I ran across an article the other day that was attempting to teach when to use serif fonts in stead of sans serif. All it talked about were the little “feet” (it called them) and really didn’t teach anything at all. That’s the problem with people finding tutorials on the web. If they don’t know any better, they will take the articles as gospel. Which could be very wrong. If you want to learn the real lesson from a pro, then don’t necessarily believe everything you read on the web. We believe you will benefit greatly from these books — we can attest, their information is correct.
This collection adds to our running inventory of excellent design, typography and lettering manuals. As it stands, the Logo, Font & Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga along with Alex White’s Advertising Design and Typography, and the classic Typographic Design: Form and Communication by Rob Carter, Ben Day, Philip B. Meggs still rank at the highest point in all-time important books typography books
This year we recommend :
Type. A Visual History of Typefaces & Graphic Styles
This book offers a connoisseur’s overview of typeface design, exploring the most elegant fonts from the history of publishing. Taken from a distinguished Dutch collection, this exuberant two-volume edition traces the evolution of the printed letter via exquisitely designed catalogs, showing type specimens in roman, italic, bold, semi-bold, narrow, and broad fonts. Borders, ornaments, initial letters and decorations are also included, along with lithographic examples, letters by signwriters, inscription carvers, and calligraphers.
Featuring works by type designers including: William Caslon, Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke, Peter Behrens, Rudolf Koch, Eric Gill, Jan van Krimpen, Paul Renner, Jan Tschichold, A. M. Cassandre, Aldo Novarese, and Adrian Frutiger.
Cees W. de Jong is a designer and publisher based in Laren, the Netherlands. He has published numerous books on design, architecture and art, and is now working as a design/publishing consultant and author. He has also published many books on graphic design.
Full story : Type: by Cees W. de Jong, Alston W. Purvis
Scripts: Elegant Lettering from Design’s Golden Age
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. 275 illustrations, 254 in color
Logotype
Logotype is the definitive modern collection of logotypes, monograms, and other text-based corporate marks. Featuring more than 1,300 international typographic identities, by around 250 design studios, this is an indispensable handbook for every design studio, providing a valuable resource to draw on in branding and corporate identity projects.
Retaining the striking black-and-white aesthetic and structure of Logo (also by Michael Evamy) and Symbol, Logotype is an important and essential companion volume.
Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, Vol. 1
This book offers a novel overview of typeface design, exploring the most beautiful and remarkable examples of font catalogs from the history of publishing, with a special emphasis on the period from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, when color catalogs were at their height.
Taken from a Dutch collection, this exuberant selection traverses the evolution of the printed letter in all its various incarnations via exquisitely designed catalogs displaying not only type specimens in roman, italic, bold, semi-bold, narrow, and broad, but also characters, borders, ornaments, initial letters and decorations as well as often spectacular examples of the use of the letters. The Victorian fonts, sumptuous and sometimes unbelievably outrageous, are accorded a prominent place in this book.
Typography Sketchbooks
Typography the design of letters is at the heart of visual communication and graphic design. No design is successful without successful typography.
* An artful craft since the days of moveable type, today’s digital designers have an unimaginable array of possibilities when it comes to choosing typefaces. Whether on paper, screen or in e-ink, legibility and expression are paramount.
Where do the best contemporary fonts come from, and who designed them? Fortunately for us, typography for most designers is an obsession, one of the purest forms of design, one that can always be improved and refined.
* Selected by the world’s most knowledgable and well-connected graphic-design commentator, Steven Heller, this survey gets into the minds of designers who create typefaces, word-images and logos through their private sketchbooks.
And, thanks for reading
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