between creators, audiences, and platforms in the digital age. By visualizing these relationships, the diagram invites critical inquiry into both the opportunities and challenges of digital publishing. While it celebrates a new era of accessibility and innovation, it also prompts us to interrogate the structures that define visibility, ownership, and creative autonomy. In doing so, it remains an essential tool for understanding the evolving complexities of contemporary publishing. |
| | Good shortcuts for spacing
Update metrics Control + ⌘ + M
Update all masters’ metrics
Control + ⌥ + ⌘ + M
Update all masters’ metrics
Control + ⌥ + ⌘ + M
Change left side bearing Control + arrows
Change right side bearing ⌘ + arrows
Write = and number to have the same metric in all masters
Write == and number to have consistent metric in one master
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| | For the people interested in asemic writing, here’s something I found. I don’t remember if MCR mentioned in some lecture.
Codex Seraphinianus, originally published in 1981, is an illustrated encyclopedia of an imaginary world, created by Italian artist, architect and industrial designer Luigi Serafini between 1976 to 1978. It is approximately 360 pages (depending on edition) and written in an imaginary language.
Link to archive.org to read it, if you want to try. |
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