I’ve read this twice now, and twice I have thought it amazing that there are people who have not heard about this book. I suppose this is because I am buried in my own perspective: former college graphic design major and current amateur letterpress printer.

The re-read was prompted by my recent work of rehabilitating my old Chandler & Price press, and trying to learn everything about this elegant art. Bringhurst’s brilliant book is both reference and narrative, something to keep at hand when setting type and trying to remember average letters per 20-pica line in 10-point fonts, but also something to curl up with. What a peculiar balance!

Bringhurst isn’t just a type expert; he’s also a poet. As such, the tone is master-crafted and evocative. He speaks of motion and negative space and the moods of the printed word. All this while dosing you with history and the occasional barbed interjection (Mr. Bringhurst is not a fan of Helvetica or Cheltenham, for example).

The first half a dozen chapters focus on type in a pan-technological study. The foundations laid here are relevant both to setting type by hand as well as kerning in Adobe Illustrator. Then there are a few chapters on layout–which manage to integrate proportion, mathematics, musical harmonies, the Golden Mean and a certain amount of mysticism and reverence. Toward the end of the book, there is more detail on digital typography (which I must admit I skimmed because of my current focus).

If you do anything with type, read this book. It is required.

LibraryThing Tags:

read, printing, letterpress, design, reread, printing, layout, readin2008, nonfiction, reference

As always, see all of my reviews on LibraryThing.

Tags: Books, font, graphic design, layout, nonfiction, reading, reference, review, type

lyzadanger’s review: “I finished this nigh a week ago but I’m still challenged to say exactly how I feel about it.Reading this book is like getting off a bus and finding yourself in a third-world country where you not only don’t speak the language, but you don’t even understand the brand of humanity exercised around you. It’s a whirling confusion of sweetness paired with inhuman destructiveness. From my admittedly sheltered perspective, the leap of understanding required to conceive of how anyone could behave this way, playing fast and loose with human life in such an elementally evil way, is difficult to grasp. But I suppose that is the point.

All that said, I find that I like Beah. Anyone who can start sensitive, devolve into the Heart of Darkness and somehow come back again is a deep character in my book.

Watch out reading this if you, like me, are sensitive to graphic imagery. There were times when I had to force myself to keep reading, assuring myself that I *needed* to know about this, to understand this chaos. I found it difficult to read at night or when I was feeing tense.”

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2007), Hardcover, 240 pages

**** (of 5)
, Read for Book Club

Tags: 50 book challenge, africa, autobiography, bookclub, memoir, nonfiction, read, readin2007, sierra leone, war

lyzadanger’s review: “What I hoped would be an educational, historical read about geology turned out instead to be mostly an elegiac to the alleged personal brilliance and, well, worthiness of the early 19th century geologic pioneer, William Smith. I dove in wishing for details, what I got was spates of almost whimpering testimonial about how slighted the morally unassailable Mr. Smith was by his colleagues and the general churchiness of his contemporary puritan English society. Basically: Think biography here, not history or geology, and you’ll have more accurate expectations.

While I agree with most of Winchester’s arguments–religion stood in the way of deeper scientific inspection, for example, he had a tendency to repeat them so often that, even as an adherent to the concept, I was put off. I should have counted how many times he repeated the notion that drawing-room dandies and dilettante geologists of the nascent Geological Society were BAD, and the practical, muddy, romanticized “real” geologists like Mr. Smith were where it was at. Tiring.

There were brief runs of interesting historical fact and glimpses into Regency life that made it tolerable. It also ended on a cheerful note, which was reassuring.”

Harper Perennial (2002), Paperback, 352 pages
tags: borrowed, history, geology, england, 19th century, nonfiction, read, readin2007, 50 book challenge

Tags: geology, nonfiction