Customer Reviews

Typographers on Type

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This is a great compilation of the thoughts of numerous renowned typographers and type designers. It is not light reading, but consequently provides great insight. McLean has done a great job with all aspects of the book, including its layout

For me (not a designer, just someone who recently became intrigued by type), only some of the essays seem interesting. I don't know that I will end up reading more than half of the book. What I had hoped for were intriguing discussions of particular typefaces or their history, emotional and aesthetic issues that came into play when designing a particular typefaces, or debates about the relative merits of specific typefaces, with some elucidation of aspects of the typefaces that make a difference. There is certainly some of that in the book, and there are a few gems that I have found so far. However, many of the essays which I have read from the book seem to trade in broad generalities. The book consists of very short essays or short excepts from larger works--nothing is longer than a few pages--which may make it difficult for ideas to be developed in depth. For experienced type design people, who bring much, much more knowledge to the topic, it may well be that these essays are much more interesting. I'm probably an unusual reader for this book, and certainly not part of its intended audience.

I honestly had trouble staying awake reading this one. I'm very interested in type design and typography but the pace of this book made me feel like a kid with attention deficit disorder watching C-Span. There's a lot of interviews so definitely get your money's worth. Illustrations are bit sparse for a book on type and the whole book comes across as überconservative.