Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

Simon Garfield's recent publication, Just my type, is, for lack of a better word - cool. Books are sold by their covers, and Just my type reveals how the typeface used on those book covers is an integral part of the artistic design of that cover, and how the font selected for the text affects the readability within. Garfield's work is no exception: the cover showcases numerous fonts and is very visually appealing, and the choice of body text, Sabon, and its inherent readability are explained in a section all its own. The pun included in the title is also brilliant, making the reader feel a bit superior for "getting it" (that the "type" in the title refers to typeface) from the first glance, although they may not consciously realize that their ideas are being manipulated by the fonts used. Just my type is about fonts, "although some whiskered English traditionalists will still insist on [using] `fount' in an elitist way" (p. 31). Garfield entertainingly transitions back and forth between funny anecdotes about the creation or use of a typeface and the history of fonts, between legal concerns for designers and the vast and never ending supply of depictions of an alphabet. Spanning from before the advent of the printing press to almost right this moment and even delving into the future, Garfield addresses why we need new typographic invention: "because the world and its contents are continually changing. We need to express ourselves in new ways" (p. 322).Just my type is just my type of book. The audience of this work will extend from typophiles to graphic design and technical communication students to your average Joe who probably has at least a splash of geek in him. Typeface is everywhere and whether the public at large realizes it or not, it is an integral part of modern existence. Throughout the course of an average day, most seeing individuals will encounter a multitude of different fonts, and these fonts will elicit, or carefully not elicit, automatic responses. Most street signs will just exist, the chosen typeface being carefully inconspicuous, while the t-shirt that says "Ciao Bella" will require a double-take because, due to its font and color choice, it was first thought to say "Coca-Cola." Garfield's first point in Just my type is this very fact, that fonts are everywhere. Using the Bible, comics, and TV show logos, Garfield does an excellent job of pulling the reader in with interesting examples from their current life. Just showing the inside cover of Just my type, which is a periodic table of typefaces, to a handful of my friends was enough to pique the interest of four out of five potential readers .Garfield has an impressive grasp of the human attention span. Just my type grabs the reader's attention with an onset of images from contemporary life, to graphic and humorous typographic images, such as El Lissitzy's famous work "Beat the whites with the red edge" with the type changed to "El Lissitzy gave me a wedgie and I loved it." Garfield then delves into the advent of desktop publishing and how Steve Jobs's history in calligraphy influenced the early fonts that Apple created that changed the printing world entirely when they were released on his first Macintosh computer (p. 3). It takes Garfield a little while to get to the "meat" of the matter of typeface history, but he does eventually - although he retains his comedic edge. Garfield unifies his audience by declaring a common enemy: Comic Sans. He is careful not to disparage the font directly, but reveals the distaste for the font that has been noted loudly by both designers and the public, even showing how the dislike has entered pop culture in joke form: "Comic Sans walks into a bar and the bartender says, `We don't serve your type'" (p. 21). Only then, when the reader is a comrade at arms, does Garfield delve into the real history of typefaces.Throughout Just my type, Garfield discusses the progression of type-technology. The arduous labor of creating metal and wooden types is portrayed, as well as IBM's Typeball which was the first easy way to change a font in personal printing; linotype and monotype are also discussed. Garfield mentions the Type Museum in London, where ancient techniques can be impressed upon modern minds and shares that there are a few true printing presses still in existence, like White's Books (p. 247). Garfield also addresses current trends and difficulties. Aside from corporate branding and patenting every individual character in a typeface, there is no way for designers to ensure credit for their work. Fonts are also often pirated, that is acquired and used without paying the proper licensing fees. And fonts are downright copied. Arial, in fact, is a considered a copy of Helvetica, although the differences between them can be seen to make the fonts as different "as pineapple is from mango" (p. 221). As the book progresses and the subject matter becomes more