Godzilla Posted April 1, 2024 Posted April 1, 2024 I have several books of type and typefaces in my library, including a couple on how to identify a typeface. Some are catalogues from typesetters, others just show glyph sets from various faces, and others offer comparisons of similar faces. I use these all the time when I'm hunting for a suitable face, but I also just like browsing the pages. Does anyone else here have similar books? I'd like to see more. I will make a list of those I have and post it in the comments (with some images) if anyone else is interested in this sort of book. (I also have some books on designing with type). I've attached some images of one such book. I recently came across this particular typeface catalogue buried in my library and somewhat forgotten. It was printed for the 25th anniversary of CompuGraphic in 1985, but reprinted in '87. Has some interesting and innovative typefaces in it. I picked it up in the late 1980s, likely when I was doing freelance editing and writing for tech companies. loukash and iconoclast 2 Quote
loukash Posted April 1, 2024 Posted April 1, 2024 14 minutes ago, Godzilla said: Does anyone else here have similar books? Quite a few, including old Swiss letterpress books from the 50s or 60s which I found in a garbage container some 30 years ago… Looking at your photos, "Heldustry" and "Helios" are obvious Helvetica rip-offs, hehe… Also "Triplett" rings a bell although I can't put my finger on it off the top of my head. Godzilla 1 Quote MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2
iconoclast Posted April 1, 2024 Posted April 1, 2024 I have a few books like these too. It's nice to have them, but there are also some services on the web, where you can e.g. upload screenshots of a text to find out what font it is and to find comparisons/alternatives. And I think that these books are not up to date today anyway. What I miss a little is a good service for font classification. So a service that shows up if a font is e.g. a Renaissance Antiqua, Barock, Classicism... or even an Egyptienne, Uncial, Rotunda... or whatever and why. I have two books about that too, but it is often not easy to say of what kind a font is. Any recommendations would be welcome. Godzilla 1 Quote
Godzilla Posted April 2, 2024 Author Posted April 2, 2024 Three more books from my collection. The leftmost one is a printing textbook from 1904 by Charles Thomas Jacobi. It has the original owner's name and date on the frontspiece as Nov. 1906. The middle is an undated, Cerlox-bound handout from Domtar, and the rightmost is a small 1968 book from Howard & Smith Monotype. It has a subtitle inside: A Guide to Better Typographic Communication. I get great joy holding a book that is 120 years old, knowing that before me others opened it, read it, examined the images, and learned from it. I much prefer actual books to a website, although I have used them to help identify fonts and found many to be very informative. My last two versions of CorelDraw came with What The Font access built in. It was very handy when I had to replicate a face for a client's new work and they had no idea what had been used. In large part I prefer the printed version because I like to read and own books, and to refer to them at my leisure, not merely when I am online. I read a lot these days (two-four hours most days). At night I read in bed for at least an hour and will often choose books from my library like this to reread or look for content related to come project or study. That's how I found these three: looking for something else I recalled from my library I hoped might help with a project I am working on. I also sometimes pick up old books from yard sales or library discards and examine them for their type and layout. I have several shelves of books from the mid-1800s to the 1930s (as well as a few thousand song sheets from about 1880 to 1940). Mostly I keep them because I like to examine the typography, rather than to actually read them (well, most of the songsheets are for playing music on my ukuleles...). To my wife's annoyance, I once rescued an entire set of encyclopedias from the 1940s just because they were so beautifully set and laid out (you can see some pages here). iconoclast and loukash 2 Quote
iconoclast Posted April 2, 2024 Posted April 2, 2024 Yes, I'm a book fan too. I collected books for many years, preferably well illustrated and designed books of all kinds (even Comic Books). It was a huge challenge as I changed my residence some years ago, because I had to literally move mountains. There is no alternative to books for me in general, but especially in case of reference books, digital media has some advantages. It is much easier and quicker to click links than to flip through books, page up, page down. Your examples are really beautiful, especially the last ones. I like this concept reminding to the great Encyclopedia of Diderot, D'Alembert and others. Amazing stuff. Godzilla 1 Quote
Godzilla Posted April 2, 2024 Author Posted April 2, 2024 These books are what I used to identify typefaces for many years, before there ever was any online service like What The Font. The edition on the right is the last one, from 2004. The one on the left is much older: 1983. Oufti, loukash and iconoclast 3 Quote
Godzilla Posted April 23, 2024 Author Posted April 23, 2024 Three books on the history of type and type design. I got Loxley's book yesterday. I read Garfield and Houston previously but and rereading both. Both are entertaining to read. Modern readers may not know that punctuation is a fairly new invention in the history of writing, and that the non-alphabetic/non-numeral characters on your keyboard have an interesting, often contentious history. Alan Ralph 1 Quote
Godzilla Posted April 23, 2024 Author Posted April 23, 2024 Third edition of Lupton's excellent book. I have the 2nd edition as well. Alan Ralph 1 Quote
Godzilla Posted April 23, 2024 Author Posted April 23, 2024 And then there's Mark Argetsinger's magnificent book, A Grammar of Typography: Classical Book Design in the Digital Age. Shown here with Bringhurst's excellent work for comparison in size. Quote
Godzilla Posted April 23, 2024 Author Posted April 23, 2024 A few more books from my shelves: clockwise from top left: Sophie Beier's Reading Letters (an excellent book on readability and legibility in text); Ina Saltz's Typography Essentials; Sarah Hyndman's Why Fonts Matter, and Beier's Type Tricks. Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.