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Thinking with type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students Paperback – September 1, 2010
| Ellen Lupton (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Price | New from | Used from |
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The best-selling Thinking with Type in a revised and expanded second edition:Thinking with Type is the definitive guide to using typography in visual communication. Ellen Lupton provides clear and focused guidance on how letters, words, and paragraphs should be aligned, spaced, ordered, and shaped. The book covers all typography essentials, from typefaces and type families, to kerning and tracking, to using a grid. Visual examples show how to be inventive within systems of typographic form, including what the rules are, and how to break them.
This revised edition includes forty-eight pages of new content with the latest information on:
• style sheets for print and the web
• the use of ornaments and captions
• lining and non-lining numerals
• the use of small caps and enlarged capitals
• mixing typefaces
• font formats and font licensing
Plus, new eye-opening demonstrations of basic typography design with letters, helpful exercises, and dozens of additional illustrations.
Thinking with Type is the typography book for everyone: designers, writers, editors, students, and anyone else who works with words. If you love font and lettering books, Ellen Lupton's guide reveals the way typefaces are constructed and how to use them most effectively.
Fans of Thinking with Type will love Ellen Lupton's new book Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers.
- Print length224 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS
- Publication dateSeptember 1, 2010
- Reading age18 years and up
- Dimensions7 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-101568989695
- ISBN-13978-1568989693
Frequently bought together
From the Publisher
"should be in the collection of every designer, writer, editor, publisher and typographer."
—The Designer's Review of Books
"Thinking with Type is to typography what Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is to physics."
—I Love Typography
"a rewarding and recommendable guide, all the more so because of Lupton’s gifts as an educator and critic."
—Typographica
"If you get a kick out of using different fonts on the computer or have and appreciation for lettering, this book belongs on your bookshelf."
—HelloArtsy
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| Extra Bold | Herbert Bayer | Graphic Design: The New Basics (2nd Edition) | The Senses | Graphic Design Thinking | Type on Screen | |
| More design classics by Ellen Lupton | Extra Bold is the inclusive, practical, and informative career handbook for designers that we've all been waiting for. | Explores the evolution of Herbert Bayer's design process, from his student works featuring hand lettering to mechanically printed typography and hyperreal photo illustrations. | Explains the key concepts of visual language that inform any work of design, from logo or letterhead to a complex website. | Explores how space, materials, sound, and light affect the mind and body. Co-edited with Andrea Lipps. | Hands-on, up-close approach to instructional design brainstorming techniques. | The definitive guide to using classic typographic concepts of form and structure to make dynamic compositions for screen-based applications. |
Editorial Reviews
Review
Product details
- Publisher : PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS; 2nd edition (September 1, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1568989695
- ISBN-13 : 978-1568989693
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Item Weight : 1.28 pounds
- Dimensions : 7 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Desktop Publishing
- #5 in Design History & Criticism
- #5 in Typography (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, educator, and designer. She is Senior Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. New projects include the books Health Design Thinking and Extra Bold, a feminist career guide for designers. Lupton is founding director of the Graphic Design MFA Program at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore, where she has authored numerous books on design processes, including Thinking with Type, Graphic Design Thinking, Graphic Design: The New Basics, and Type on Screen. Her book Design Is Storytelling was published by Cooper Hewitt in 2017. She received the AIGA Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 2007. Recent exhibitions include Face Values: Understanding Artificial Intelligence and Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master. The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, How Posters Work, and Beautiful Users. She was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019.
Customer reviews
Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2018
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on January 18, 2018
"In fifteenth-century Italy, humanist writers and scholars rejected gothic scripts in favor of the lettera antica, a classical mode of handwriting with wider, more open forms. The preference for lettera antica was part of the Renaissance (rebirth) of classical art and literature."
Why did they reject gothic scripts? Were they too harsh looking? Was there too much embellishment? Were they harder to read easily? Did using wider and more open forms have a clear benefit? Was gothic just a fad and the fad was over? Did readers like letter antica more because it was easier to read? Or was it easier to draw, allowing more books to be made? How was it part of the renaissance, was it coincidental that it happened during the renaissance, or was it caused *by* the renaissance, or did it help *create* the writing renaissance?
The entire book is like this. Including the parts where they talk about how typography is used. They say stuff, and you're left wondering how any of it works or why it's significant. The author will tell you that some people use a certain grid system and show you a picture of said grid system. But they won't say why those people do it, or what the benefits and disadvantages are of that system compared to others. It's just like "Hey, this grid system exists, see look." This means there is very little practical information in the book.
Overall the book feels like the author wrote a bunch of post-it notes to remind themselves of things they already know. But they don't let the reader in on the background knowledge that makes those post-it notes relevant. So yeah, sorry for the negative review but I was pretty dissatisfied.
This is a nice book to buy when you are excited about being a graphic designer. Given that one day you will actually want to do something with those aspirations, you will find this book severely lacking.
Top reviews from other countries
Do your self a favour and spend the extra £2 and get it in print.
Update
I have just bought the printed edition as the kindle edition is useless.
Last 20% gets a bit rambly, but it's still something you should read.













