The Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger decisively influenced the international creation of typefaces after 1950. His Univers typeface and the machine-readable font OCR-B are milestones, as is his type for the Paris airports, which evolved into the Frutiger typeface. All set new standards for signage types. In all, he created some fifty types, including Ondine, Méridien, Avenir, and Vectora.

Based on conversations with Frutiger himself and on extensive research, this publication provides a highly detailed and accurate account of the type designer's artistic development. All of his types - from the design phase to the marketing stage - are illustrated and analyzed with reference to the technology and related types.

Hitherto unpublished types that were never realized and more than one hundred logos complete the picture.

This publication provides a highly detailed and accurate account of the type designer's artistic development.

For at least a dozen years, Luca Lattuga has been collecting and cataloguing metal and wooden movable type produced in Italy between the 1920s and 1940s. During his research, he rediscovered a recurring and consistent style, hitherto little considered, that characterized that period. Although widespread at the time, this style, which originated in the printing workshops, remained in the shadows for decades.

These lesser-known typefaces coexisted alongside the famous types from historic foundries, such as Nebiolo and Reggiani, surviving thanks to their versatility and affordability and enjoying spontaneous and widespread popularity even in the most isolated provinces. They remained in use until the 1960s or 1970s, effectively lasting until the end of the era of movable type printing. They were widely used in advertising, flyers, posters, book covers, and magazine headlines. They followed European trends toward more modern forms and represented a fascinating vernacular expression, entirely Italian, of the international taste of the time.

The book contains over one hundred specimens, divided and grouped into categories and subcategories. It is accompanied by a testimony from the book’s editors, Veronica Bassini and Luca Lattuga, a historical analysis by Carlo Vinti, and a technical study by Luciano Perondi. The work is completed by in-depth profiles of some of the key figures of that era: Guido Modiano, Ruggero Zuliani, Francesco and Antonio Tocchio, and a gem by Enrico Tallone.

• Texts: Veronica Bassini, Luca Lattuga, Luciano Perondi, Carlo Vinti

• Foreword: Riccardo Olocco

• Book Design: Luca Lattuga

• Hardcover, 23,5 x 28,5 cm

• 336 pages

• English/Italian

https://lazydog.eu/en/product/alfabeti-modernisti-italiani-2/

Alfabeti Modernisti Type Specimens illustrates twenty-five digital revivals based on wooden and lead typefaces produced in Italy in the 1930s and 1940s, documenting a research and enhancement project that intertwines memory and design and gives new voice to a little-explored chapter of Italian graphic design.

Very popular at the time but now forgotten, the typefaces have been recovered by Luca Lattuga over a period of more than ten years. Reissued by the CAST type foundry, available for purchase at c-a-s-t.com and also available on Adobe Fonts, these geometric, sometimes vernacular, floral, highly expressive, often rationalist-inspired typefaces recount a crucial period in 20th-century Italian typography.

Their digital revival—the result of a selection from Lattuga’s complete collection published in the volume Alfabeti Modernisti Italiani to coincide with the release of this sample book—gives graphic designers and type designers full access to a unique and precious typographic heritage.

• Typefaces and book design: CAST

• Softcover with flaps, 23,5 × 28,5 cm

• 64 pages

• English

https://lazydog.eu/en/product/alfabeti-modernisti-type-specimens-2/

All the Fonts of the Fair, Joby Carter’s second book, takes a deep dive into fancy lettering styles found at traditional British fairgrounds up until the 1960s. Many of these vibrant, whimsical designs are missing from graphic design manuals and typography archives. This book helps continue their legacy and give them a new lease of life.

This full colour book includes 26 hand drawn fairground inspired alphabets. Each alphabet has a reference guide with tips on how to accurately recreate the lettering alongside details about the origin of the style and photographs of variations of the lettering in use. The alphabets represent an enormous amount of hours in the workshop with each letter drawn, painted and decorated by hand, ensuring it worked alongside the other alphabet letters and could stand up to scrutiny and be accurately copied and scaled.

https://jobycarter.com/product/all-the-fonts-of-the-fair/

Eric Gill’s opinionated manifesto on typography argues that “a good piece of lettering is as beautiful a thing to see as any sculpture or painted picture”. This essay explores the place of typography in culture and is also a moral treatise celebrating the role of craftsmanship in an industrial age. Gill, a sculptor, engraver, printmaker and creator of many classic typefaces that can be seen around us today, fused art, history and polemic in a visionary work which has been hugely influential on modern graphic design.

• “Written with clarity, humility and a touch of humour … timeless and absorbing” Paul Rand, The New York Times
• “His lettering was clear, confident and hugely influential on the development of modern type design. The world has now caught up with Gill” Guardian

Although Arabic is the third-most widely used script in the world, there is a lack of sound typographic literature. This publication is a multi-disciplinary reference work that combines the latest academic research with applied typography. The focus on elements that pertain specifically to Arabic typography prevents overlapping with the comprehensive literature on Latin script typography, making the book relevant and accessible to the widest possible audience. The first part provides an in-depth synthesis on the typographic history and development of the Arabic script, bringing together a cohort of young scholars who are breaking new grounds in pursuing research excellence. In the more extensive second part, these historical foundations are complemented by a concise guide to Arabic typography through the lens of a design practitioner. Inspired by Jost Hochuli’s standard work “Detail in Typography”, the author vividly addresses all relevant micro-typographic parameters.

• Language: English
• Pages: 304
• Size: 17,5 × 25 cm, Hardcover
• ISBN: 978-3-7212-1017-0

Arcade Game Typography presents readers with a fascinating new world of typography: the pixel typeface. Video game designers of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s faced color and resolution limitations that stimulated incredible creativity. With each letter having to exist in a small pixel grid, artists began to use clever techniques to create elegant character sets within a tiny canvas. This book presents typefaces on a dynamic and decorative grid, taking reference from high-end type specimens while adding a suitably playful twist. Arcade Game Typography recreates that visual aesthetic, fizzing with life and color.

