The Lesikon der visuellen Kommunikation

kind
book
number of pages
3,000
weight
2.095 g
measures
15.9 × 23.8 × 6 cm
publisher
Hermann Schmidt
price
100 Euro
print
offset
colours
black and brown (Pantone colour)
binding
adhesive binding, softcover
paper
Bible paper Thinopaque cream 75 smooth 32 g / m² by Tervakoski
equipment
each Lesikon includes 5 out of 30,000 different graphic finds as book marks, cabrio slipcase to let them look out of the book
fonts
Lemon Serif (headlines of chapters) by Jürgen Huber, Scala Serif (text) by Martin Majoor and The Mix (keywords and sources) by Luc(as) de Groot
automation of layout
Andreas Trogisch and Timm Boeken / Troppo Design
production
C.H. Beck
press
brand eins, DE:BUG, Design Report, Deutsche Welle, DIE ZEIT, FAZ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, fontblog, hochparterre, mdr, rbb, NZZ Neue Zürcher Zeitung, slanted, stylepark, WDR among others
more
lesikon.net

buy

My »Lesikon« represents nothing less than a new literary genre – combining lexicon with reading book. Hence its title, ‘The readicon of visual communication’. It comprises each and every field of visual communication: colour, form, mistakes, measures, materials, originality, illustration, emotion, animation, talent, typography, photography, web design, effects, and many more.

To non-experts, this book offers an uncomplicated and fun way to access a highly interesting field of human creation, that embraces each and every part of our everyday life: sport, music, sex, politics, science, jobs, games, nourishment, traffic, clothes, hygiene, medicine, birth, death, and religion.

»Nothing is certain and not even that is certain.« This is one of my favourite quotes. It is around 2,000 years old and is attributed to Antiphon. I use it as the opener to my Lesikon, because almost everything in and about it, is or was uncertain. For many years, I was not sure whether this book would ever be published. When you read it, you can rely only on your own judgement, and it raises at least as many questions as it answers. Basically, like in »real life«.

The Book of all books. A cornucopia for designers and all those who perceive the world with their eyes open.

Erik Spiekermann on Twitter

In times of Wikipedia this seemingly anachronistic work repeatedly gives the pleasure to find what you did not seek.

Andrea Eschbach, NZZ

, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

The most bizarre and quirkiest book to be published this year. An absolute work of art.

Denis Scheck, German national TV show »druckfrisch«

Gudehus keeps the traditional form of a lexicon, only to throw a party inside it like someone who opens a restaurant in an abandoned factory. The guests love it.

Ulrich Stock, German national newspaper

, DIE ZEIT

The Lesikon provokes thoughts – and is thus an epitome of usefulness of reading. More praise is probably not possible. At least not for a lexicon that in times of Wikipedia retrieves the honour of the book as a medium.

Jürgen Kaube, German national newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

, FAZ

0

You will find 0 = no images in my Lesikon. The whole project was a big adventure for me and when I started I had 0 = no idea what I would have to shoulder and to go through.
3,000

The Lesikon is comprised of precisely 3,000 pages. Presumably, it is not only the world’s most voluminous, but also the most entertaining design book. The first print run was 3,000 copies.
508

The Lesikon tells you a design story in 508 chapters. All imaginable topics of life are in there – weather, opera, hiking, drugs, gold-mining, death, party and so on. It is the kind of book to dip in and out of at random. You could try to read it from cover to cover, but would probably find yourself with many fingers marking several pages at once.
1

People have asked me several times why it has to be 1 volume? As it is 1 giant text collage in 1 piece, it could not be split. By the way, I am glad to have earned approximately 1 Euro per hour with that project.
14,000

Around 14,000 hours of my time are embedded in this project. I enjoyed the work hugely. Sometimes people asked me. »How will you know when you’re finished?« I knew instinctively that I would recognise it as clearly as you recognise a saturated sponge.
280

At an average reading tempo you will need about 280 hours to read this book. So, if you put in 45 minutes per day, you will have finished it in one year’s time. You can let yourself roam through it randomly, or you can use it to find something specific.
70

By the way, around 70 % is quoted from professional literature, fiction, fairy tales and poems, from the bible, advertising, reference books and the internet. I painstakingly noted every source.
3,513

3,513 people from about as many years, are quoted in the »Lesikon«. Famous and unknown people, laymen and professionals – like the wise and sharp-tongued Kurt Weidemann, with whom you see me posing here.
627

627 people wrote texts specifically for this book. I invited practically everybody I knew or met over the time to contribute. Some of my co-authors then suggested more co-authors who I had not met before. A new variation on a blind date – getting to know someone through their texts, led to many inspiring friendships.
112

112 of my co-authors read their texts aloud at the Museum der Dinge (Museum of Things) in Berlin. They came from all over – Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, and Sweden. One of them was Judith Schalansky, author, art historian, designer and editor. You see us here going through her script.
12

Here you see Andreas Wiemers, TV journalist and satirical author, reading his texts aloud. The whole reading went on for 12 hours non-stop, and before we knew it, it became the world’s biggest reading ever. 12 % of this book are my own texts.
9

I started with this project in the same year when Wikipedia went online. I started the day before 9/11, and at that time I worked with system Mac OS 9. I worked on my Lesikon for precisely 9 years to the day.
6

I worked on the Lesikon 6 half days per week. It has about 6 times as many characters as the bible. The first run weighed far more than 6 tonnes, as did the weight that fell from my shoulders when I held the first copy in my arms. I went to see 6 publishers with it.
2

Each appointment with publishers took around 2 hours. I took it as a sign that they were highly interested. I would never have thought that 2 out of 6 publishers wanted to produce it at once. A single copy weighs a little more than 2 kilos. The 2nd print run came within a year.
9,704

You will find the 9,704 terms in this book not in an alphabetical order but in an order by topics. For instance in the chapter ‘black art,’ you find terms like Aladdin, Luxomagic, magic wand, and illusion.
42,029

More often than not, you find more than one entry to one term. In total there are 42,029 entries in this book. You will find not only definitions but also anecdotes, jokes, rants, personal views and insights.
20,376,109

The Lesikon comprises 20,376,109 characters. By that sheer mass of texts it may appear rather serious. However, as soon as you start reading you will discover its personal and playful sides.
5

Each copy contains 5 bookmarks. These are all unique, no copy has the same bookmarks. They are found, printed ephemera to use when no »real« bookmark is at hand: tickets, flyers, scraps of newspaper and magazines, postcards etc. They represent the infinite richness of creation in the field of visual communication.
?

Those were some approximate, and many precise numbers so far. Much however, has remained uncounted. How many grey hairs did I grow? How many computer crashes did I have? How many versions of my text document? How many mails did I write to ask people for contributions?
∞

∞ = infinitely often I read all the texts, ∞ = infinitely rich is this treasure of experience and language and ∞ = infinitely reliefed I was after the happy ending of a big adventure.

»Comparing apples and oranges is my daily bread.«

newsletter subscription

The Lesikon der visuellen Kommunikation

»Comparing apples
and oranges is my
daily bread.«