Reviewed by James Puckett
In 1983 Rudy VanderLans, Zuzana Licko, Marc Susan, and Menno Meyjes began Emigre, a magazine about “…the global artist who juggles cultures, travels between them, and who is fluent in the cultural symbols of the world. An émigré.”[1] Early issues meandered through essays, interviews, fiction and poetry. VanderLans directed wild layouts that […]

Reviewed by James Puckett

Artist Joseph Kosuth’s 1965 work One and Three Chairs presented a static composition that represents an idea three ways. It was heady stuff, addressing what conceptual artists saw as a crisis of reconciling the realization of concepts with the concepts. One of the three material representations in One and Three Chairs […]

Reviewed by James Puckett
Yakov G. Chernikov (1889–1951), was a Russian artist, designer, and architect learned in classical and modern styles. As a draftsman he was on par with Piranesi and Rembrandt; his most forward-thinking drawings resemble the style of Yoshitaka Amano. This combination of knowledge and skill made him one of the most accomplished Russian […]

Reviewed by James Puckett
I was excited when Taschen announced the first volume of Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, described as “This exuberant selection of typographic fonts and styles traces the modern evolution of the printed letter”*. Such language, including the title, is disingenuous, because this book is not a history. Type […]

Reviewed by James Puckett
“The truth of the terse but expressive ‘dead and forgotten’, comes home with peculiar force to the searcher after information about the individuals who have developed the art and craft of typefounding.”
– William E. Loy
The Industrial Revolution is often seen as a black hole in the history of typography. In that era […]

A Brief review
One can never have too many books about type and typography. One of the most recent additions to my own library is Theodore Rosendorf’s The Typographic Desk Reference or, if you’re in a hurry, simply TDR.
From the outset it’s worth stressing that this is not a how-to book. It does not compete […]

A Brief Review
A book that carries the names Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross on the cover is enough to get just about anyone’s synapses salivating.* Designing books: practice and theory, published by Hyphen Press is the best single volume on the subject of designing books. Why save it for the concluding remarks. Hold this book […]

one big bullet point
Mathieu and Breton’s article on their experience of KABK’s Type and Media masters course has proven insanely popular. The students at Reading are nearing the end of their masters in Type Design, so hopefully we’ll be hearing from them too.
I’ve spoken here before about the importance of white space, not simply as […]

Book Review
Recently I received through the post something large, yellow and weighing 3kg. No, not a genetically modified banana, but FontShop’s FontBook, an the encyclopaedia of type. This book really should come with a health warning: my postman almost had a hernia delivering it, and very nearly sprained his wrist attempting to hold it in […]

Book Review by Dan Reynolds
Several Reading University classmates of mine from the typeface design programme share a small house. On the dining room wall is a poster that reads:
To be blunt, and it is good advice to serious newcomers: do not make the mistake of being afraid to be labelled ‘conventional’, ‘traditional’, or any other […]

Book Review By Cody Curley
Welcome to my review of the Logo, Font and Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga. There was some talk of this book in the comments of a past article on this beautiful blog. Someone mentioned something of the cover; I think it was me. Anyway, I think it is an absolute […]

BOOK REVIEW
Made With FontFont: Type for Independent Minds is a celebration of 15 years of the FontFont type library. The low-down (why do we never say “the high-up”?): it’s big, it’s yellow, has 351 pages and it’s divided into an introduction and five sections.

Introduction
A brief history of the founding of type distributor FontShop by Spiekermann […]

Book Review
If you own not a single typography-related book, then reserve a place on your bookshelf for Thinking With Type. Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type is to typography what Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is to physics.
Even those who already know something about typography will benefit from this title. It’s a great “propaganda” […]