Featuring pixel typefaces carefully selected from the first decades of arcade video games, Arcade Game Typographypresents a completist survey of a previously undocumented outsider typography movement, accompanied by insightful commentary from author Toshi Omagari, a Monotype typeface designer himself. Gathering an eclectic range of typography, from hit games such as Super Sprint, Marble Madness, and Space Harrier to countless lesser-known gems, Arcade Game Typography is a vivid nostalgia trip for gamers, designers, and illustrators alike.

In the early 1970s, the Swiss packaging company Bobst S.A. began to wonder whether it would be ready for the future with only one product type. The Lausanne-based company, already far advanced in terms of packaging manufacturing technology, decided to launch phototypesetting machines.

Thanks to the participation of some of the best font designers in the country, e.g. Team 77, different font families were developed for the new technique.

The history of Bobst Graphic – a pioneering feat in the development of the phototypesetting at the time – has never been included in the rich history of Swiss graphic and font design.

This study is a fascinating inside look at digital type design, the rather mysterious career of one of its most important practitioners, and the history and culture of Adobe Type, with additional insight into other type designers of the digital era. It is difficult to imagine a graphic designer in the last quarter century who is not familiar with at least some of Carol Twomblys typefaces. Yet many of those who use her fonts today would be hard pressed to name their designer. Twombly studied at the Rhode Island School of Design under professor Charles Bigelow, and she also studied at the Bigelow & Holmes studio. She joined Adobe Systems in 1988, when the company was hiring young designers for the newly launched type department. During her ten years at Adobe, she designed some of the most recognizable and popular typefaces on the market today, including Trajan (1989), Charlemagne (1989), Lithos (1989), Adobe Caslon (1990), Myriad (1991, with Robert Slimbach), Viva (1993), Nueva (1994), and Chaparral (1997). In 1994, Twombly won the Prix Charles Peignot, given by the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI)the first woman, and second American, to receive the award. Having achieved international recognition, Twombly was uncomfortable being in the public eye at conferences and in Adobe marketing materials. She also grew dissatisfied with changes at Adobe and with her evolving role at the company. In 1999 she left both Adobe and her career to pursue other artistic interests. Nancy Stock-Allen is a graphic designer and a blogger on subjects related to design, type, and women in design history. She was formerly Professor of Graphic Design and department chair at the Moore College of Art and Design. She interviewed and corresponded extensively with Carol Twombly and many of her associates and colleagues in writing this profile of a woman who rose to the top of a field historically dominated by men, at a time of barrier-breaking and technological revolution. Illustrated throughout with halftones, examples of Twomblys design process, and type specimens, this book will be of great interest to anyone involved or interested in type design, typography, and computer-aided graphic design.

Available from Oak Knoll Press

“Chinese typography is not easy to tackle, but we believe that, by more self-initiated and open research, we are able to address our challenges under a global perspective and invite more discussions and breakthroughs to the field.

So here is a three-volume collection of our on-going research and dialogues about typography and design in China, including its history and development, conventions and contemporary practice, and working in transcultural contexts.”

1. Shanghai Type: a slice of modern Chinese type history
2. Transcultural Type Design: a dialogue from China
3. Kǒngquè: restoring the mindset of Chinese typesetting

Counterpunch is both an explanation of the 16th-century method of cutting metal type and an impassioned plea for contemporary designers to incorporate the lessons of history as a means of creating typography in our digital age. Smeijers sees the counterpunch technique as essential for ensuring the regularity of form, repeatability, and speed of production necessary for rational design.

Smeijers traces the history of letterform design to discover how technique influenced the shape of type, whether the metal punches of the past or today's computer-generated forms. Counterpunch is generously illustrated with drawings by the author, examples of early type specimens, and detailed photographs of punches.

Cyrillic is a script used in numerous primarily eastern and southern Slavic languages in Europe and Asia. “Cyrillize it!” is an introductory work for graphic designers who are not native to the Cyrillic script, and cannot read Cyrillic-based languages. The book offers a method of dealing meaningfully and successfully with writing systems other than your own. The approach is based on constantly drawing parallels between Latin and Cyrillic, thus making a foreign script more familiar to non-native users. The author reflects about the relevance of Cyrillic in the modern world, looks at the history and currrent design trends, provides an overview of the typographic rules, and provides examples of Cyrillic graphic design works. With a playful and esthetically appealing design, the publication is also of interest to non-designers who are generally curious about the topic of Cyrillic script and related cultures.

• Author: Yana Vekshyna
• Language: English
• Pages: 160
• Size: 17,5 × 25 cm, Hardcover
• ISBN: 978-3-7212-1018-7

Design School: Type is an instructive guide for students, recent graduates, and self-taught designers. You'll get a comprehensive introduction to typography, a crucially important skill that underpins practically every aspect of graphic design. These guided lessons offer in-depth analysis of all the major areas of theory and practice used by experienced professional designers. Each section is interspersed with tests designed to help you retain the information they've covered, and a selection of relevant support files in popular design software formats so you can test yourself with provided demos. This guide to the rules and practices of typography avoids the temptation to stray into other areas of design technique, preferring to cover the essential skills of the professional typographer in the detail required to arm students and graduates with the knowledge needed for a successful start to their chosen career.

The author Richard Poulin is cofounder, design director, and a principal of Poulin + Morris Inc., an internationally recognised, multidisciplinary design consultancy located in New York City. His work has been recognized by major design organisations, competitions, and publications including the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), Communication Arts, Graphis, Library of Congress, Type Director Club, and the New York Art Directors Club.

With easy-to-follow instructions, many examples and professional tips, the book teaches you how to design unique typefaces tailor-made for your own projects or customer orders. 

Designing Fonts has two parts. Part 1 explains the theoretical, creative and technical basics of type design and font production. Six chapters then cover everything from alphabet to font, showing you how to find and develop typeface ideas, design matching letters, produce fonts and expand them with special functions. Part 2 comprises eight workshops that explore how to design and implement different kinds of typefaces, from decorative interlocking display fonts with alternative letters to well-developed headline fonts with multiple cuts and OpenType features.

