- Publisher
- Princeton Architectural Press
- Published
- 2010
- Shelf
- typography: Fundamentals
- ISBN
- 9781568989693
Fundamentals
Thinking with Type
Ellen Lupton
The clearest short course in setting type: letter, text, grid, in that order.
Why read it
Lupton teaches typography as a set of decisions with consequences rather than a set of rules to obey. The book climbs three scales (the letter, the text block, the grid), so by the time you reach layout you already know why a measure runs to 45–75 characters and what goes wrong on either side of that.
Why own it
It is a specimen book as much as a textbook: every principle is shown as a spread you can hold your own work against. The anatomy diagrams and the type-crime pages are what you reach for in the middle of deciding, which is why it lives on the desk rather than the shelf.
Who it is for
Anyone setting type on purpose for the first time, and every self-taught designer with a gap where the fundamentals should be.
Reading order
Book 2 of 5 in the typography reading order. See all 5
Read nextType Matters!Jim WilliamsWilliams then shows the faults that creep into real documents, such as rivers and widows, each set wrong and then right.Read before thisStop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works
Opens a search on AbeBooks, a network of independent and antiquarian sellers, which is where a good part of this shelf has to be found, because it is out of print.
Read next
Chosen because they argue with this one, not because a machine noticed they share a category.
