The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst (2004)

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. ( )

Bringhurst's manual is the first reference for the aspiring typographer. It's full of pithy wisdom, and obviously written to be quoted:

“Letterforms that honour and eluciate what humans see and say deserve to be honored in their turn. Well-chosen words deserve well-chosen letters; these in their turn deserve to be set with affection, intelligence, knowledge and skill. Typography is a link, and it ought, as a matter of honor, courtesy and pure delight, to be as strong as the others in the chain.” (Pg. 18)

There's an awful lot of much more specific advice and analysis, but the overwhelming impression is of the passion Bringhurst has for the craft of typography, and which he communicates to the reader at every turn.

As one would expect, Elements is beautifully designed and typeset, and indeed showcases many of the techniques Bringhurst argues for or suggests as possibilities. Variations are usually shown by altering the design of the main text, as are some of the bad habits that he argues against; this destroys the unified vision of some pages, but it's very helpful to see the examples in real text which you're reading, rather than lorem ipsum or endless repeats of the same advertising copy.

The design has very generous outer margins, which are used for example images, (literal) asides and references, and running section heads. My only quibble here is that the running heads are dropped below the head of the text block by about one fifth of its height, where they are most naturally interpreted as relating to whatever text they are adjacent to instead of to the page as a whole. I'd call this a case of the conscious design getting in the way of clear communication, while Bringhurst's main thesis is that typographic design should support communication. Such a minor slip is pretty forgivable, especially when you realise that the manual really has to stand out in terms of design, in order to sell its content.

The first 200 pages are given to advice and general analysis, from book design and page layout through choice of font and use of symbols to the minutiae of font management and optical corrections for badly-kerned fonts. This is followed by 80 pages of typeface samples, each with a single-line large sample and a paragraph or two of history and description. Unfortunately this explanatory text is all set in the same text face, so you don't get to see how the typeface handles at text size in running text. For the display and script faces this was obviously the right choice, but it's rather a shame for the faces designed for text. Still this is a fantastic resource for browsing through, with a single letter sample in the margin at about 70 pt to give the character of each typeface at a glance.

The trailing sixty pages are given over to appendices, probably the least useful part of the book for most readers. We are given a list of over a thousand named letters (“e-circumflex-grave…e-circumflex-caron…e-underdot…”), as well as a list of commonly-used symbols. Likely to be more useful are the lists of type designers and foundries; there is an extensive list of further reading, with some items flagged as essential or benchmark but without explanation beyond the bibliographical information.

Apart from these slightly excessive encyclopaedic listings, Elements is accessible and written in an engaging style, and packed with historical information, design principles and technical detail. It's an introduction to the field, so you'll want more detail eventually, but as an introduction it comes highly recommended.

(I haven't made any inroads yet in the related reading list, if anyone wants to recommend me a starting point or their own personal favourite I'd be delighted.) ( )