“One of the most essential tools of graphic design, typography influences the appearance of visual print materials perhaps more than any other component. This essential book explains the processes behind creating and designing type. Author Karen Cheng discusses issues of structure, optical compensation, and legibility, with special emphasis given to the often overlooked relationships between letters and shapes in font design. The book is illustrated with numerous diagrams that demonstrate visual principles and letter construction, ranging from informal progress sketches to final type designs and diagrams. A wide range of classic and modern typefaces is analyzed, including those from many premier contemporary type foundries. Introductory essays and diagrams emphasize the history of type, the primary systems of typeface classification, the two main proportional systems for type, the parts of a letter, the effects of new technology on design methodology, the optical illusions that affect density and balance in letterforms, and the differences in form between basic serif typestyles. The book provides detailed guidelines for creating serif and sans serif letters, numbers, punctuation, and accents.”

• Table of Contents
• A review of the book by Peter Biľak can by found at Typotheque

The book is a collection of invited chapters by renowned experts and is part of a series on Language Processing, Pattern Recognition, and Intelligent Systems. The content is wide-ranging, encompassing perspectives from computer science to social science to design and reflecting the considerable experience of researchers, teachers and practitioners. This diversity offers rigorous approaches to the topic of Digital fonts and reading, organised in four sections: vision and reading; scientific approaches to reading; perspectives on type design practice; and using type. The heavily illustrated text includes original research, case studies, reviews, and practical advice, serving as a useful handbook or reference to inform design for reading. Traditionally, there has been a separation between researchers and practitioners, with different agendas. This book bridges the gap between scientific testing and design experience and considers the reader's perspective. The collection aims to resonate with academics and students, experienced or novice typographic or interface designers and software engineers, and engage with anyone who has an interest in type and reading.

Contents:

• Vision and Reading:
  • The Effect of Type Design and Typesetting on Visually Impaired Readers (Eleni Beveratou)
  • Matilda: A Typeface for Children with Low Vision (Ann Bessemans)
• Scientific Approaches to Reading:
  • Sitka: A Collaboration Between Type Design and Science (Kevin Larson and Matthew Carter)
  • Eye Movements: From Psycholinguistics to Font Design (Timothy J Slattery)
  • Designing Legible Fonts for Distance Reading (Sofie Beier)
  • Effects of Interword Spacing on Chinese Children's Reading Abilities (Hsiu-Feng Wang)
• Perspectives on Type Design Practice:
  • Elements of Chinese Typeface Design (Xiaoqing Lu and Ting Tang)
  • Optimizing Type for Use in Specific Media (Eben Sorkin)
  • 'Harmonised Type Design' Revisited (Titus Nemeth)
  • Using Pattern Languages in Typographic Design (Rob Mckaughan)
• Using Type:
  • How Does Expertise Contribute to the Recognition of Latin and Chinese Characters? (Mary C Dyson, Keith Tam, Clare Leake, Brian Kwok)
  • Newspaper Text (Lucie Lacava)
  • Perception of Fonts: Perceived Personality Traits and Appropriate Uses (A Dawn Shaikh and Barbara Chaparro)
  • Legibility and Readability of Arabic Fonts on Personal Digital Assistants PDAs (Mrouj Almuhajri and Ching Y Suen)

Dutch Alphabets is a portfolio containing 47 broadsides featuring new samples of lettering and writing by today’s most significant ‘Dutch’ lettering artists, type designers, calligraphers and sign painters. All the contributors are working and/or educated in the Netherlands. 

This collection of lettering has been compiled by Mathieu Lommen (University of Amsterdam) & Peter Verheul (Royal Academy of Art, The Hague), and was published in a limited edition. It showcases a wide variety of lettering and calligraphy, made especially for this project by: 

Amsterdam Signpainters / Yomar Augusto / Jacques le Bailly / Donald Beekman / Françoise Berserik / Barbara Bigosińska / Frank E. Blokland / Erik van Blokland / Maria Doreuli / James Edmondson / Ramiro Espinoza / Martina Flor / Dave Foster / Fritz Grögel / Janno Hahn / Hansje van Halem / Berton Hasebe / Henry van der Horst / Ondrej Jób / Max Kisman / René Knip / Holger Königsdörfer / Paul van der Laan / Lida Lopes Cardozo / Niels Shoe Meulman / Ross Milne / Gerrit Noordzij / Diana Ovezea / Krista Radoeva / Trine Rask / Arthur Reinders Folmer / Donald Roos / Pieter van Rosmalen / Just van Rossum / Kristyan Sarkis / Florian Schick / Elmo van Slingerland / Heidi Sørensen / Nina Stössinger / Joost Swarte / Teo Tuominen / Underware / Gerard Unger / Peter Verheul / Bernd Volmer / Job Wouters 

Offered in a collectors’ limited edition of only 175, with contributors’ copies separately reserved and numbered, Dutch Alphabets is printed offset on heavy acid-free paper in seven PMS colours and black. The broadsides and the introduction are housed in an attractive handmade cloth-covered portfolio with ties. 

The portfolio costs € 160,– and is available from the Publisher or Typotheque. 

In ‘Dutch Type’, Jan Middendorp presents a comprehensive overview of type design and lettering in the Netherlands, tracing its origins through type designers and lettering artists from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Partly based on interviews, the book also offers insight into the motives and methods of the first generations of digital type designers, featuring published and unpublished typefaces as well as sketches, studies, and samples of lettering work. While the quest for quality and innovation has remained constant, it makes clear that the advent of desktop type has opened up the discipline to a more spontaneous, inventive, and democratic approach.

Dutch Type was originally published in March 2004 and was received with huge enthusiasm. Its 3,500 copies sold out in 3 years. The book soon became hard to find and ended up being offered at embarrassingly high prices on Amazon, eBay and by antiquarians — between €400 and $800 for a copy.

