Hi all,

I thought it would be nice if we stuck our feet up for 5 minutes for a little chat about one of my favorite subjects Typography.

Come on, you love it! You do, you do, you do. You just might not know it. But what happens when it goes bad? How do we know if it’s bad? How many times have you been tripped up when reading your favorite publication (For me it’s Gardeners weekly, bushes and shrubs special edition) when, out of nowhere good crikey, a tricksy letter leaps out of the page and says “hi there, I’m down here being all out of place and ugly among all these pretty other letters”, or a rogue ‘O’ sits too near / far from a ‘P’ (or other straight sided character for that matter) and you just want to tumble dry a beaver in despair! And it’s not just the fake crappy ones like ‘comic-sans’ that are at it either, oh no! It seems that even the really really brilliant typefaces can have their own equivalent of ‘Christmas Jumpers’ tucked away at the bottom of their little typey closets. Ever noticed the disastrous Question Mark in Futura?, the odd protrubance and bulginess of the ascender on the lower case ‘f’ of Adobe Caslon Pro? or the, and my personal worst offender, descending Tail of the capital ‘R’ of Bembo (however, this point of view does sometimes upset people).

However, lovely people, help is at hand! Love him, really love him, hate him, entirely ambivalent of his existence on this good earth, or just plain don’t know him from a squished dormouse, Massimo Vignelli has published an amazing 96 page book on better understanding typography in graphic design. It must be stated that this book comes entirely from Mr. Vignelli’s opinion of a ‘better understanding of typography in graphic design’, and for those of you who do know Massimo from a squished dormouse will of course appreciate that he has rather opinionated.

The book gives specific details on Vignelli’s methodology and approach as well as how he decides on typefaces, grid systems, paper sizes and stock. Which is slightly ironic as the book is not out in print, but available as a PDF download here. It is well worth a peruse over a nice hot cup of tea, I assure you. Do make sure to look out for typos.

Bye Bye