Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

If you don't know anything about letters, fonts, and typography, but you're otherwise pretty smart, this is the book for you. Simon Garfield races through the history of printed letters, stopping frequently for interesting interviews, amusing stories, surprising facts, and illuminating examples, all leavened with dry British wit. If you do know a lot about fonts, you'll still enjoy yourself, and find plenty of forthright opinions to argue with.

I came to this book through an online excerpt of the penultimate chapter ("The Worst Fonts in the World"), but if I had found it in a bookstore, the fifteen-page illustrated introduction by book designer Chip Kidd would have done the trick.

This book is a lot of fun.

This non-fiction delight is for all the nerds, stationery lovers, trivia fiends and those who just love absorbing minutiae.

Just as the title declares, Just My Type is a book all about fonts. Author Simon Garfield has successfully made the world of fonts and typefaces quite fascinating and I've begun looking at font in all mediums of print and advertising in an entirely new light; and of course trying to identify the different types.

The book briefly explains the printing press, the technology of carving individual letters from different materials and the advances in technology since then. I found it fascinating to read about the creation of particular fonts, and learning some fonts took years to complete was a real eye-opener.

Garfield show more also explains why some fonts are difficult to read, how some fonts rose to fame, which fonts are currently dominating the world of print and why.

When Garfield described the differences in the letter 'g' or the humble '&' in different fonts, I was engrossed. There were also plenty of snippets of trivia to maintain interest. If you're the sort of person who enjoyed the 2007 documentary entitled Helvetica, then Just My Type: A Book About Fonts is definitely the book for you! show less

Most of us became aware of fonts first through using the computer. Open up any word processing program, and you have dozens of options available for self-expression. Before personal computing, Microsoft Windows, and Apple computers, most of us had little clue about the world of fonts. We knew text presents itself differently in, say, movies, newspapers, and magazines.

Recently, ubiquitous computing – and especially the Internet – have made different type faces a pervasive part of everyday life. It’s almost as if their commonality has reduced some of their novelty. Through this book, author Simon Garfield seeks to renew the wonder about fonts. He describes engaging stories in typography’s history that accentuate each font’s show more personality.

Although I listened to this audiobook, it still communicated well even aurally. Because I was familiar with a lot of type faces already, I didn’t need visuals to construct the book’s meaning. I suspect someone unfamiliar with different fonts might have more trouble, though.

Garfield brings the typographer’s profession to life, all the way back to Gutenberg’s printing press. He talks about the personalities of type makers, the obscure uses of many fonts, and their dissemination into popular culture. I’ve read a few books about fonts before, but this one is certainly the most comprehensive. The stories entertained me while my mind fixated on the diversity of fonts around me.

Since I work in software, fonts play a major role in my life. When I write, I often switch from Times New Roman to Georgia straightaway to please my eyes more. Anyone who does a lot of work on the computer – which is a lot of us these days – can benefit from educating themselves about fonts. This book is one of the most fun ways to do that and just makes readers feel smarter and more in control of communication. show less

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Book Report: The book description says:
A hugely entertaining and revealing guide to the history of type that asks, What does your favorite font say about you?

Fonts surround us every day, on street signs and buildings, on movie posters and books, and on just about every product we buy. But where do fonts come from, and why do we need so many? Who is responsible for the staid practicality of Times New Roman, the cool anonymity of Arial, or the irritating levity of Comic Sans (and the movement to ban it)?

Typefaces are now 560 years old, but we barely knew their names until about twenty years ago when the pull-down font menus on our first computers made us all the gods of type. Beginning in the early days of show more Gutenberg and ending with the most adventurous digital fonts, Simon Garfield explores the rich history and subtle powers of type. He goes on to investigate a range of modern mysteries, including how Helvetica took over the world, what inspires the seeming ubiquitous use of Trajan on bad movie posters, and exactly why the all-type cover of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus was so effective. It also examines why the "T" in the Beatles logo is longer than the other letters and how Gotham helped Barack Obama into the White House. A must-have book for the design conscious, Just My Type's cheeky irreverence will also charm everyone who loved Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Schott's Original Miscellany.

My Review: I confess it: I am a type geek. I love a well-designed book. I love to immerse myself in a book and lose all sense of time and space, and then after I've returned to the dull confines of mortal reality, look closely at the object in front of me to winkle out its secrets. Often I find the design of a book can make it a better read (The Night Circus being a great example) or pop me so far out of the story there's no way for me to get back in (no names, I don't want to hear from all those shady gray twilit ladies with their dripping fangs).

So this book was meant for me. Simon Garfield, not a first-time writer apparently though one couldn't prove it by me, is the perfect cicerone into the mysteries of typefaces, fonts, and typography (three separate things); he's as nutsy about the subject as one can get (did you know there's a type museum? It's not open to the public, yes the author knows about it, knows the curator...that's deep), and able with his clear and pleasant prose voice to bring the reader right along on his trip.