In 2018 author Jan Middendorp decided to self-publish a near-identical reprint, and successfully financed the production with crowdfunding. 

This book is a 752-page compilation celebrating the art of the type specimen. It features reprints of Emigre's most remarkable specimen designs covering a period of 30 years. Besides displaying the virtues of the fonts and revealing the processes used to design them, these specimens go beyond their primary function as sales tools and can be enjoyed as much for the typefaces as for their esoteric content. If your collection of Emigre's popular type specimens is incomplete, or if you've missed out on these entirely, here's your opportunity to catch up.

The fiftieth anniversary of Helvetica, the most famous of all sans serif typefaces, was celebrated with an excitement unusual in the staid world of typography and culminated in the release of the first movie ever made starring a typeface. Yet Helvetica’s fifty-year milestone pales in comparison with the two thousandth anniversary in 2014 of Trajan’s Column and its famous inscription — the preeminent illustration of the classical Roman capital letter. For, despite the modern ascendance of the sans serif, serif typefaces, most notably Times Roman, still dominate printed matter and retain a strong presence in screen-based communication. The Eternal Letter is a lavishly illustrated examination of the enduring influence of, and many variations on, the classical Roman capital letter.

The Eternal Letter offers a series of essays by some of the most highly regarded practitioners in the fields of typography, lettering, and stone carving. They discuss the subtleties of the classical Roman capital letter itself, different iterations of it over the years, and the work of famous typographers and craftsmen. The essays cover such topics as efforts to calculate a geometric formulation of the Trajan letters; the recalculation of their proportions by early typefounders; the development and astonishing popularity of Adobe Trajan; type and letter designs by Father Edward M. Catich, Frederic W. Goudy, Eric Gill, Jan van Krimpen, Hermann Zapf, Matthew Carter, and others; the influence of Trajan in Russia; and three generations of lettercarvers at the John Stevens Shop in Newport, Rhode Island. Essays about modern typefaces — including Matinia, Senatus, and Penumbra -- are contributed by the designers of these typefaces. Contributors John and Nicholas Benson, Frank E. Blokland, Matthew Carter, Ewan Clayton, Lance Hidy, Jost Hochuli, Jonathan Hoefler, Richard Kindersley, Scott-Martin Kosofsky, Gerry Leonidas, Martin Majoor, Steve Matteson, Gregory MacNaughton, James Mosley, Tom Perkins, Yves Peters, Ryan L. Roth, Werner Schneider, Paul Shaw, Julian Waters, Maxim Zhukov. 

Explorations in Typography is a vast collection of typesetting examples. Page after page, a brief article by Erik Spiekermann has been set in hundreds of ways in hundreds of typefaces, creating an extended visual taxonomy of typesetting that allows you to learn by looking.

Beautifully printed and bound, with complete type specifications on every page and examples set in hundreds of faces (many from the FontFont library), the book is an extensive resource of typesetting ideas. 

The second edition has been revised and expanded to include more typesetting examples and more typefaces as well as a visual index of page layouts and grids. This edition also features the writing of Stephen Coles who composed all new typeface descriptions and an index of alternates for each that are low-cost or free for educational use.

Available on http://www.explorationsintypography.com

“We are surrounded by emoji. They appear in politics, movies, drug deals, our sex lives, and more. But emoji’s impact has never been explored in full. In this rollicking tech and pop culture history, Keith Houston follows emoji from its birth in 1990s Japan, traces its Western explosion in the 2000s, and considers emoji’s ever-expanding lexicon. Named for the world’s most popular pictogram, Face with Tears of Joy tells the whole story of emoji for the first time.”

https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324075141

Femme Type is an all-female publication conceptualised by ex-University of Arts London Chelsea attendant Amber Weaver aiming to celebrate over 40 skilled, international women in the type industry. The mission is to create a valuable stage and platform for designers to showcase their typographic achievements wrapped up in a printed format. 

• Includes contributions from over 40 international women 
• Foreword by GoodType Founder Brooke Robinson 
• 272 pages + 4pp Cover / 25cm x 21cm / PUR bound  
• Litho printed CYMK plus a special Pantone Spot colour 
• Printed in English onto Fedrigoni Arcoprint paper
• Published by People of Print (in perpetuum)

Available at https://femme-type.com

Fifty Type Specimens is a collection of postcards with typographic images, for inspiration, correspondence, or display. Cards feature classic letterforms, pages from specimen books, and crops of letters presented in a box with the feel of an old specimen book. Historic typefaces, selected by renowned designer Tobias Frere-Jones, are organized into four geographic categories by thumb tabs: Germany, France, United States, and the United Kingdom.

This is the first English-language biography of the relentlessly ambitious and incomparably talented printer Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813). Born to a printing family in the small foothill town of Saluzzo, he left his comfortable life to travel to Rome in 1758 where he served as an apprentice of Cardinal Spinelli at the Propaganda Fide press. There, under the sponsorship of Ruggieri, his close friend, mentor, and protector, he learned all aspects of the printing craft. Even then, his real talent, indeed his genius, lay in type design and punchcutting, especially of the exotic foreign alphabets needed by the papal office to spread the faith.

His life changed when in 1768 at age 28 he was invited by the young Duke of Parma to abandon Rome for that very French city to establish and direct the ducal press. He remained in Parma, overseeing a vast variety of printing, some of it pedestrian, but much of it glorious. And all of it making use of the typefaces he personally designed and engraved.

This book goes beyond Bodoni’s capacity as a printer; it examines the life and times in which he lived, the turbulent and always fragile political climate, the fascinating cast of characters that enlivened the ducal court, the impressive list of visitors making the pilgrim- age to Parma, and the unique position Parma occupied, politically Italian but very much French in terms of taste and culture. Even the food gets its due (and in savory detail). The illustrations—of the city, of the press, of the types and matrices—are compelling enough, but most striking are the pages from the books he designed. And especially, pages from his typo- graphic masterpiece, the Manuale Tipografico, painstakingly prepared by his wife Ghitta, posthumously published in two volumes, and displaying the myriad typefaces in multiple sizes that Bodoni had designed and engraved over a long and prolific career.

Intriguing, scholarly, visually arresting, and designed and printed to Bodoni’s standards, this title belongs on the shelf of any self-respecting bibliophile. It not only makes for compelling reading, it will be considered the biography of record of a great printer for years to come.

Complete with numerous color plates of the personalities, type specimens, and related illustrations, the book satisfies the cravings of the biography lover while serving as eye candy for the typophile, bibliophile, and Italophile. No less would be expected from Boston-based publisher David R. Godine, the independent press with a reputation for fine design and vision of books as works of art. With Lester’s refreshingly disarming tone distinguishing the book from many dull biographies or condescending art history tomes, this is the perfect marriage of project and publisher.

Although, or perhaps because, most of us write less and less by hand, our fascination for handwritten letterforms is growing. Typeface designers who specialize in traditional, charming, or spectacular lettering with a handmade look have become role models for today's young typographers and graphic design students. Script fonts--digital type families based on handwriting--are among the most sought on the typography market today. Scripts from the past, be it 18th-century formal calligraphy or advertising headlines from the 1960s, are being digitized and turned into OpenType programming. The love of the hand-written look is nothing new. Even the oldest printed books pretended to be something unique and not a machine-made mass product. Hand to Type is a collection of some of the best work by today's lettering artists in the fields of hand-made and digital script forms. The book includes texts about outstanding designers and contains a series of expert chapters outlining the principles of script forms that may be lesser known to most western typographers--from the German Sütterlin to Arabic and Asian scripts. Hand to Type also traces script fonts back to some of the earliest examples: hand-lettering as a sign of authenticity, or printing type made to look like formal writing.

Erik Spiekermann is the epitome of a typographer. With his typefaces, commercial projects, and enterprises, he has shaped the world of graphic design like no other. This comprehensive book is the first to showcase his body of work and tell the story of his life. 

Hello, I am Erik is the first-ever visual biography of Erik Spiekermann s work. The book documents his projects, traces milestones in his life, and offers his personal perspectives on design. Essays by notable designers and authors provide a framework and further context for this vivid presentation of his body of work.

Helmut Salden Uncovered 1:1 is the first international monograph on Helmut Salden (1910–96), exploring his original sketches and working drawings. The material spans the years 1939 through 1970. In those years, Salden was the most celebrated Dutch lettering artist. All drawings are reproduced at actual size and reveal in detail his pursuit of the ultimate form.

• Helmut Salden Uncovered 1:1 by Mathieu Lommen & Karen Polder
• Language: English/German
• Pages: 80
• Size: 16,3×23,4×1,9 cm
• Print run: 750
• ISBN: 978-90-9033531-5

The book can be ordered directly from the publisher via email or from Typotheque:
https://www.typotheque.com/books/helmut_salden_uncovered

The book contains 464 pages of in-depth history of the people, places, and products manufactured by the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. Frank Romano traces the history of corporate acquisitions, product development, and competing machines all with his usual wit and experience. He also writes about his own personal history working at Linotype starting in 1959. There are hundreds of color reproductions of advertisements, publications, photographs, and typeface specimens. It also includes 120 pages listing every font manufactured by Linotype or its subsidiaries.

A hardcover edition is available exclusively in the Linotype Film shop, a paperback version at Amazon. 

This book aims to shine light on work of women in type. The first part of the book offers research on the gender issue in type design field. It includes statistics, data and an overview of some works that address this issue. Further it contains some biographies of female type designers that worked in the 19th and in the beginning of 20th century. These women contributed to the industry, yet they are rarely mentioned in educational material.
The second part is a series of the interviews with 14 women that are either currently working as type designers or are in any other way involved in the field of type design. These interviews intend to uncover the topic of unequal share of female and male speakers at type conference as well as the lack of women in the industry. The last part of the book is a showcase of typefaces designed by women. The purpose of this part is to show the great amount and broad variety of such typefaces.

Interviews with Designers: Gayaneh Bagdasaryan, Veronika Burian, Maria Doreuli, Louise Fili, Martina Flor, Loraine Furter, Jenna Gesse, Golnar Kat Rahmani, Indra Kupferschmid, Briar Levit, Zuzana Licko, Ana Regidor, Fiona Ross and Carol Wahler.

How are typefaces designed? What is the process? Which characters are essential? What is the difference between roman, italic and cursive? What is OpenType? In How to create typefaces Cristóbal Henestrosa, Laura Meseguer and José Scaglione answer these and many other questions in a straightforward and direct way. This publication, aimed at new and novice type designers as well as those trained in the field, unravels the fascinating task of creating a font, from sketch to screen. 

Content

• Foreword by Gerry Leonidas
• Motives
  • The thinking that happens before even starting the process of creating a new typeface.
• Writing, calligraphy, drawing and type designs
  • On the similarities and differences between methods of writing, calligraphy, drawing, and type design; shared characteristics, common elements and considerations when sketching typographical characters.
• Processes and methods
  • On approaches to sketching, proportion and structure, consistency, optical correction, planning and workflow.
• Digitisation
  • On digitising the sketches, principles of drawing with digital outlines, fundamental and complementary characters, sequences and derivations.
• Spacing
  • On basic methods to control and adjust spacing: sidebearings and kerning, the importance of counterform, numerals and vertical spaces. 
• Typographic programme
  • On series design and family variations – italics, weight and proportional variants, optical sizing, superfamilies and other ways of extending a typeface family.
• Typography as software
  • On the role of digital technology in typeface design, from the basics of formatting to the possibilities of Open Type features and Unicode. 
• Distribution
  • On legal issues and marketing, plagiarism and piracy, distribution models, custom typeface design and costings.
• 9 Perspective
  • Reflections of each author on their personal experiences of the process of type design.
• Glossary and Bibliography

Technical data

• Title: How to create typefaces. From sketch to screen
• Authors: Cristóbal Henestrosa, Laura Meseguer y José Scaglione
• Translation: Christopher Burke and Patricia Córdoba
• Publisher: Tipo e
• 152 pages
• 123 illustrations
• ISBN 978-84-938654-3-6
• 170 mm × 210 mm

Available here

This show-all romp through design-world darling Jessica Hische’s sketchbook reveals the creative and technical process behind making award-winning hand lettering. See everything, from Hische’s rough sketches to her polished finals for major clients such as Wes Anderson, NPR, and Starbucks. The result is a well of inspiration and brass tacks information for designers who want to sketch distinctive letterforms and hone their skills.

With more than 250 images and metallic silver ink printed throughout to represent her penciled sketches, this highly visual book is an essential—and entirely enjoyable—resource for those who practice or simply appreciate the art of hand lettering.

Learn FontLab Fast; A Simplified Guide to Creating Fonts with FontLab, TypeTool, ScanFont and AsiaFont Studio covers versions 4.6 and 5.0 of FontLab. It has been written to enable users to dramatically cut down the learning curve required to master FontLab and its sister programs, TypeTool and AsiaFont Studio. Author and designer Leslie Cabarga (who also wrote The Logo Font & Lettering Bible) packed Learn FontLab Fast with illustrations, diagrams and screenshots, and cut the text to a minimum so learning to create fonts that you can load onto your own computer and/or distribute commercially becomes easy and enjoyable. 

Learn FontLab Fast explains the techniques used by five established font designers to create their own fonts. The book'll tell you everything you need to know to: begin using the program; to open existing fonts and create new ones; to scan your sketches and add them as backgrounds; to paste drawings into FontLab from Adobe Illustrator; to understanding and using the brush and pen tools to draw glyph characters; to correctly setting up parameters in the Font Info window so your fonts will perform correctly on any computer; to making Type 1, TrueType and OpenType fonts; to spacing, kerning and hinting fonts; to adding accented characters; to using components and anchors; to setting up font families; to making OpenType fonts with special features and organizing those features into classes.

Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution is the first comprehensive history of Letraset, the rubdown lettering system that revolutionised typographic expression.

The book tells the Letraset story from its early days as a difficult-to-use wet system, to its glory years as the first truly democratic alternative to professional typesetting.

The book also looks at Letraset’s present-day revival amongst a new set of admirers who recognise the typographic excellence of the system’s typefaces.

The book comes with a gatefold Letraset timeline. It has an introduction by Malcolm Garrett, and features in-depth interviews with Mr Bingo, Erik Brandt, Aaron Marcus, David Quay, Dan Rhatigan, Freda Sack, Andy Stevens and Jon Wozencroft.

Essays by Colin Brignall, Dave Farey and Mike Daines – all key members of the Letraset team – provide expert insight into the rise of Letraset as a typographic and commercial powerhouse. A central essay by Adrian Shaughnessy examines the typographic and cultural impact of the system.

The book’s design is by the Spin team of Tony Brook and Claudia Klat. It uses many rare specimens from Letraset’s past – catalogues, press ads, mailers, storage units, and of course, sheets of classic Letraset typefaces. 

THE REVOLUTION in typesetting - a revolution that over the past two decades has eliminated a five-hundred-year-old system of hot metal production and replaced it with one of photo-generated and computer-driven composition - shows no sign of winding down. This book, more than any other we know, traces the steps that went into that revolution and simultaneously makes the argument that the letter forms themselves are in process of evolution. Tracy argues that, whether they are of the sixteenth or the twentieth century, the forms that comprise our alphabet are subject to the same rules of good taste, proportion, and clarity that have always obtained. But what we face today is vastly different from fifty years ago. For the first time, new technology has made the proliferation (and, as some would maintain, debasement) of letter forms fast and easy (or quick and dirty.) 

With fifty years of professional experience on both sides of the Atlantic (including thirty years as head of type design for the British Linotype Company), Tracy is in a unique position to make this argument and arrive at his sad conclusion: the design of distinguished, contemporary typefaces is far outnumbered by the mediocre and downright bad. Part of the reason for this deplorable deterioration is a lack of critical analysis of the particular esthetics involved. This step-by-step examination of type-design esthetics is precisely what Tracy provides here, while avoiding both the promoter's hype and the manufacturer's claims. Here are the gut issues of what makes type good or bad, legible or unreadable. Extensively illustrated with both typefaces and line drawings, this book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in thehistory of letters or in the artistry and peculiar problems that lie behind their production.

From the Age of La Peinture en Lettres — A kaleidoscopic survey of letterforms from nineteenth- and twentieth-century France, Lettres Décoratives includes more than 150 plates from grand lithographic albums printed at the height of the sign painter’s craft. Originally made to demonstrate styles and inspire artists to decorate cities with increasingly colorful, adventurous, and refined forms, these portfolios preserve a rich visual history of urban alphabets.

An introduction by practitioner Morgane Côme explores the story of French sign painting and its historic albums, while additional texts shed light on their contents. Featuring dozens of monumental alphabets, Lettres Décoratives is a portal to the past, as well as a valuable resource for contemporary sign painters and designers today.

https://letterformarchive.org/shop/lettres-decoratives/

This study of America’s leading type foundry of the nineteenth century, MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, emphasizes the design of the hundreds of typefaces that were produced by the foundry, from its inception in the 1860s until its merger with most other American foundries at the end of the century. The author describes how changing business conditions and technical improvements in type founding interacted with changes in public taste over the decades to modify the appearance of American typefaces.
While MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan is only one of many American foundries, it can stand as an exemplar of the rest. It was the descendant of the first successful American type foundry, Binny and Ronaldson, started in Philadelphia in 1796, and set many industry standards in business practice, manufacturing, and design. When taste turned away from ornamented type styles at the end of the nineteenth century, MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan’s output fell into obscurity. This study proposes that the earlier styles were very successful in their own time and should be judged on that basis. A completely illustrated appendix showing MS&J’s original typeface designs accompanies the text.

