An Essay on Typography

Author: Eric Gill
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
ISBN: 9780879239503
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Book Description
An Essay on Typography was first published in 1931, instantly recognized as a classic, and has long been unavailable. It represents Gill at his best: opinionated, fustian, and consistently humane. It is his only major work on typography and remains indispensable for anyone interested in the art of letter forms and the presentation of graphic information. This manifesto, however, is not only about letters "š€š" their form, fit, and function "š€š" but also about man's role in an industrial society. As Gill wrote later, it was his chief object "to describe two worlds "š€š" that of industrialism and that of the human workman "š€š" and to define their limits." His thinking about type is still provocative. Here are the seeds of modern advertising: unjustified lines, tight word and letter spacing, ample leading. Here is vintage Gill, as polemical as he is practical, as much concerned about the soul of man as the work of man; as much obsessed by the ends as by the means.

Modern Typography

Author: Robin Kinross
Publisher: Hyphen Press
ISBN:
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
Modern Typography, 2nd Edition is a completely updated and revised edition of Robin Kinross's classic survey of European and North American typography since 1700, first published in 1992. In addition to numerous new illustrations and revised text, Modern Typography has been re-scaled to a new, convenient pocket format. Kinross's overview breaks ground by focusing on the history of typography as an intricate web of social, technical, and material processes, rather than a parade of typeface styles. Eye magazine calls Modern Typography the book that tells "how modern typography got to be the way it is." Together, Kinross's clear, concise writing combined with his extensive knowledge of the history of typography create a gold standard for how design history ought to be written.

Typographically Speaking

Author: Margaret Re
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN: 1568984278
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 108

Book Description
In a career that has spanned more than forty years, Matthew Carter has designed many of the typefaces that we see every day in and on publications, books, signs, and screens. Carter's celebrated typefaces include such stalwarts as Galliard, Mantinia, and Verdana. In 1975, he created the now-pervasive Bell Centennial specifically for use in phone books. Publications including Sports Illustrated, the Daily News, Wired, and the Washington Post, along with cultural institutions such as the Walker Arts Center and The Victoria & Albert Museum, have all commissioned Carter fonts. Typographically Speaking: The Art of Matthew Carter entered the field in the days of hand-cut punches and hot-metal type, and has continued to innovate through the eras of photocomposition and digital design. Essays discuss the form of his work, his position and use of typographic history, and his technological innovation. All of his fonts are reproduced in full for reference, and illustrations place his designs in context. Published in conjunction with the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design

Author: Michael Bierut
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1616890711
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design brings together the best of designer Michael Bierut's critical writing—serious or humorous, flattering or biting, but always on the mark. Bierut is widely considered the finest observer on design writing today. Covering topics as diverse as Twyla Tharp and ITC Garamond, Bierut's intelligent and accessible texts pull design culture into crisp focus. He touches on classics, like Massimo Vignelli and the cover of The Catcher in the Rye, as well as newcomers, like McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and color-coded terrorism alert levels. Along the way Nabakov's Pale Fire; Eero Saarinen; the paper clip; Celebration, Florida; the planet Saturn; the ClearRx pill bottle; and paper architecture all fall under his pen. His experience as a design practitioner informs his writing and gives it truth. In Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, designers and nondesigners alike can share and revel in his insights.

Texts on Type

Author: Steven Heller
Publisher: Allworth Press
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
Presents more than fifty texts, familiar and rare, about the history, aesthetics, and practice of type design and typography. Includes essays by such leading type masters as Frederic W. Goudy, Hermann Zapf, and Paul Rand. [back cover].

Inside Paragraphs

Author: Cyrus Highsmith
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1616899786
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 104

Book Description
What goes on inside a paragraph of printed text? Cyrus Highsmith's Inside Paragraphs is an essential primer on the basics of typography that focuses specifically on the role of printed text within a paragraph. Engaging full-page illustrations and Highsmith's accessible explanations show the role of white space between letters, words, and lines. Perfect for students and professionals alike, this updated edition includes a new preface.

Just My Type

Author: Simon Garfield
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847652921
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
Just My Type is not just a font book, but a book of stories. About how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world. About why Barack Obama opted for Gotham, while Amy Winehouse found her soul in 30s Art Deco. About the great originators of type, from Baskerville to Zapf, or people like Neville Brody who threw out the rulebook, or Margaret Calvert, who invented the motorway signs that are used from Watford Gap to Abu Dhabi. About the pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Letraset and were loaded onto computers ... and typefaces became something we realised we all have an opinion about. As the Sunday Times review put it, the book is 'a kind of Eats, Shoots and Leaves for letters, revealing the extent to which fonts are not only shaped by but also define the world in which we live.' This edition is available with both black and silver covers.

Letraset

Author: Adrian Shaughnessy
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 9780995666443
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
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.

Why I Write

Author: George Orwell
Publisher: Renard Press Ltd
ISBN: 1913724263
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 15

Book Description
George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

The Typographic Medium

Author: Kate Brideau
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262365626
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Book Description
An innovative examination of typography as a medium of communication rather than part of print or digital media. Typography is everywhere and yet widely unnoticed. When we read type, we fail to see type. In this book, Kate Brideau considers typography not as part of "print media" or "digital media" but as a medium of communication itself, able to transcend the life and death of particular technologies. Examining the contradiction between typographic form (often overlooked) and function (often overpowering), Brideau argues that typography is made up not of letters but of shapes, and that shape is existentially and technologically central to the typographic medium. After considering what constitutes typographic form, Brideau turns to typographic function and how it relates to form. Examining typography's role in both the neurological and psychological aspects of reading, she argues that typography's functions exceed reading; typographic forms communicate, but that communication is not limited to the content they carry. To understand to what extent the design and operations of the typographic medium affect the way we perceive information, Brideau warns, we must understand the medium's own operational logic, embodied in the full diversity of typographic forms. Brideau discusses a range of topics--from intellectual property protection for typefaces to Renaissance and Enlightenment ideal letterforms--and draws on a wide variety of theoretical work, including phenomenological ideas about comprehension, German media archaeology, and the media and communication theories of Vilém Flusser and others. Hand-drawn illustrations of typographic forms accompany the text.