Type: The Secret History of Letters

by Simon Loxley

Book Overview

Type is the bridge between writer and reader, between thought and understanding. Type is the message bearer: an art-form that impinges upon every literate being and yet for most of its history it has conformed to the old adage that 'good typography should be invisible', it should not distract with its own personality. It was only at the end of the nineteenth century that designers slowly realised that they could say as much with their lettering...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1845110285
• ISBN13: 9781845110284
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.7" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful history!

A fascinating history of type and it's designers right up to the present digital era. I couldn't put it down.

Ah, the poverty of Times New Roman . . .

Even though I'm not a typographer or type-designer, when I began engaging in desktop publishing a decade ago and sought out guidance for the decisions I suddenly had to make, I became interested in the history and minutiae of fonts and letterforms for their own sake. Also, in pursuit of a master's degree in library science more than thirty years ago, I took an elective in the "History of Books and Printing," so the background knowledge was already there. Loxley has produced a thoroughly fascinating social and philosophical history of the development of type, beginning with Gutenberg (who may or may not have been the inventor of moveable type) and following the development of words-in-print down through the centuries to the Nazi affection for Blackletter and the present-day democratization of the field via the personal computer. The author is very knowledgeable, especially about biographical details and personalities among western type designers. Illustrations and quotations are frequent and the book itself, naturally, is very nicely designed with footnotes and cut-lines set off in a one-third-size outside column. Though this is Loxley's first book, I hope it won't be his last.