This history of typography starts with the early years of the Enlightenment in Europe, around 1700. It was then that typography began to be distinct from printing. Instructional manuals were published, a record of the history of printing began to be constructed, and the direction of the printing processes was taken up by a new figure: the typographer. This starting point gives the discussion a special focus, missing from existing printing and design history. Modern typography is seen as more than just a modernism of style. Rather it is the attempt to work in the spirit of rationality, for clear and open communication. This idea is argued out in the introductory chapter.

The chapters that follow trace the history of typography up to the present moment. Different cultures and countries become the focus for the discussion, as they become significant. In the nineteenth century, Britain provides the main context for modern typography. In the twentieth century, the USA and certain continental European countries are prominent. Kinross provides concise accounts of modernist typography in Central Europe between the wars and in Switzerland in the 1950s and 1960s. Traditionalist typography in the USA, Britain, Germany and the Low Countries is also discussed sympathetically. A concluding chapter considers ‘modern typography’ in the light of the social, political and technical changes of the recent period.

A separate chapter of illustrations resumes the argument. Representative examples are shown, and analysed in captions.

The book concludes with a critical discussion of the literature of typographic history, and a full bibliography.

In 1929, ten years after the Bauhaus was founded, Berlin’s Martin-Gropius-Bau launched the exhibition “New Typography.” László Moholy-Nagy, who had left Dessau the previous year and had earned a reputation as a designer in Berlin, was invited to exhibit his work together with other artists. He designed a room—entitled “Wohin geht die typografische Entwicklung?” (“Where is typography headed?”)—where he presented 78 wall charts illustrating the development of the “New Typography” since the turn of the century and extrapolating its possible future. To create these charts, he not only used his own designs, but also included advertising prints by colleagues associated with the Bauhaus.

The functional graphic design, initiated by the “New Typography” movement in the 1920s, broke with tradition and established a new advertising design based on artistic criteria. It aimed to achieve a modern look with standardized typefaces, industrial DIN norms, and adherence to such ideals as legibility, lucidity, and straightforwardness, in line with the key principles of constructivist art.

This book showcases Moholy-Nagy’s wall charts which have recently been rediscovered in Berlin’s Kunstbibliothek. Renowned authors provide insights into this treasure trove by each contributing to this alphabetized compilation starting with “A” for “Asymmetry” and ending with “Z” for “Zukunftsvision” (“vision of the future”). By perusing through the pages and allowing a free flow of association, the typographical world of ideas of the 1920s avant-garde is once again brought back to life.

‘Why do type designers traditionally think in black and white?’

Are typographers and type designers really black-and-white thinkers? Are they really so conservative as to think that text in books, periodicals, newspapers and other print, including the text on your laptop, tablet or mobile phone, should always be black? There’s plenty of color in the print media, at least in illustrations, and occasionally we come across a color headline. Traditionally, texts in manuscripts were written in black, or nearly black, ink. Gutenberg’s invention did not make it easy, technically, to print a second color. So from 1450 up to now, text has mostly been presented to us in a single color: black.
But this is going to change.

(Preface by Gerard Unger in Novo Typo Color Book, text and design by Mark van Wageningen)

The Novo Typo Color Book is published by De Buitenkant, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Hardcover, size 16,5 x 24 cm, 96 pages printed in 3 pms colors offset and letterpress.

In 2016 type designer, software developer, and lecturer Frank E. Blokland successfully defended this PhD dissertation at Leiden University. Blokland’s research is conducted to test the hypothesis that Gutenberg and consorts developed a standardised and even unitised system for the production of textura type, and that this system was extrapolated for the production of roman type in Renaissance Italy. For roman type, Humanistic handwriting was moulded into a prefixed standardised system already developed for the production of gothic type. Renaissance typographic patterning was in part determined by prerequisites for the production of type. As a consequence, the typographic conventions are not purely the result of optical preferences predating the invention of movable type but are also the result of the standardisation of characters in the Renaissance type production.

The a4-sized book contains 455 pages and is printed in black and white.

It is available from Lulu.

Typography is your design's voice and the most powerful tool you have to communicate with your readers. Learn how to wield type with care and wit: how to evaluate typefaces, consider technical constraints, create flexible typographic systems, and put together your own collection of favorite faces. Jason Santa Maria wants you to see type beyond code or flourishes. You'll discover how typography shapes the way we read and how you can adapt the craft's practices for the screen. So go ahead. Choose, combine, and set typefaces with ease-and invite readers in.

Jason Santa Maria is a graphic designer with a deep love for letters. He’s the founder of Brooklyn-based design firm Mighty; a faculty member at SVA’s MFA Interaction Design program; a cofounder of A Book Apart; and the founder of Typedia, a shared online encyclopedia of typefaces.

http://www.abookapart.com/products/on-web-typography

Written and designed by poet, linguist, and typographer Robert Bringhurst, Palatino is a definitive account of Hermann Zapf’s most ambitious and enduring design project.

This book provides a detailed and sumptuously illustrated history of the evolution of all members of the Palatino tribe: foundry Palatino, Linotype Palatino, Michelangelo, Sistina, Aldus, Heraklit, Phidias, American Palatino, Enge Aldus, Linofilm Palatino, Zapf Renaissance, PostScript Palatino, Palatino Nova, Aldus Nova, and Palatino Sans. It includes new specimens of the foundry and Linotype faces printed by hand directly from the metal, as well as hundreds of color illustrations documenting the artistry and care expended in creating these components of our typographic heritage.

