Laura Eydmann's Reviews > Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

I’m only just on target with my challenge, and I think this is because this is another genre of books that I am not swift at reading! I would normally dip into books like this and going at it all in one go wasn’t difficult, but I did go a day every now and again where I didn’t pick this up… I think this is mainly because this topic is linked to my job and after spending all day designing and looking at typefaces, occasionally (as much as I love the subject!) I didn’t want to then carry on reading about the subject in my downtime.

However, this makes me sound like I didn’t enjoy the book, when in fact I really enjoyed it. Each chapter was the story of a font, or of specific uses of different fonts, and told the stories of Gill Sans, Futura, Optima and Helvetica just to name a few. There were some interesting anecdotes, little snippets of history, and some technical information, all told in a relaxed and easy to read way. As someone who has studied Typography at degree level, a lot of the content was information I already knew, the history of many famous typefaces and typographers, and news about different faces being used for different work (the Verdana/Ikea new story, the 2012 Olympic logo and font etc.) but in most cases went into a little bit more detail, so the stories were still interesting.

There were many images of both the faces in use and the typographers at work, and the main bulk of the book itself is set in Sabon and Univers 45 Light. Within the publishing details at the beginning of the book, the author explains the typefaces used which I think is lovely. This is not done much anymore and is a real shame as if I like the look and feel of a typeface when I’m reading a book, I like to know what it is!

When a chapter is on a specific typeface, the first paragraph is set in that face which I think is a really nice touch, and throughout the book every face that is mentioned has an example, either in the form of text set in the face or an image, so you do not need to rush off to your computer very 5 seconds to see what the author is talking about!

The stories were short and sweet, and I would highly recommend this to anyone who has the slightest interest in typography, even if you have no real prior knowledge. the book doesn’t use lots of terminology, and when it does, it explains it all very well.As someone who loves typography, this book was definitely a must red for me, but I think most people would find it interesting, it’s a rich and varied subject about something that we all see and use everyday without really thinking about it.