modern, so do the references. It is shockingly interesting to see YouTube referenced outside of colloquial conversation, as well as CollegeHumor.com. These references make Just my type feel as current as it can possibly be. New music and events are referenced, and the only significant details that are lacking, that have occurred since the publication of the book, are the deaths of both Amy Winehouse (yes, she is referenced) and Steve Jobs. The work is in no way invalidated by these omissions, it is just an interesting to note such changes when reading something so contemporary.Between each chapter detailing different significant historical aspects of type-history, are "fontbreaks." The fontbreaks are akin to slowing during a run to preserve stamina for the rest of the journey. Garfield uses humor throughout all sections of his work, but the fontbreaks bring the reader back to recent times and showcase fonts that the user is at the very least cursorily aware of, i.e., Gill Sans, Futura, Verdana, etc. Another wonderful point that also keeps the reader turning the page is the anticipation for different typefaces appearing within the text itself. Just my type is about type - so of course examples of the different typefaces would be displayed, but the reader would not necessarily expect the differing fonts to be interspersed within the text itself. Garfield references Paul Felton's The ten commandments of typography at one point, and the first commandment is "Thou shalt not apply more than three typefaces in a document" (p. 255). However, typographers are rebellious artists, and Felton's work's "flip-side", Type heresy, begins with, "Thou shalt apply as many different typefaces as thou wanteth to!" (p. 257). Garfield displays fonts as an image sometimes, simply set apart from the verse, but often the font used changes within the sentence being read. Garfield is also very careful about this technique: all type changes are done for a clear purpose. Readers not familiar with an extensive variety of typefaces may wish for even more inclusive font changes, but the careful selection of altered fonts serves to maintain the cohesiveness of the work and can also inspire the reader to research the referenced fonts him/herself.There are a few areas in which Just my type is lacking. Garfield has knowledge of all things typographic, but his reader may not. In addition to the reader potentially not being intimately familiar with a library of fonts, which can impede the value of references and general understanding, Garfield also makes assumptions of knowledge. While he is careful to explain some of the basics, such as ascenders, descenders, and x-height, he seems to assume that the reader has some knowledge of how a typeface is created and what makes them unique and works of art. The reader learns about the artist, about the inspiration and motivating factor of some fonts' creation, but not much about why these items, letters, which may seem so alike, are in fact very different. Garfield works to explain the ethos inspired by certain fonts, but not necessarily how those in the same "family" are related. While there is a general progression and line of continuity, there is also a certain disjointed haphazardness. Coming from a point of little knowledge, the reader would benefit from some items of instruction earlier in the work. The marked differences between typefaces, such as line thickness variance in a single character and the "key" letters of a typeface: g, a, s, and e, are not discussed until very late in the book (p. 293); it would benefit the reader to have this information at the start of the work in order to be able to aptly evaluate the fonts shown. Just my type feels like something of a teaser - a tool to pique interest and encourage further research for the ignorant, and a light and interesting read for those in the know.Just my type is intended for informationally entertaining purposes. It is non-fiction and chock-full of information, but it is not to be used as a textbook. There is a table of contents and an index, tools of reference materials and quite useful within this text, but the chapter titles are clever instead of informative and the index is not cross-referential. Garfield presents information over a broad scope, but he does not completely explain any items. Just my type is a great tool to establish interest in typefaces; enough information is given to whet one's appetite and Garfield references easily accessible sources of information for further perusal. Overall it is a surprisingly exciting read. The end feels a bit hurried and provides more light commentary than meaty information, talking about the best and worst fonts, etc. However, Garfield's framing of the "heaviest" information by pop-data at both the start and finish of the book may be a sign of editorial brilliance - pulling the reader in and leaving the reader with a sense of pure entertainment, while delivering valuable information all the while.

