In this handbook, Karin Schacknat shows, in a new and orderly way, the development of clothes and clothing habits in Europe from antiquity to the beginning of the 21st century, from togas to Dolce & Gabbana, from 17th century lace collars to Iris van Herpen. Much of what goes out of fashion eventually comes back in.

Fashion encompasses more than the latest skirt length, the newest colours or the most up-to-date accessories. Image, individuality, group identity and countless other facets also play a role. And fashion is no longer only prescribed by the catwalk — what happens on the street is just as important.

Through text and image, Fashion and Imagination illustrates the stimulating relationship of fashion and photography, film, visual arts, performance arts, architecture, and literature.

The new-media technology calls into question our accepted notion of typographic communication and raises a number of essential questions that we cannot ignore. Never since Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type in the fifteenth century has typographic communication been exposed to such a fundamental change as it is today. Can typography still play a significant role when digitisation and new media shake at the foundation of the typographic trade?

De vijf pijlers van design describes how designs came to be, how they are built, and what the motivations, inspirations, questions and preferences of the designer were. However different designers may be, basic knowledge of the five main thematic pillars on which each product is built is indispensable: material, construction, function, meaning and market.

Using various themes, Eric de Kuyper and Emile Poppe discuss the effect of staging on audiences of the traditional performing arts, such as opera, theatre and ballet. Contemporary and more popular forms also come into play, such as circus, musicals, festivals, street theatre, mime and even ‘garden art’.