Typography books for newbies

matthew_dob · October 18, 2002

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

I want to learn about good type design, elegant type layout and a small amount of history. What books would you recommend? I live in London, England so have a wide access to various design bookshops.

Please... I need inspiration!

Matthew

christopher · October 21, 2002

Ruari McLean's Manual of Typography gives a good history of typography and design and is a very practical book. The only caveat is that it only goes up to the 80s so the digital side of typography is not addressed.
I also like Stop Stealing Sheep by Erik Spiekermann, it is a nicely illustrated introductory text.

Joe Pemberton · October 21, 2002

Stop Stealing Sheep is in its second edition
as of this past summer. (It is available in the US,
but I'm not sure about the UK.)

j75 · January 11, 2003

Every one talks about 'The Elements of Typographic Style' by Robert Bringhurst http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0881791326/qid=1042314873/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/026-8626606-6990000

matthew_dob · January 12, 2003

Yup, I read Stop Stealing Sheep. Good it was, too. I would recommend it to people who are interested in letters, whether or not they are typophiles.

anonymous · January 13, 2003

Bringhurst is (very) good. For advanced reading & typography I recommend "Detailtypografie" from Forssman and de Jong, (you can find it here, the german Amazon). It's in german, but it's got everything in there. There's also a book by Adobe Press that got some good reviews: The complete manual of typography, by Jim Felici. see it at amazon. I like Detailtypografie more tough...

rcapeto · January 13, 2003

I don't know this book you mention, Detailtypografie,
but I recommend the similarly titled Detail in Typography,
by Jost Hochuli (Compugraphic, 1987). It's instructive to
the newbie and a pleasure to the veteran. It's out of
print, but it does turn up now and then on the used-book
services. I've recently bought a copy in English (the
original is in German, of course).

R

nike · January 14, 2003

you can find detailtypografie at amazon:

http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3874395685/qid=1042538030/sr=2-1/ref=sr_aps_prod_1_1/302-1473027-7508846

i read it too and its recommendable.

nevine · April 26, 2003

Yes, definitely Bringhurst!

Miss Tiffany · May 15, 2003

Don't forget to visit our Books List: http://typophile.com/books

Miguel Sousa · May 18, 2003

The non-designer's design book - Design and typographic principles for the visual novice by Robin Williams; a very nice and informal way to look at Typography and start using it correctly.

In http://www.typebooks.org/ you'll find a complete typographic bibliography.

jay_wilkinson · June 9, 2003

out of the five or so books on the subject <joke> bringhurst's book is good. i think stop stealing sheep is kind of weak. as far as books on letterforms my old teacher from art center has a book out called font's and logos which is very comprehensive. the authors name is doyald young.

hrant · June 16, 2003

To me Gill's little book is very serious. It puts type in the context of society, exposing some deeply-rooted problems. The fact that many people today might think it's "strange" is simply that we've been brainwashed into loving industrialization over the past 100 years. I think when Gill's book came out, there were a lot more people who "got it".

According to the colophon*, "Essay" was in fact the first use of Joanna. And the later 1936 edition was set in foundry, not Monotype.

* It has two: one on page 4 and one at the end. I'm not sure the first one can be called a "colophon".

hhp

Jemma Hostetler · July 25, 2003

i really love emil ruder's Typography you can get it on amazon but it's cheaper on YWFT... those are the nice hardcover versions... mine is older and paperback, but i love it. (did i mention i love it?)

hrant · July 25, 2003

> i really love emil ruder's Typography

Really?
The way it treats the three languages identically bothers me a lot, not least functionally: there are spots (like in some illustration captions) where you have to make an extra effort to know where to start reading.
Way too much Modernism.

hhp

keith_tam · July 25, 2003

Type & typography by Phil Baines and Andrew Haslem is a great book for beginners as well as those with more experience. It approaches type first and foremost from the linguistic point of view in a section called 'function', then move onto 'form', where history and classification are discussed in great details. The third section is about the designing and manufacturing of type. The next section is titled 'Structure', where hierarchy, grid, and the fine points about setting type are covered. The last section is 'Conventions', the 'rules' of setting text type, if you will. The whole book is illustrated throughout with relevant and engaging examples, The main running text set in Swift in a large point size and 'sidebars' set in a smaller Meta that goes into more depth about each issue discussed. I highly recommend this book. I think it's one of the best, most comprehensive and least biased I've seen so far. It is quite a brilliant achievement: it has a lot of depth and students are going to like reading it because it actually looks so interesting. Along with Bringhurst, it's going to be required reading for my type class.

Jemma Hostetler · July 25, 2003

> Really?

really. i wasn't bothered by the extra languages... but then again i wasn't bothered by the german in the weingart book either. then again, i'm one of those people who aren't bothered by subtitles in films. (did i mention i wasn't bothered?)

i'm getting out of hand ;)

i found it very informative; it made sense to me. and i still go back to it every so often, as reference.

keith_tam · July 25, 2003

Hrant, you're going to like this book. It's so post-modern :-P

I love Phil Baines's work!

matteson · July 25, 2003

I must say, I quite like Ruder myself. But more as an artifact really - not as a current resource or how-to book or entry point for someone. I'm not one to say modernism didn't (doesn't) have its fair share of problems...

hrant · July 25, 2003

> Type & typography ... is quite a brilliant achievement

I agree. Maybe the best single "textbook" out there.

The only thing that bugs me is that they go to all that wonderful trouble of setting up typography with speech, writing and all, but... did you notice... nothing about how we actually read! :-/ The whole point, really.

--

> i'm one of those people who aren't bothered by subtitles in films.

I'm envious. I have a lot of trouble watching a foreign movie in a language I know because I can't help reading the subtitles. Same thing with the opera these days - those stinky surtitles - guys, you're supposed to know the story before you get there anyway, you know?! The point in opera is the delivery. And to me the only really good thing about DVDs is that you can turn the subtitles off. I even like watching foreign movies that I can't understand - they often make more sense that way. Like before I knew Spanish I enjoyed Mexican TV much more. And one time I was watching Ran, and I called the station yelling at them to turn of the subtitles...

Now I'm getting out of hand...

One thing I found definitely kind of innovative in Ruder's book is that page where they compare regular and irregular spacing of letters of different structures, with carefully selected words set large. That was sharp.

hhp

Jemma Hostetler · July 25, 2003

> And one time I was watching Ran, and I called the station yelling at them to turn of the subtitles...

hahahaha! fantastic.

keith_tam · July 25, 2003

Hrant, you're right, nothing on the reading process. :-(

keith_tam · July 25, 2003

Ovink would be a good supplement to Baines.

hrant · July 25, 2003

> nothing on the reading process.

Probably because that's a book by itself. But still, some stuff about saccades and such would've been nice. Ovink might be too heavy.

BTW, speaking of video titling, I've always loved the Chinese tradition of freezing the action and showing a person's name in huge vertical letters, with a gong. To me that beautifully leverages the surreal nature of video.

hhp

hrant · July 25, 2003

That's definitely a great one. And fortunately bookfinder.com seems to show two copies currently available (for $50). Just be careful, Frutiger has at least one other book (also a good one, but not as good for type design) with a very similar title (and that one I think is still in print).

hhp

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