When Mucca Design was approached to create the design for One Letter Words, Matteo Bologna had just finished creating a new text face called Infidelity. The typeface was a good match for this unusual dictionary, and Infidelity made its debut. Since the dictionary is composed of words that are one letter in length, it followed that the individual letters of the alphabet should be a prominent design element: the full alphabet is used to form a background pattern on the cover, and for each section’s beginning page the introducing letter is set in Decora, a typeface also designed by Matteo Bologna.

Everything about this book is well done, from its trim to its interim type treatment. Best of all, the book succeeds with an extremely modest palette of tools—two-color printing, a two-color and stamped jacket, simple endsheets and standard three-part binding—reminding us that you don’t need special materials or expressive production to make a winning book. An A+.