Canto degli Alpini – Perqueneau? – Esercizi di stile

Raymond Queneau’s book “Esercizi di stile” is a collection of 99 different short stories that actually tell the same story, each one of them is narrated following a different logic, defined from a specific keyword. “Perqueneau?” is a book design exercise that follows the same logic: a keyword is assigned and a “book” will be designed coherently with the term either in style and output.

“Canto degli alpini” is this book keyword. Alpines are an Italian military division operating in the mountains; I imagined them as practical and pragmatic people but also really precise. They are widely known for their songs, all “a cappella”. In order to design this book I took my inspiration from the idea of “choral chants” made from different voices. Therefore, each page adds a word to the previous one; it wants to represent a single voice; hence, the complete melody exists only if all of them are combined. I choose, to recall the environment in which they operate, a coarse creaky paper, that reminds of soil. Seen from the outside the book looks like a “Bantan” (the typical Alpines hat), due to its green felt coverage and the brown rope.