Steven Heller and Anne Fink Designed by Michael Ian Kaye Faces on the Edge Type in the Digital Age More than any other graphic medium, today’s fontography mirrors the traditions, eccentricities, and trends of modern society. Faces on the Edge, by prominent art director and author Steven Heller, is a spellbinding survey of the revolutionary effects of digital type design on 20th-century typography. More than 200 typefaces, from the classically inspired to the exuberantly (near) illegible, are featured in this compilation, illustrating how new technologies have dramatically increased the possibilities of type design. Included are typefaces from many of the world’s most innovative type foundries, such as Emigre Fonts, FontShop International, Garage Fonts, Thirst Fonts, Exploding Fonts, and T-26, and represents some of the finest type designers such as Zuzana Licko, Rudy VanderLans, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Ed Fella, and Barry Deck. The Typefaces are Organized into Six Kinds of Fontography: Rebirths and Revivals • Greeking Roman • Digital Carvings Off the Wall • Optical Delusions • Lots O’ Laffs Typefaces are identified by date, designer, and foundry; a brief description text places each in the larger context of digital type history. With useful information on how to obtain and apply each typeface, Faces on the Edge is an indispensable resource for graphic designers, desktop designers, and students alike. Over 200 illustrations in color and black and white document the real-life application of these inventive typefaces in popular magazines, advertising, posters, and multimedia. Faces on the Edge is a vivid, timely account of what is undeniably a significant era of type design.
Steven Heller, author and editor of over 130 books on graphic design, satiric art and popular culture, is the co-founder and co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts, New York. He is also co-founder of the MFA in Design Criticism, MFA in Interaction Design, MFA Social Documentary Film and MPS Branding programs. Although he does not hold an undergraduate or graduate degree he has devoted much of his career to fostering design education venues, opportunities and environments.
On the editorial side, for over 40 years he has been an art director for various underground and mainstream periodicals. For 33 years he was an art director at the New York Times (28 of them as senior art director New York Times Book Review). He currently writes the "Visuals" column for the Book Review and "Graphic Content" for the T-Style/The Moment blog (http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/author/steven-heller/). He is editor of AIGA VOICE: Online Journal of Design, a contributing editor to Print, EYE, and Baseline, and a frequent contributor to Metropolis and ID magazines. He contributes regularly to Design Observer and writes the DAILY HELLER blog for Print Magazine (http://blog.printmag.com/dailyheller/). His 135 books include "Design Literacy, " "Paul Rand," "Graphic Style" (with Seymour Chwast), "Stylepedia" (with Louise Fili), "The Design Entrepreneur" and "Design School Confidential" (both with Lita Talarico), "Iron Fists: Branding the Twentieth Century Totalitarian State", and the most recent, "Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig."
He is the recipient of the 1999 AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement. His website is www.hellerbooks.com and his blog, The Daily Heller sponsored by Print magazine is http://imprint.printmag.com/daily-heller/
