An excellent reference and an interesting read. I especially love the appendix of special characters. ( )

Yes, typography can be interesting. This seminal book both provides a good introduction to a beginner and a good base for the expert.

I've read this twice now, and twice I have thought it amazing that there are people who have not heard about this book. I suppose this is because I am buried in my own perspective: former college graphic design major and current amateur letterpress printer.

The re-read was prompted by my recent work of rehabilitating my old Chandler & Price press, and trying to learn everything about this elegant art. Bringhurst's brilliant book is both reference and narrative, something to keep at hand when setting type and trying to remember average letters per 20-pica line in 10-point fonts, but also something to curl up with. What a peculiar balance!

Bringhurst isn't just a type expert; he's also a poet. As such, the tone is master-crafted and evocative. He speaks of motion and negative space and the moods of the printed word. All this while dosing you with history and the occasional barbed interjection (Mr. Bringhurst is not a fan of Helvetica or Cheltenham, for example).

The first half a dozen chapters focus on type in a pan-technological study. The foundations laid here are relevant both to setting type by hand as well as kerning in Adobe Illustrator. Then there are a few chapters on layout--which manage to integrate proportion, mathematics, musical harmonies, the Golden Mean and a certain amount of mysticism and reverence. Toward the end of the book, there is more detail on digital typography (which I must admit I skimmed because of my current focus).

If you do anything with type, read this book. It is required. ( )

Put succinctly: this is the typographer's Bible.
Warning, this is no "typography for dummies" or even a simplified approach to good type work, it is a very dense volume that leaves nothing out. if you really want to understand typography down to the endless details it involves, Elements will enchant you. It doesn't hurt to be a bit of a geek either (*cough cough*).

A typographer himself with vast experience in the old school (that is, pre-computer typesetting), Bringhurst set out to compile working principles and ended up with 350 pages of such principles, the historical reasons for their existence, and how to apply them practically. Topics covered are discussed in general then the author really gets down to specifics, technicalities even, making this a workbook just as much as a textbook. The book answers questions you would never think of asking until you run into the problem and then you can't think of whom to ask. For instance: "If a text in parentheses is in italics, should the parentheses be italic as well?" Such details may appear meaningless, but the secret to making a text optimally legible lies in them.

This is going to be a little long but I would like to give an overview of the contents. After general principles of typography, the proper use of kerning, leading, hyphenation, pagination etc are discussed in detail, as are numerals, small caps, ligatures, font families. We then "zoom out" a bit as we get into guidelines for dealing with blocks of text, titles, headings, superscripts etc. I particularly enjoyed the chapter examining analphabetical symbols (:&/-§ and the like), how they are meant to be used, and how to make them look extra good. Then we learn what to look out for when combining fonts or different alphabets (and things to avoid), something that is also priceless to designers who routinely need to adapt non-Latin scripts (such as Arabic in my case) to existing Latin fonts. Then follows a historical interlude, and we learn how to shape a page, proportioning it and its margins to fit our aesthetic needs.

The second half of the book (all this was just the first!) focuses on fonts. A number of "classics" are discussed in detail: their history and visual characteristics, and even their faults and what figures can be foudn in the family. This was very useful in helping me build a font library that is actually useful. Like everyone else, I have thousands of fonts on my harddrive, 90% of which can only be used for titles or the like. When it comes to body text, we need something tried and true, and the selection offered (which includes serif, sanserif, blackletter, uncials, even greeks and cyrillics) saves us much time and headaches.

Appendix A provides the names and story of a few dozen characters (bet you didn't know the # symbol is called an octothorp); B is a glossary of terms; C is a biographical index of type designers; D a list of typefoundries.

Obviously this is not a book you pick up if you're just curious about working with type. Beginners will find it intimidating – it's a LOT of reading, for longer attention spans, and it's more info than most beginners will have bargained for anyway. On the other hand, font and/or layout designers (professional or serious amateur) will really benefit from it.

[Considering a purchase? Please use this URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISB... ] ( )

The best work on type that I know. Bringhurst is the typographer's typographer, and writes like the poet he is. Possibly my favorite book. ( )