It might not be instantly obvious, but every single thing you look at has some relationship to type. TV and movies have type in their credits, the box your microwave dinner comes in is loaded with type, the computer you're using? All type interfaces. The dashboard of your car: Type. The entire made world relates to us through type at some level. Yet many, if not most, of us are blind to its specifics, absorbing only its results and usually its subliminal messages. And they are many. Some typefaces convey authority (Futura, anyone? Helvetica! Trajan!) and others soothing calming pleasure (Optima). Some are bluntly informative (Times New Roman, Baskerville) and others whimsically amusing (Papyrus, the loathed Comic Sans).All of them, without fail, were created by crazy people called type designers to fulfill a function. For better or worse, some become standards, and some sink into the great morass of indifference. Such is, after all, the fate of most things...and most people, even type designers.

The stories of the type designers Garfield profiles were entertaining, and often illuminating: Eric Gill, designer of the famous typeface Gill Sans, was a lech of the first water. He was, in fact, criminally culpable in today's world for many of his sexual adventures. Funny thing...I've never liked Gill Sans. Now I have an excuse! John Baskerville, whose beautiful solid-yet-graceful serif typeface is one of my personal favorites, lived a tough life as a type-founder and, within months of his death, was so little valued by his widow that she offered a stranger who came from Europe to meet her recently deceased husband all his fonts and tools for a song. I suppose it's my subliminal response to underdogs that makes me love the typeface so.

Since type has been part of my existence from little on up, it's hard for me to gauge how good an introduction this book would make to a type-tyro, but my sense is that Garfield's obsessiveness about the topic makes him a good and reliable conductor on the train. Get on with a pleasant tingle of anticipation, alight at each small station dedicated to the history of one specific typeface, and arrive refreshed and amused at the destination, the place of expanded appreciation of the nature of your entire visible world. show less

This is an excellent introduction to typography for the uninitiated. If you want to get an overview of the history of typography and grasp just what an impact choosing a font has on a message without delving too deep into subject, this is the book to read.

Humourous, concise and entertaining, "Just my type" is consistently to the point. I have to admit that at certain points I found it hard to put the book down. Perhaps it's just the inner geek in me who is interested in relatively obscure things, but I found this history of typography utterly fascinating. Every other chapter focuses on a particular font which the author has deemed significant in some way - this gives an insight into how fonts are born, adopted and how they influence show more what is yet to come.

As is expected of a book on typography, all the mentioned fonts are set in the corresponding type, giving the reader a "live" instant impression of the font.

Although "Just my type" offers no complete recipes for choosing the right font for a particular situation, it makes for a solid starting point for understanding what constitutes great typography. show less

This is one of those rare books you come across, not expecting much, and find yourself immersed in it. Typography is rather a niche subject; many folks know nothing about it and many know just a little. Garfield takes what could be a rather dull history and turns into a whimsical, charming narrative. It's full of heroes and villains, successes and failures, and many somewhat technical but surprisingly fascinating tidbits. It is a book as much about people as it is about fonts. It is a survey of font history, pop culture and tiny nuances which, like serifs, have impacts greatly out of proportion to their size. It is highly recommended to anyone who loves books and just as highly recommended to anyone who likes a good story, well told.

When I started working on my university student newspaper in 1973, we had a very limited number of rather dull and old-fashioned typefaces for our headlines. Those were the days when you marked up your layout by hand before sending the whole caboodle to the typesetters and you had no real idea what your handiwork would end up looking like. Then I went to a student journalist conference and was introduced to the joys of Letraset. That was a revelation. I fell in love with fonts. I bought the Letraset catalogue and drooled over it night after night. Whenever I had any spare cash I spent it on sheets of Letraset and used them to produce samizdat leaflets and covers for magazines that never saw any content. Letraset was a revolution, but it show more didn't have a long life. From the day Apple first exhibited the ill-fated Lisa the game was up. Now we have access to a mindblowing number of computer-based fonts to use and abuse, from seminal and sober Garamond to outré Dirtyfax (which looks like the output of a malfunctioning fax machine) via the ubiquitous Arial.

Simon Garfield takes us on a short but hairy ride through the history of type from Gutenberg to the present day. Well, 2011; things move very fast here. The fonts that most books are set in (this one mostly in Sabon with a bit of Univers at the start of chapters) don't draw attention to themselves, which is the point, but a skilled guide like the author can draw attention to differences of detail, like the very elegant Baskerville capital Q with its swirly tail, or the classic Caslon ampersand (I can't illustrate these things here, you'll have to read the book). Some are designed to scream at you. Most are more subtle. Some, like the Transport font specifically designed in the 1950s for British motorways, are scientifically developed to be instantly readable at speed and would make no sense in a book. Some are iconic in themselves, like the Johnston font designed for London Transport. Some capture the spirit of a city by association, as with New York's love affair with Helvetica on everything. Purveyors of expensive toiletries reach for Optima. The Beatles didn't invent a whole font but the legendary raised serif B and dropped T on Ringo's bass drum started something. Motörhead would never sell with CarbonType any more than Ed Sheeran would get away with Fraktur. Typefaces are a semiotic language in themselves, a universal language for the globalised world.

If I had to find a fault with this grand tour, which I'm sure is no more than a gateway drug for serious typophilia, it's that it's inconsistent with its illustrations. Sometimes it's lavish with the showing-not-telling, then just as Simon draws attention to a particular detail of a particular face, you're on your own with no graphic to make the point. That is irritation enough to dock a star. show less