Analphabetical Symbols

I dissected a chapter on Analphabetical Symbols by Robert Bringhurst, looking up every single word or combination thereof on the European Union Intellectual Property Office database, marking it and creating a footnote list of 762 registered IP's. 

The publication tries to explore the power that abstraction has on our language and the role of the trademarked symbol. An absurd showcase of how capitalism ties commodities to our language. The extreme lay-out and the many folds hiding words and sentences try to mimic the inaccessability of the corporate legal system.

I found that it's not just interesting to see which companies trademarked which words, but which words have not yet been claimed by capital and why.

Text from The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst.

Printed and bound at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam.