Pentagram: Decipher

Each year Pentagram issues a small holiday book as a greeting to its friends and colleagues. The partners take turns researching and designing these books, which usually contain some kind of game or activity. The most recent edition is Decipher, designed by Harry Pearce, who chose as its subject cryptography, the science of writing, or encrypting and breaking, or decrypting secret codes.

This book features 14 cryptograms of varying methodologies and difficulty that conceal short phrases; through symbols, numbers, patterns and simple letterspacing, the cyptograms challenge the reader to decipher their meaning. “It’s astonishing how much you can hide in type,” says Pearce.

---