Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

The design of this book was derived (or so I hope) from the character of the manuscript. The primary document, Cabeza de Vaca’s account of his voyage across California in the 16th century, appears in the original Spanish with a parallel translation in English. Extensive notes of two sorts accompany the text in both languages—one keyed by letters and the other by numbers. Entries, each of which begins a new page, vary considerably in length. The basic design problem was to relate so many variables while retaining some feeling of an historically appropriate typography. I find that a fairly complex manuscript like this one is actually easier to design than, for instance, a simply constructed novel or biography, because its problems are readily identifiable and point toward their own resolution.