Customer Reviews

Type and Typography

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This is really one firm's style book and their personal encyclopedia of typographical knowledge. The advice on style is quirky. The guide to accessing hidden glyphs on your keboard is full of errors. The mark-up guide is not in agreement with the standard Chicago method. Their collection of objects and typographic samples are of great historical interest and the illustrations will illuminate many typographical points.

Type is the way we convey written information. Down through the centuries type faces have been developed to not only convey the raw information, but to do so in attractive and pleasing ways. Type faces continue to be developed for all kinds of uses that the designers of years ago couldn't have imagined: the dot matrix print outs of a cash register, the type face you are seeing right now as you read this on a computer screen.

This book presents an overview of type and typography fron the earliest greek alphabets (showing how the letters were derived) to modern times. It is not a textbook on how to design type, but more of an idea book illustrating what a lot of people have done in a wide variety of situations. It would be a very helpful read to anyone designing a book, print ads, or web pages.

This book was required reading by a graphic design instructor, one of the few that were recommended that proved very useful. If you view all text/type as the same and don't know the difference between serif and san serif, have no idea what a cap height, ascender or decender is, but you have to use type to design...this is the book for you. The book explains information logically and in depth it also presents a good introductory to working with a grid in your designs. This book is a good buy to learn the fundamentals of design. I highly recommend.