Customer Reviews

Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography

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This hilarious mess manages to belie almost every principle of design espoused within its pages, with its frankly ugly, workmanlike design, errors in proofreading, and strange choices in content. The layout is slapdash and the printing quality is dodgy-anyone wanting typography to match the content of the book should be looking at Robert Bringhurst's essential Elements of Typographic Style, or any other Hartley&Marks book on typography, instead. If typography is the art of overweening attention to minute details, this book is certainly a betrayal of that art.

Keeping that in mind, several of the essays contained within are classic (anything Beatrice Warde or Stanley Morison has to say about type is essential reading), and Heller has done his usual job of hitting the high points, without going into any great depth. His own contribution to the volume is typical of the limited attention span he brings to a lot of his editing projects: a thinly-researched polemic on blackletter type and fascism that manages to omit some key details that would totally change the thrust of his argument were they to be acknowledged. I have, and like, other Heller books, and he's a charismatic public speaker, but this is not his finest effort.

Steven Heller puts the "Good Graphics Seal of Approval" on any graphic design book, in my opinion. The essays in "Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography" is no exception. Together with Philip B. Meggs, Heller pulls together over fifty essays on the history, aesthetics and practice of type design and typography. You'll find essays in this anthology penned by the likes of Goudy, Zapf, Rand, Ogilvy, and other huge names in the arena of graphic design. This is just another Heller book to have to back up the rest of your everyday knowledge. After all, if you know more than the next guy, you'll get the job. My only complaint is that - for such an excellent book on typography - the typeface in the body copy is smaller than the norm. If you're over 40, pull out the reading glasses.

I loaned out my first copy and never got it back. No surprise; this books is like a box of specialty chocolates. Each essay is a savory morsel leaves the reader anticipating the next confection. It's just packed with little gems; a delicious assortment of pieces from the legendary figures of Graphic Design and Typography. Despite its rather bland (pink?!?) package, the book is a pure delight.