Just My Type
The original and best book about fonts
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Just My Type is not just a font book, but a book of stories. About how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world. About why Barack Obama opted for Gotham, while Amy Winehouse found her soul in 30s Art Deco. About the great originators of type, from Baskerville to Zapf, or people like Neville Brody who threw out the rulebook, or Margaret Calvert, who invented the motorway signs that are used from Watford Gap to Abu Dhabi. About the pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Letraset and were loaded onto computers ... and typefaces became something we realised we all have an opinion about.
As the Sunday Times review put it, the book is 'a kind of Eats, Shoots and Leaves for letters, revealing the extent to which fonts are not only shaped by but also define the world in which we live.'
This edition is available with both black and silver covers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Printed type is no mere neutral conveyor of ideas but an artistic medium in its own right, with psychological, social, and even sexual overtones, according to this lively romp through the history of fonts. Garfield (The End of Innocence) surveys fonts from Gutenberg's dour Gothic and the elegant classicism of Garamond to the childlike faux-na vet of Comic Sans, now so widely used for everything from medical brochures to tombstones that a movement has arisen to ban it. Along the way he revisits the sometimes lurid lives of the great typographers incest and bestiality included and explores the legibility of highway signs and the subliminal messaging of presidential campaign fonts. There's much pop psychology here heavy, angular fonts seem male, apparently, while thin, curlicued ones are female and a lot of engaging connoisseurship that occasionally goes overboard, especially when comparing look-alike modern sans serif fonts: you have to strain at gnats to distinguish the ubiquitous corporate cordiality of Helvetica from the "slightly softer and more rounded tone" of Arial. Regardless, Garfield's evocative prose Cooper Black is "the sort of font the oils in a lava lamp would form if smashed to the floor" entices us to see letters instead of just reading them. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Who would have thought?
Who would have thought a book on fonts and type faces could be so enjoyable and full of information and knowledge. I laughed out aloud many times too. My only problem now is I can no longer read anything without wondering what font it is and what the designer/typesetter/printer or writer is trying to tell me without me knowing. Highly recommended.