Just what are the essential books on typography? When faced with the task of choosing the definitive list, I first had to determine just what makes a book essential. Certainly I have favorites such as Richard Hoffman's charming "Don't Nobody Care About Zeds," a specimen book showing Z in 85 different metal typefaces, each in a decorated setting, but while it's a fun little book, it's not what I'd consider indispensable. Similarly, there are classic texts such as select volumes of "The Fleuron" and Bruce Roger's "Paragraphs on Printing," but are they essential? I decided not.
The books listed here form a sort of canon of typographic works. This listing is not meant to be an end, only a beginning. There is no attempt at comprehensiveness simply because there is too much to comprehend. But unlike other areas of creative pursuit, there is a small enough body of work to make a reasonable starting point.
So what forms our canon? In other fields, whether literary or musical or artistic, the central canon consists of those works that are important to understanding the larger world of typography. As such, we want to cover the basics of typography, but also have a solid sense of typographic history. Therefore it's important to read not only books covering design principles such as Carl Dair's Design With Type, but also those about typographic history such as Sebastian Carter's Twentieth Century Type Designers.
Design Principles
Whether one's typographic pursuits tend toward a clean Swiss-German neue typographie style or a layered postmodernist approach, there are principles that should at least be known-even if they are, in the end, rejected. The same fundamental reasons why one should think twice before mixing Baskerville and Bodoni on the page apply equally to Blast-O-Rama and Not Caslon. The books in this section provide a grounding in the essentials of typographic design as seen by four prominent designers of the 20th century.
Design With Type, Carl Dair (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
Carl Dair's typographic works encompass a wide range of endeavors, from book design to advertising and work for television. Design With Type reflects that experience and is easily the best introduction to typography available. While type technology has changed considerably since 1952 when the original version of this book was published, the principles underlying it have not. Dair has managed to create a work that instructs the reader in typography without getting caught up in the technology. As a result, Design With Type is no less valid in 1996 than it was 44 years ago. I know of no better introduction to type for the tyro typographer.
Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst (Hartley & Marks Publishers Inc., Vancouver, 1996; second edition). Robert Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style presents a rather lyrical approach to typography. Bringhurst lays out typographic principles while maintaining a sense of play. Some of the suggestions initially seem radical, but quickly make perfect sense, such as substituting capitals or boldface from another type family to get a better look on the page. A chapter near the end of the book, "Prowling the Type Specimen Books" is especially delightful, providing insight to a variety of typefaces. A second edition has been recently released with additional information on computerized typography and expansion of the previous contents. A new appendix lists the major type foundries.
The Design of Books, Adrian Wilson (Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1993). Adrian Wilson was perhaps the premier typographer in San Francisco after World War II, producing book designs for a number of publishers, from his own private press to the University of California Press. This book distills his knowledge and experience in book design into an enjoyable read, describing not only his own technique but that of other designers, from the traditionalism of Bruce Rogers to the avant-garde typography typified by Massin's design for Le Cantatrice Chauve. While Wilson occasionally gets bogged down in addressing technological questions that are no longer relevant, it's still essential reading for anyone involved in book design.
Asymmetric Typography, Jan Tschichold (Faber & Faber, London, 1967; out of print). Before there was the current crop of "new typography" there was die neue typographie with Jan Tschichold as one of its leading proponents. Tschichold's earlier work, The New Typography, has recently been published in English by the University of California Press, but the shorter Asymmetric Typography is much more easily digested and a better statement of the principles behind the new typography of Germany in the 1930s. While the philosophical battle over design is now passé, the design principles laid out here by Tschichold are an excellent example of his strong understanding of how typography should work. The relative inaccessibility of the book at present represents an opportunity for a publishing house to issue a Dover-style inexpensive reprint of the book.
Deeper Studies
Of course typography goes beyond texts introducing basic principles. These next five books represent the best of the examinations of more specialized typographic research, whether issues of typographic history or the details of designing and using type.
Best of Fine Print on Type and Typography, Edited by Charles Bigelow, Paul Hayden Duensing and Linnea Gentry (Bedford Arts Press, San Francisco, 1989). Fine Print was the premier book arts journal in the United States from 1975 until 1990 when it ceased publication. In its 16-year run, it covered all aspects of book publishing from papermaking, printing and binding to design and typography. These articles, culled from the first 14 years of the publication's history, present one of the best-if not the best-collection of articles on type and typography from the best-known names in the field. The range of articles is stunning: from historical examinations of Civilité and the Hungarian type designer Miklos Kis to examinations of contemporary designs such as Gudrun Zapf-Von Hesse's Diotima or Kris Holmes' Isadora. The articles on the creation of typefaces, in both metal and photo or digital format, are quite enlightening. The diversity of techniques and sources for inspiration can be quite informative. While this book can be hard to obtain because of the demise of Fine Print as an institution, it is well worth the effort to locate a copy.
