Weird, more and more people around me are getting into typography stuff. One codes a few popular Mac OS font tools (FontLab, TransType). Another one, Aaron Sittig, used to work with infamous Napster, and now, when the company dissolved, got back to the university and began learning typography and tries to design his own fonts.
The whole area is pretty much a mystery to me -- I can judge a font by the way it looks, but I got no other criteria or special knowledge to do so. This is something I'd love to learn sometime later -- I guess I'll have to pick some good books on the issue. Any suggestions?
Posted by slava at 06:04 AM
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The best place to start for a general appreciation of typography is widely held to be The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. The book is beautifully designed, applying the ideas it promotes, and Bringhurst is an excellent writer, making the book a joy to read.
Next, I would suggest getting several catalogs of fonts. The Precision Type Font Reference Guide: Version 5.0 is a huge collection of commercial fonts from larger foundries, each page printed at very fine resolution. Indie Fonts is a well crafted catalog of fonts from smaller independent foundries. Beyond that, some foundries like Emigre and The Hoefler Type Foundry will send you a catalog of their fonts if you fill out a form on their website. These catalogs show off the unique style of the foundry and might help you understand the best use of the their typefaces.
If you want to explore the history of type, there isn't a preeminent volume. The approach I prefer is to explore the history by seeing what notable typographers of the past thought of the state of typography. The writings of Eric Gill and Stanley Morison are examples of this.
If you want to know what someone else thinks about this, check out typebooks.org
Posted by: Aaron Sittig on January 3, 2003 6:34 AMI would agree with Aaron...The Elements of Typographic Style is the de facto when it comes to Typography. Another excellent book is TypeSense, by Susan and Gary Wheeler.
Posted by: Jamie McKee on January 3, 2003 1:07 PMThere's a long tradition of digital typography on the Mac. Erfert Fenton used to write 10-15 page stories on digital typography in Macworld back in the day.
House Industries on the East Coast has a great collection of fonts.
Robin Williams' Non-Designers Type Book is an excellent intro,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201353679/
Posted by: Robb Beal on January 3, 2003 2:41 PMStop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works, Second Edition
by Erik Spiekermann, E. M. Ginger. It's a good basic typography book from a designer's perspective, it's used in many college typography classes.
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