The onboard diary of Charles Darwin on the Beagle, the ship on which he visited the Galápagos and began developing the theory of evolution, functions as a metaphor for the typeface Typolution.
While the typeface retraces the evolution of typographical styles through time, this publication is at once a specimen and a key to interpreting the project as a whole. It raises questions about what we actually mean when talking about evolution in the context of typefaces. The personal nature of the diary brings into question the historicity of these processes: how the contributions of a few people became representative of entire historical periods.
The book starts on page 1470, and each page is typeset in an instance further along the YEAR axis of the typeface, starting with Venetian and reaching the end at page 1830, typeset in Didone style. Every page corresponds to a key style in the typeface, and at regular intervals between them the pages fold out, revealing the specimen section of the publication, with all the technical and stylistic information of the typeface.