Palatino: The Natural History of a Typeface is printed in an edition of three hundred copies, each numbered and signed by the author. Each copy contains two additional specimens printed letterpress by Richard Seibert – one from polymer plates, the other from handset Heraklit loaned for this purpose by Norman McKnight. The book is 296 pages, measures 5 5/9 x 9 inches, and is bound in full cloth with two-color typographic endpapers and a two-color letterpress tilting label, slipcased.

http://www.bccbooks.org/store/products/forthcoming-palatino-the-natural-history-of-a-typeface-3/

Sofie Beier from Denmark holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art in London. Her research focuses on typeface legibility, aiming at a better understanding of how different typefaces and letter shapes can influence the reading process. Her book “Reading Letters—designing for legibility” tries to bridge the gap between scientific research and applied graphic and type design.

The purpose of the book is to support type designers in creating legible typefaces and help graphic designers to determine the optimal typeface for a given project. But the book doesn’t work like a “manual”. It does not list the most legible typefaces or will tell you settings for font-sizes, line-heights and so on. It’s all about understanding the principles of legibility. Definitive answers about the fundamental parameters of legibility are yet to be found and Sofie Beier was certainly well advised, not to speculate too much in this book. But still, even though this book cannot answer every question about legibility — if you are interested in legibility research from a typographic point of view, this is a book worth reading. 

Responsive web design helps your site maintain its design integrity on a variety of screen sizes, but how does it affect your typography? With this practical book, graphic designers, web designers, and front-end developers alike will learn the nuts and bolts of implementing web fonts well, especially how to get the best appearance from type without sacrificing performance on any device.

After examining typography fundamentals and the evolution of type on the Web, author Jason Pamental provides useful approaches, real examples, code, and advice for making your type performant, progressive, proportional, and polished—the primary ingredients of responsive typography.

• Understand how type plays a vital role in content-first web design
• Weigh the tradeoffs between self-hosting and using a font service to get the best performance for your site
• Get your type on the screen fast by designing for Progressive Enhancement
• Use a responsive relative scale to adjust proportions between typographic elements for any device or resolution
• Polish your type with ligatures, kerning, and other techniques to create rich, textured reading experiences

A wide-ranging survey of revival typefaces focusing on digital fonts with roots in the past

Examples in 'Revival Type' include direct revivals of metal and wood typefaces, while others are looser interpretations of older typefaces. Among the fonts are interpretations of classic designs by Nicolas Jenson, Claude Garamont, Robert Granjon, William Caslon, John Baskerville, Giambattista Bodoni, Firmin Didot and other iconic names. Alongside them are typefaces rooted in the work of important, though lesser known, names such as Eudald Pradell, Philippe Grandjean and Richard Austin. 

Finally, there are updates and revisions of 20th-century classics like Palatino, Meridien, DIN, Metro and Neue Haas Grotesk (the original name of Helvetica). Some designs are not revivals of typefaces but of letterforms, from inscriptions to calligraphic manuals to letters in posters and bookjackets. Some revivals are aesthetic extensions of 20th-century typefaces that have been updated technologically. Others are actually reinterpretations or variations on typefaces from the past necessitated by having to make types that function in the 21st century and not in the distant past. Re:Type looks at type ‘revivals’ in this broad manner.

• 24.60 x 19.00 cm
• Quarterbound (no jacket)
• 256pp
• Illustrated in colour throughout

Reviving Type is a book by Céline Hurka and Nóra Békés. Two studies, that started as a university course assignment and developed into an independent design-research, are woven together into one volume: one about the Renaissance letters of Garamont and Granjon, the other about the Baroque types of Nicholas Kis. The publication guides the reader from finding original sources in archives, through historical investigation and design process to the finished typeface. The first part of the book provides insight into historical changes in type design through hands-on examples with theoretical background. The second part gives a thorough explanation of the production process of the revival typefaces. Here two different approaches are placed side by side, creating a conversation piece about possible working methods in type design. Design decisions, technical details and difficulties of the process are thoroughly discussed. Rich imagery of original archival material and technical illustrations explain the texts visually. Altogether, the publication becomes a ‘cookbook’ for anyone, who would like to dive into revival type design.

http://www.revivingtype.com

Seen in everything from wedding invitations and birth announcements to IOUs, menus, and diplomas, script typefaces impart elegance and sophistication to a broad variety of texts. Scripts never go out of style, and the hundreds of inventive examples here are sure to inspire today’s designers. Derived from handwriting, these are typefaces that are stylized to suggest, imply, or symbolize certain traits linked to writing. Their fundamental characteristic is that all the letters, more or less, touch those before and after. Drawn from the Golden Age of scripts, from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, this is the first compilation of popular, rare, and forgotten scripts from the United States, Germany, France, England, and Italy. Featuring examples from a vast spectrum of sources—advertisements, street signs, type-specimen books, and personal letters—this book is a delightful and invaluable trove of longoverlooked material. 

Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, & Other Typographical Marks (USA), or Shady Characters: Ampersands, Interrobangs and Other Typographical Curiosities (UK), is an illustrated companion book of the website Shady Characters: The secret life of punctuation.

“Shady Characters weaves a fascinating trail across the parallel histories of language and typography. Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger (†)—which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bible—or the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic squiggles, both exotic (¶) and everyday (&). From the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs, figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Vladimir Nabokov, and George W. Bush cross paths with marks as obscure as the interrobang (‽) and as divisive as the dash (—). Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and artifacts.”

Shaping Text takes a practical and broad approach to typography. It is aimed at design students and graphic designers, and also at those who are concerned with content: writers, editors, and publishers. Showing a wide range of examples from first-rate designers across the world, the book examines why and how typographic designs work well in a given context. Particular attention is given to the team play between the text itself—written language—and the design—the shaping of the text—to form a new, multilevel visual message with a complex content.

Jan Middendorp is a freelance editor, writer and designer working in Berlin. He is the author of such reference books as Dutch Type (2004), Type Navigator (2011, with TwoPoints.net), Shaping Text (2012) and Hand to Type (2012). Since 2007 he has been the editor of MyFonts' bi-monthly newsletters, which reach an audience of over a million users. He has written about type, typography, performance and media for a variety of magazines including Eye (London), Typo (Prague), Etapes (Paris), tipoGrafica (Buenos Aires) and Items (Amsterdam).