Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

Just My Type:A Book About Fonts

By Simon Garfield

Gotham Books, 2011. 356 pages. Nonfiction

Until the advent of computers for the common man, most people had never given a moment’s thought to fonts. Now everyone has myriad fonts at their disposal: Century Gothic, Bookman Old Style, Helvetica, Comic Sans, Garamond, etc. This book is a terrific introduction and overview to font design, implications & consequences of font selections, and a bit of history of types. There are numerous historical vignettes and anecdotes. My favorite regards the unfortunate fate of the original Cobden-Sanderson fonts used to produce the beautiful books that issued from the Doves Press in the early 20^th century. The stories of successful and unsuccessful font selections permeate our culture.  Amy Winehouse, Barack Obama, The Beatles and the Beach Boys, American Airlines, IKEA, Vanity Fair & Tiger Woods all pepper the pages of Just My Type. Font designs are intellectual property and require licenses for their proper use. There is a deliciously ironic story about a problematic anti-piracy campaign by HADOPI, the French agency responsible for policing copyright infringements.

This book is well written, nicely illustrated, and surprisingly engaging. I found this book to be both useful and entertaining. One word of warning: if you do read this book, you may find that you begin seeing the typefonts instead of the words.

SML