Twentieth Century Type Designers, Sebastian Carter (W. W. Norton, New York, 1995; new edition). Twentieth Century Type Designers is without peer. There is no other book that provides such a comprehensive survey of the work of major typographers in recent history. On occasion, Carter retreats to a nondiscriminatory recitation of types created by a designer, but there are enough thorough examinations of typefaces to make up for this. The rerelease of this volume by a major publisher (the first edition was published by Taplinger Publishing) makes it easier to find, although the changes are relatively minor, being mostly short insertions of more recent designers.
Finer Points in the Spacing & Arrangement of Type, Geoffrey Dowding (Hartley & Marks Publishers Inc., Vancouver, 1995). There are few books that concern themselves with the details of fine typesetting quite like Dowding's book. Dowding is a proponent of tight, even spacing and tending to such details as optical (as opposed to physical) centering of display matter and the like. The book is composed of two sections, "The Setting of Text Matter" and "The Setting of Displayed Matter" and both provide a more complete accounting of text setting than one will find anywhere else. After reading this book, the designer may never be satisfied with most commercial typography again.
Letters of Credit, Walter Tracy (David Godine, Boston, 1989). Walter Tracy's Letters of Credit is a rare source of typographic critiques. Over half of the book is devoted to a close examination of the work of just five designers: Jan van Krimpen, Frederic Goudy, Rudolf Koch, W. A. Dwiggins and Stanley Morison (the latter presenting the orthodox account of the origins of Times New Roman before the discovery of Sterling Burgess' typeface). If Letters of Credit only consisted of this section, it would be an invaluable book. But the beginning portion is equally wonderful, consisting of a 12-chapter study of design. If there is any defect of this book, it is the lack of an adequate context of other books on type design in which Letters of Credit might take its place. As a result, this part of the book is a strange mixture of the basic and the arcane. Fewer than 60 pages separate the definition of "set" from a detailed (and excellent) explanation of character spacing. While the basic information may be off-putting to the expert typographer and the expert information may have the same effect on the tyro DTPer, these chapters will still be useful to both. The latter class of readers would be well-advised to reread the book at least once a year as their knowledge and experience increase. In all this is well worth a place in any typographer's library.
Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use, D.B. Updike (Harvard and Oxford, various editions through the 1920s; out of print). The original two-volume hardcover edition costs between $100-$200 depending on condition. (A Dover reprint was published but is no longer available.) While it's sadly out of date, having missed the typographic scholarship and development since its writing, Updike's Printing Types is still the most comprehensive survey of typographic history in existence. Anyone interested in understanding the origins of traditional type designs would be well-served by a reading of this book. The second edition has additional notes at the back of the book indicating advances in typographic scholarship since the first edition (such as Beatrice Warde's discovery that many of the types called "Garamond" were in fact the work of Jean Jannon), although the lack of any reference to the notes in the texts makes their usefulness marginal at best.
Type Specimens
Every typographer should have a wide selection of type specimen books to help find the right type for the job at hand. The two listed here are good choices. The first gives a good sampling of historical faces with background information. The second provides the most comprehensive showing of digital typefaces now available, although it is inevitably incomplete.
American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, Mac McGrew (Oak Knoll Press, 1994). Roughly 1600 typefaces are displayed in American Metal Typefaces, in showings that are usually complete. Each typeface is shown in a 24pt specimen (unless, of course, it was never cast in that size) along with some brief information on its origin. The result is a volume running nearly 400 pages filled with specimens of just about every typeface ever cast in America. Scattered through the book are various tidbits about typography, some of which could be truly enlightening to the reader who has little or no experience with metal type.
Precision Type Font Reference Guide Version 5.0 (Precision Type, Commack, New York, 1995). There are two big problems with a contemporary comprehensive specimen book: First, it's going to be big. Second, it's going to be out of date before it's finished. The Precision Type Font Reference Guide has fallen victim to both of these faults. But it manages to be more comprehensive than anything else in its class. It may only list those fonts that Precision Type sells, but that covers a substantial fraction of the market. For the working typographer, the more specimen books on hand, the better job he or she can do. This book, however, is the one worth paying for.