You are looking at it right now, and if it is doing its job, you don't even notice it. It might represent a creation that has taken centuries to come to its current state of perfection, or it might be something that a dedicated specialist worked on for years and brought out a decade ago. It represents artistry directed within a circumscribed realm. I am talking about the font in which these letters are presented. Thirty years ago, fonts were usually the interest of only a select few in the printing world, but now every computer is charged with fonts and everyone gets to be an amateur typographer (technically, the font is a specific set of metal parts, or digital files, that allows reproduction of letters, and a typeface is the design of letters the font allows you to reproduce, but you can see how the words would get used interchangeably). Simon Garfield is not a professional typographer; his role is bringing out fine nonfiction about, say, stamp collecting, history, or the color mauve. But he has an amateur's enthusiasm for fonts, and communicates it infectiously in _Just My Type: A Book About Fonts_ (Profile Books). This is not a collection of type designs, though there are many illustrations. In most cases it won't help you in finding out what font you happen to be looking at (but it will tell you how to do so in surprising ways). It is a book of appreciation for an art that is largely invisible, but is also essential.I would not like to read pages set in any of the fonts in one of Garfield's last chapters, "The Worst Fonts in the World." On the list is Papyrus, which caused a stir when it was used extensively in the film _Avatar_. The expensive film used a free (and overused) display font, and font fans noticed. There was also a font war (also known as a "fontroversy") when in 2009 Ikea decided to change its display font from Futura to Verdana. The change inspired passionate arguments in mere bystanders, "like the passion of sports fans," says Garfield, and the _New York Times_ joked that it was "perhaps the biggest controversy to come out of Sweden." The biggest of font wars has had a comic edge to it, and it is the starting point for Garfield's book. Comic Sans is a perfectly good font. It looks something like the letters you see in comic books, smooth, rounded, sans serif, clear. Because it caught on and was quickly overused, there has been a "ban Comic Sans" movement. Even the heads of the movement, which is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, admit that Comic Sans looks fine, say, on a candy packet; but they have also seen it on a tombstone and on a doctor's brochure about irritable bowel syndrome. If you see a font and you wonder which one it is, you can take steps to identify it. Lots of people like to do this. It is especially useful to examine the lower case g. (The other character that reveals a lot is the ampersand, which, maybe since it is not a letter or a punctuation mark, appears in exuberant eccentricity even in some calm fonts.) That g has a lot of variable points; it might have a lower hook or it might have a loop, it might have a straight line on the right, or the upper loop might have an ear that rises or droops, and this doesn't even get into whether the upper loop is a circle, a long or wide ellipse, or has uniform width. Take a look at the g letters shown here, or in your regular reading matter, and you will be amazed at how variable a selection of even only a few can be. If you have your g, you can look it up in font books, but there are so many fonts now that no book comes close to showing them all. There's an application for the iPhone which allows you to take a picture of the letter in question, upload it somewhere, and then get suggestions of possible matches. Or you can go to a type forum and ask there, because there are lots of people devoted to hunting down this sort of thing. And they take it so seriously that, as on many internet forums, they get rather snarky about disagreements.If you don't pay attention to fonts (and most of them do their work best by not calling attention to themselves), Garfield's entertaining book might get you started. There are chapters about the difficult matter of copyrighting a font, because if you design a good font it is easy to copy it, and there isn't much that can be done about font piracy. Font designers work for love, not money. There's a chapter on "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy white dog" and other phrases that show all the letters, or particular words that display a lot of the letters most important to font design. There's plenty of history starting with Gutenberg and the historical Roman types from which are descended many of the fonts we read every day. Between the chapters are "font breaks" to praise Albertus or Gill Sans and to tell about how they came to be designed, with plenty of anecdotes and other funny or sad stories. This is a delightful, amusing book about a whole world most of us take for granted.

