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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
The intro was pretty good. The chapter on Comic Sans, mildly interesting. After that, it was just too dull. I expected a little more personal interaction from the author, not just a history of the various fonts.
This book gets... ALL THE STARS!!!!
It's well-written, full of useful images to illustrate points, and... funny. It wanders around the history of typography, including odd little technologies that came and went like the 8-track.
It takes "font breaks" -- little chapters in between others to talk about the evolutions of specific fonts, including bizarro tidbits about the designers themselves. (For example -- Gill, the crafter of Gill Sans, is known for incest and fornication with animals. There are people out there who want to ban Gill Sans for this very reason. Did you know? I did not. Bizarre shit, man. You also get a chapter about -- who else? -- the author of Comic Sans, and you find out how the font was intended. Poor little Comic Sans.)
You get to learn about the history of the printing press. You get to learn about how near-impossible it is to copyright a font. You learn about legibility studies that are used to craft road signs. You become one with the Helvetica/Arial debate. You learn about IKEA's design shift. You get to visit an ass-ton of ugly fonts.
IT IS A DELIGHT FOR TYPOGRAPHERS!
I must warn you, however, that if you're not interested in typography, this might be merely three or four stars. But still worth reading so you, like me, can go on tangents about type use at the drop of the hat. (Maybe you don't want to be like me. In which case... avoid this.)
It's well-written, full of useful images to illustrate points, and... funny. It wanders around the history of typography, including odd little technologies that came and went like the 8-track.
It takes "font breaks" -- little chapters in between others to talk about the evolutions of specific fonts, including bizarro tidbits about the designers themselves. (For example -- Gill, the crafter of Gill Sans, is known for incest and fornication with animals. There are people out there who want to ban Gill Sans for this very reason. Did you know? I did not. Bizarre shit, man. You also get a chapter about -- who else? -- the author of Comic Sans, and you find out how the font was intended. Poor little Comic Sans.)
You get to learn about the history of the printing press. You get to learn about how near-impossible it is to copyright a font. You learn about legibility studies that are used to craft road signs. You become one with the Helvetica/Arial debate. You learn about IKEA's design shift. You get to visit an ass-ton of ugly fonts.
IT IS A DELIGHT FOR TYPOGRAPHERS!
I must warn you, however, that if you're not interested in typography, this might be merely three or four stars. But still worth reading so you, like me, can go on tangents about type use at the drop of the hat. (Maybe you don't want to be like me. In which case... avoid this.)
I marked this as "read," but that's sort of a lie. I read most of it, but I was too bored by the end to finish it.
A fun book about fonts, if at times going a bit deeper than I as a non-type enthusiast was interested in going. I bought this book in paper exactly because I hoped that the physical format will make use of all the typographic possibilities, and that is definitely the case - when referencing different fonts, the book prints them in the font in question, and there are also copious illustrations and pictures that made the text more interesting. The one thing I felt missing was a discussion about the mess different types make of non-anglophone alphabets - I don't necessarily mean a whole discussion of non-Latin scripts as I know that would require a far more extensive study, but the book is heavily referencing French and German history of type, and so at least a mention of the designing (and the issues associated with) Umlauts and cedilles would surely not go amiss. Tellingly, the Czech word for the @ sign - zavináč - is printed without diacritical marks, as if the book decided to uniformly pretend that these funny extra signs did not exist.
informative
medium-paced
You wouldn't think a book about fonts and typography would be interesting, but it really is! The book even switches up the fonts mid-text to visually demonstrate what is being discussed. I learned so much about something that is ubiquitous yet I never really thought much about or consciously noticed before. Only issue with the book is that it was published in 2010, so some of the references are a bit dated. Mild content warning for brief mention of sexually abusive acts by the creator of the font Gill Sans.
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal cruelty, Incest, Pedophilia
Content warnings are specifically for the section on Gill Sans because of the brief acknowledgement of sexually abusive acts perpetrated by that font's creator.
bibliovermis.com Illustrated Review
Just My Type is a short history of printing and type design, with emphasis on particular typefaces and type designers. If you ever wondered how they chose the fonts used on U.S. Interstate signs or the London Underground…
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I thoroughly enjoyed this one, even though I (in an incredible act of irony) only listened to the audiobook. Nonetheless, I would definitely recommend if you’ve ever wanted a fun and informative book on typefaces. 8.5/10.
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2024 RATING SCALE:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 9.25-10
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 8.25-9.25
⭐️⭐️⭐️6.25-8.25
⭐️⭐️4.25-6.25
⭐️ 0-4.25
*Overlap is to allow for subjective
differences in borderline ratings.
___
2024 RATING SCALE:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 9.25-10
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 8.25-9.25
⭐️⭐️⭐️6.25-8.25
⭐️⭐️4.25-6.25
⭐️ 0-4.25
*Overlap is to allow for subjective
differences in borderline ratings.
A very fun book about fonts -- mostly history. I have a very amateurish interest in fonts and design and I still couldn't tell many of the fonts apart, but I really enjoyed the read.
Extremely specialized subject. Highly recommend it if you're interested in fonts/typography.
This was a fun read, even more so because every so often I'd look up and suddenly notice a font I'd just read something about - street signs, soccer jerseys, and of course the London Underground with its famous font. But being a book-arts nerd, I expected Garfield to cover more of the (rather long) history of fonts, so I was a little disappointed that it focused disproportionately on the second half of the twentieth century, especially digital fonts. Nonetheless, it was full of interesting anecdotes and made for good summer reading without rotting my brain as much as chick lit or the other usual suspects for vacation reads.