Wired Italia n. 96 “Health Edition – L’altro vaccino”
Wired Italia is a quarterly bookazine. Last year’s spring issue was entirely devoted to the topic of health, and entitled “L’altro vaccino” (“The other vaccine”). In a time dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, medical research has not stopped. The special Health Edition has stories from laboratories around the world, of pharmaceutical companies, doctors, scientists and researchers who have moved on and continued to make breakthrough discoveries, develop drugs and cures that could save or extend our lives, and explore new horizons in medicine and biology.
So, among the articles and authors in this issue, we find science journalist Roberta Villa telling us how research on messenger RNA, which carries genetic instructions to cells, could now help in the fight against cancer and other diseases; American popularizer John Nosta, on the other hand, explains why assigning a technological quotient to people, just as is done with the IQ, could help them cure themselves better; philosopher of science Sabina Leonelli illustrates Plan S, the project that will give us free access to the most important discoveries; and 2020 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry Jennifer Doudna reveals all the secrets of her creature, Crispr, the revolutionary genome editing tool that has disrupted the way research is done.
In addition, you can read about how biohackers decided to make their own anti-Covid 19 vaccine, the true story of Sputnik V (told by science journalist Alexandra Borissova), urban legends about so-called superfoods, the cure for imaginary sick people, how much our medical records are worth on the black market, what the hospitals of the future will look like (architect Mario Cucinella explains), which startups are working on the food we will eat in the next 50 years, and much more. The epilogue is given to writer Diego De Silva and the amusing tale of his hypochondria.
Pitis e Associati were in charge of the art direction and editorial design. They invited almost two dozen artists and illustrators who came up with fantastic imagery that accompanies and enriches the various features and articles. The cover shows a 3D graphic of a human immunodeficiency virus by Ukrainian-born artist Alexey Kashpersky.
In terms of typography, Pitis e Associati relied on the established Exchange by Frere-Jones Type for long-form text. It is combined with two typefaces from Production Type’s library: Cardinal and Enduro. The former is used for author names and is mixed with the latter for article titles. The sans-serif Enduro is also used for the index, the preface, intro texts, drop caps, and the stacked page numbers.
The Cardinal Collection spans five subfamilies. The variant used here is Cardinal Photo. Designed for big, bold headlines, it has compact extenders, just like Cardinal Classic Short (and Enduro), but is distinguished by more dramatic contrast, and extratight spacing. Inspired by magazine typography featuring large headlines with shallow linespacing, Cardinal Photo has come full circle here: the designers of Wired Italia played to the typeface’s strengths, utilizing it in large and gigantic sizes, in both roman and italic styles. Single glyphs and whole words are often shown playfully cropped by lines and boxes, further emphasizing the compactness found both in Enduro and Cardinal Photo.