As a graphic artist who completed an apprenticeship during pre-Mac days and retired around the time the MacBook Air was launched I loved it. I found it full of memories and trade in-jokes as I was taken back to the days when paste-up had nothing to do with decorating and enlarging a title or reducing the company logo a little involved an entire darkroom full of equipment, as well as understanding which dpi halftone screen will work best and how to adjust the OHP Camera exposure to compensate (followed later by a certain amount of Cow-Gum).Anyway, back to reality... today’s Graphic Designers – whatever was wrong with plain old graphic artist (without needing capital letters no matter where the words fell in a sentence) as a job title I’ll never know – will still enjoy the book, although some of the nuances of old may be lost on them.I find it hard to imagine anyone without some professional involvement with typography would find it quite such a good read as I did, but if one has a serious interest in books and writing in general, or just wanting to read from curiosity, I think it will be just as easily accessible and if should be interesting to varying degrees.The way the writer brings this rather humourous observation of historical views on type up to date is beautifully articulated and full of insightful descriptions and ideas on typefaces and their usage is really worth reading.In case anyone is interested, I read this book from the point of view of one lucky enough to have seen a massive technological change in graphic art. I have added below a few of my own memories of working with type in the hope it may encourage more people to read this absolute delight of a book. Please just ignore the ramblings of an old git if you think I’ve gone too far…I remembered many, many painful repetitions of Palace Script Letraset invitations to weddings or funerals (mostly) until I at last got the spacing correct and the baseline perfect. Then after mastering that, learning to use our wonderous IBM typesetting machine was a joy – it was so amazing… it could even store the galleys onto thin plastic cards that were about the size of the time-cards with which we clocked in and out, being monitored every second of our working days. But, oh, what excitement when I was finally presented, in a small manilla box and nestling inside amongst soft tissue paper, I found the 7pt Times medium golfball head I had been asking for for so long! I needed it join the 8pt, 10pt and 11pt golfballs (each size in light, medium *and* bold versions), it stayed with me for months! I thought myself very lucky because we had the same fount range – yes, that was how I was taught to spell it at the time – in Helvetica too!Contrasting this ‘modern’ section of the art room were the sights, sounds and smells of long ago... the cabinets of seemingly ancient and mysterious bits of metal that only the oldest member of staff, past retirement age but the only one who knew what to do with it, and the terrifying, noisy, hot Linotype metal type casting machine growling in the corner as it prepared the type for the ancient Heidelberg letterpress.I feel privileged to have been part of the last tradesmen to experience such a massive change in print technology. One of very few to have been taught to use the AppleMac SE (with a 5” square, black and white screen and I think I’m right in saying it had a 128k hard drive and 500k floppy discs), by the original team of instructors from America, who had to accompany the first sales team bringing them to the midlands in 1985 as there was nobody in the UK with experience to teach us early-adopters at that time.By the way, I might not be as old as you think… I’m 51 now and my 17yr old nephew, himself recently having commenced an apprenticeship in computer engineering, thinks it’s cool to have an aunty who was one of the first to take on the Apple-Mac DTP system (as it was then known) in the UK.

This is a non-fiction book about fonts. Its strong point is that it includes plenty of illustrations, and some of the text is printed in the font being described: so, for example, the first paragraph of a discussion of the Albertus typeface is set in Albertus. The print edition of the book is a handsome physical object. I didn't read the ebook, so I'm not sure how well it comes across in electronic format.For me, the content didn't quite live up to the presentation. The chapters cover the material in a random order (not chronological or any other sensible scheme), and many chapters are just a grab-bag of very loosely connected sections and anecdotes. The whole book is like a giant listicle with a hundred bullet points; the lack of structure makes it feel curiously unsatisfying.Some of the stories are individually interesting. However, this material is counterbalanced by numerous rather dull sections in which Font X was created by Person Y for Purpose Z, and inevitably these become repetitive.Throughout, the book pitches itself at the level of a breezy magazine article, with the consequent lack of depth and rigour. A few factoids about typography are sprinkled into the narrative, but there's no real introduction to the key technical facets. The book is fun to read, yet doesn't make you feel as if you've learned very much.

