At it’s heart it is an encyclopedia of some of the most influential type designers from Gutenberg the current crop of digital designers. It is well laid out, thorough and, as you’d expect, has excellent typography. The entries on the various designers have nice informative brief biographies, lists of typefaces and lots of images of the designers fonts being used in books and other ephemera. It’s a perfect way to get face to face with those behind the typeface.
The end of the book has a nice section for further reading. Perusing the list I was very happy to find that I already had several of the recommended books. Now those books get to share space with this great new edition to my typography and design library.
Included are several short essays on different aspects of typography, they almost alone make the book worth it.
- Jonathan Barnbrook writes on the way digital tools have upset the old order of typography for good and ill and have made typography and type design a realistic vehicle for artistic and self expression.
- Erik van Blokland writes about the change in type foundries from traditional foundries to digital foundries.
- Clive Burton writes about the need for font licensing and the respect for the field of type design.
- John Downer has a great essay about creating new typefaces based on older versions and how that with the lack of historical knowledge of type design has led many designers to use revival fonts and create designs that are wildly anachronistic.
- John Hudson writes and essay on the technology, particularly Open Type technology, behind digital typography and how it is being used to create non roman based alphabets. Espcieally script based languages like Arabic, Thai and so on.
- Jean François Porchez writes on the extent at which type reflects and influcences perceptions of nationality.
- Erik Spiekermann has an essay on corporate typography where he makes the case for buisnesses having unique typography created for their brand.
- Jeremy Tankard has an essay about how to actually draw letters and the initial steps in designing type.
