February 17, 2012

The Last Picture Dictionary

Stoltze Design is proud to be part of the fifth and final printed edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. While such a large project warranted the involvement of multiple design teams, Stoltze had the honor of designing the cover, as well as the section opener for each letter. Since the AHD was the first dictionary of its kind to incorporate color illustrations, we used a spectrum on the half cover and culled bright letterforms from iconic American imagery for the openers.

This dictionary is extraordinary in many respects: it has been exhaustively researched, thoroughly revised, and contains 10,000 new words and over 4,000 new images; it also includes access to an app that puts the entire dictionary at your fingertips on your smartphone. Perhaps most notably, this edition is the last of its kind. As such, it just might become a collectable artifact from the early 21st century!

Recently, the design blog Felt & Wire featured the dictionary on their site—be sure to check it out!