Just My Type is a book about fonts. It tells the story behind the design of many different typefaces and their designers, and passes judgement on some of the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ fonts in common use.I have a slightly complicated history with this book. I bought it when it first came out, having seen a number of rave reviews, including a virtually evangelical endorsement from Robert Bound. However, first time round, I didn’t get on with it. I found it dull indeed, and gave up with it after a short while.Early in 2014, I decided to tackle it again: I could not accept that so many people whose opinion I respect had so highly recommended a book which I found impenetrable. Second time round, I very much enjoyed it, and devoured it in a couple of days. I enjoyed its humour and levity; its facts and figures; its tales of times gone by and anecdotes of contemporary life in the design community. It was a real treat, a pleasure to read. I cannot understand why I found it such a struggle the first time round. Garfield deftly brings the human spirit to a topic which, at face value, lacks any humanity. He brings type alive in the most engaging way.Each chapter of the book discusses a font trend or another similar topic, including the history of how it came to exist, and how it progressed over time. The second chapter, which discusses the terminology of type, has a lovely quote which sums up the combination of accuracy and levity which the author employs throughout:In common parlance we use font and typeface interchangeably, and there are worse sins.Between the chapters, there are ‘font breaks’, in which Garfield typically discusses an interesting story relating to a single typeface. This structure might seem unusual at first glance, but it works well, setting up a predictable rhythm throughout the book. And, as one might expect, the book is peppered with different typefaces, providing illustration of the points discussed.I found Just My Type to be a lovely book – at least on second reading – and it made me genuinely interested in a topic I’d never considered in great detail previously. It was factual, but with a real sense of fun. I’d thoroughly recommend it.

I’ve always been interested in fonts (I still have an ancient Letraset catalogue round the house somewhere), but I can’t boast anything even approaching the degree of erudition, passion and obsession which is demonstrated in this book. It has made me far more aware of the fonts I see around me in the street, on food containers etc.I was fascinated to discover that the producers of historical films do meticulous research on every aspect of the period they are representing only to slip up on a detail like an anachronistic font.I particularly enjoyed the chapter called DIY, starting with the inky title. The John Bull printing outfit, DYMO tape, Letraset, the IBM Selectric – I remember them all. All of them great fun to use, apart from fiddling with the balls on the IBM typewriter every time you wanted to change from roman to italics to bold and back again. I’d forgotten all about the John Bull printing set – I loved the bit about the tiny letters getting lost in the carpet.At the beginning of the 80s, I edited a little feminist magazine in Esperanto, of course using Letraset headings. (I loved selecting the appropriate font for each article.) My problem wasn’t the E, but O, which is the noun ending in Esperanto and always ran out long before the other letters.Anyway, many thanks to Simon Garfield for these happy reminiscences, and also for the rest of this very informative and readable book.

I bought this book because a have an interest in fonts, and it looked promising. I was not disappointed!In fact it is amazing! Simon Garfield reveals all sorts of fascinating details about all sorts of typeface fonts. There must be about 1,000 different fonts and font features that he discusses in the book. But it is not a slow technical read! It is informative, clearly written, and at a gentle pace so that you can ponder and take it all in... and it is very funny!Simon has divided his 352 page book into 22 themed and lively chapters, dealing with all aspects of design and printing achievements, font fashions, etc. He draws attention to the 'message' of the various fonts! For example, he covers why Barack Obama chose Gotham, and why Amy Winehouse opted for 30s Art Deco! And why Germanic/Gothic fonts were once all the rage, but fonts changed, and do change, for various reasons.It is well illustrated throughout, well-seasoned with interesting and amusing anecdotes. Photos and illustrations enhance the text at almost every page opening. Initial paragraphs of each chapter are printed in the landmark font(s) under discussion. Invaluable!From Baskerville to Zapf, no lithographic stone is left unturned, including the role of Letraset!The author's writing style is an easy read and very conversational -he has authored 12 books and is a Somerset Maugham prize winner. After rapidly devouring the book from the moment of purchase, I have deliberately stopped reading it at half-way, because I never want to finish it, it is so delightful!Simon Garfield has composed an excellent detailed book about fonts. Reading it will make you think twice when choosing the appropriate font(s) for your next written work! With his guidance you'll be amazed at the insight you will have. Worth every penny!