Typography, Referenced: A Comprehensive Visual Guide to the Language, History, and Practice of Typography Hardcover – February 1, 2012

This is probably a decent textbook for first year students headed for careers in advertising and commercial design. It skims the surface of a thousand topics. It has some splashy design examples and a short selection of type specimen. Its discussions of typefaces are brief, shallow, and sometimes eccentric. For example, the paragraph on the traits of Garamond (as if there were just one) is exactly thirty-four words long and concludes that Garamond is "blobby." Treatment of layout is perfunctory, but illustrations of contemporary designs with type are ample and excellent. Its own choices of typefaces and layout don't inspire confidence. Material on Internet resources is much better than anything else.

I should start this review with a disclaimer: I'm a developer, not a designer. I bought this book on a whim, wanting to understand more about design and why certain fonts click in certain contexts and others don't. I thought it might help me pick a new font to use for my new company web site.Typography Reference has proved to be an excellent impulse purchase (proven by checking similar books aimed at the same audience in Waterstones). Don't let the rather dull cover fool you. This is a lavish, beautifully produced and designed book. As the authors explain in the introduction their aim s to cover the BREADTH of typography and point to other sources for the DEPTH. It more than lives up to that goal. More importantly it does so in a way that's exciting, inspirational and fun to read. I intended reading just a chapter of this book on a lazy Saturday and lost the whole day reading from start to finish. A book on typography that's hard to put down - who'd have thought it?!I could give a breakdown of how the book is divided, but in reality there's only one thing you need to know: it covers the basics, the history, the main fonts, creative usage, inspirational ideas - pretty much everything you'd want. Just go and buy it already!

This is an overwhelming thorough book about typography. The most positive thing about Typography Referenced is that it's packed with so much facts on each page, it's really a ton of information there –it was really refreshing! The layout is also nice, and the navigation is super-easy. I.e. names within the text are followed with references to what pages you could read more about this person. Great way to learn a bit of type founders history and who-did-what. I also really liked how the book highlights different types and the anatomy of them, and points out their characteristics and what differs them from other similar fonts. In the back the book has a fairly big chapter with important typography webpages, like Typophile and similar pages. Bonus points for that idea!I can easily say that this is the best book I've read on this topic.

Book received as advertised and very quickly.