typography books

[Joe Armstrong]

   Several people mailed me for references to typography books

   The books I have read are listed below:

   If you only read one buy and read #1

/Joe

 PS feel free to mail me more titles

1) 

The Complete Manual of Typography - James Felici - 
ISBN: 0321127307
Published by Adobe

  Excellent  - a  lot of  detail, several  *chapters* devoted  so line
spacing  and justification  - lots  of postscript  specific  details -
interesting  history of  the reasons  why Microsoft,  Apple  and Adobe
stuff  is incompatible.  Why  virtually identical  fonts on  Apple and
Microsoft products  have completely different names.  Why truetype was
developed ...

2)

A typographic workbook - Kate Clair
Paperback: 384 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.75 x 11.01 x 8.59
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; (January 4, 1999)
ISBN: 0471292370

  Also excellent - very good  history of printing. The book is printed
in hundreds of different typefaces - every two or three pages the main
typefaces  change  -  so  you   can  see  the  effects  of  typesetting
significant bodies of texts in different typefaces.

  Reading this book is *dangerous* - she warns that you'll never every
look  at a typeface  again without  trying to  classify the  serifs and
trying to date  it .. - do you know the  difference between bracket and
square serifs - how many serif families there are etc.

3) 

Making digital type look good - bob gordon

Less good - rather quark specific - has nice potted histories of the
major typeface designers - who was garamond etc.

Many pages of comparison charts - i.e. prints of different typefaces
varying leading, measure, .... etc.

4) 

About Face - Reviving the rules of typography.

An arty book - nice prints of old 14-19 century books showing different 
typographies.

5)

Bokstaven, ordet, texten - Christer Hellmark.

(in swedish) - great book.

  This  is  a  beautiful high  quality  book  -  the author  not  only
discusses  the typography  but even  details  of the  paper (like  the
weight of  the paper, the color  nuances, the type of  cloth (and the
color) used in the binding.

  This is  modern printing at its  best - there is  attention to *all*
levels of detail - the text is clear and well written - the typography
is beautiful - the choice, color and weight of paper is exemplary, and
it's well bound - it's even fairly cheap (c. 245 kr)