Just My Type (book)

Last updated
Just My Type: A Book About Fonts
Just My Type.jpg
First edition (UK)
Author Simon Garfield
Subject Typography
Publisher Profile Books
Publication date
1 October 2010
Media typePrint (Hardcover, paperback)
Pages356
ISBN 978-1-59240-652-4
OCLC 706017795
686.224
LC Class Z250 .G228 2011

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts is a nonfiction book by Simon Garfield, a British journalist and non-fiction author. The book touches on typography in our daily lives, specifically why people dislike Comic Sans, Papyrus, and Trajan Capitals; the overwhelming European popularity of Helvetica; and how a font can make a person seem such a way, such as masculine, feminine, American, British, German, or Jewish. [1]

Contents

Overview

The first chapter, "We Don't Serve Your Type", is about why people dislike the font Comic Sans. Other widely disliked fonts are discussed in chapter 21, "The Worst Fonts in the World". Chapter 2, "Capital Offence", details font etiquette, while chapter 3, "Legibility vs. Readability", details the difference between a font being "legible" and a font being "readable." Chapters 4, "Can a font make me popular?"; 9, "What is it about the Swiss?"; 13, "Can a font be German, or Jewish?"; and 14, "American Scottish", detail how a font can make somebody or something look. Chapter 7, "Baskerville is Dead (Long Live Baskerville)", and various "fontbreaks" detail the histories of specific fonts.

Critical reception

Reception of Just My Type by non-professional reviewers was overwhelmingly positive. The New York Times praised the book, saying that it "does for typography what Lynne Truss's best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves did for punctuation" and that it is a "smart, funny, and accessible book". [2] BBC declared it a "well-written, anecdote-filled romp through the highs and lows of fontdom". [3] The Guardian declared it "bouncy, well-informed, and wittily-designed". [4]

On the other hand, historian of typography Paul Shaw, in a review of the US edition, while admitting the book is "full of fascinating stories and trivia about type" stated that "[u]nfortunately, many of these stories are incomplete or superficial and the trivia often more odd than informative". He goes on to list in detail numerous errors in the book. [5]

Just My Type was named one of the Amazon.com Best Books of the Month for September 2011. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typography</span> Art of typesetting text

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), as well as adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device, unrelated to the communication of information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palatino</span> Serif typeface

Palatino is the name of an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verdana</span> Humanist sans-serif font

Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography group and commissioned by Steve Ballmer. The name "Verdana" is derived from "verdant" (green) and "Ana".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sans-serif</span> Typeface classification for letterforms without serifs

In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than serif typefaces. They are often used to convey simplicity and modernity or minimalism.

In typography, a serif is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface, and a typeface that does not include them is sans-serif. Some typography sources refer to sans-serif typefaces as "grotesque" or "Gothic", and serif typefaces as "roman".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typeface</span> Set of characters that share common design features

A typeface is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight, slope, width, and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emigre Fonts</span> American type foundry

Emigre, Inc., doing business as Emigre Fonts, is a digital type foundry based in Berkeley, California, that was founded in 1985 by husband-and-wife team Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko. The type foundry grew out of Emigre magazine, a publication founded by VanderLans and two Dutch friends who met in San Francisco, CA in 1984. Note that unlike the word émigré, Emigre is officially spelled without accents.

In typography, leading is the space between adjacent lines of type; the exact definition varies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gill Sans</span> Humanist sans-serif typeface family developed by Monotype

Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Frutiger</span> Swiss typeface designer (1928–2015)

Adrian Johann Frutiger was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital typesetting eras. Until his death, he lived in Bremgarten bei Bern.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comic Sans</span> Sans-serif typeface family by Microsoft Corporation

Comic Sans MS is a sans-serif script typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in cartoon speech bubbles, as well as in other casual environments, like informal documents and children's materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">All caps</span> Text with all capital letters

In typography, all caps refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters, for example: "THIS TEXT IS IN ALL CAPS". All caps may be used for emphasis. They are commonly seen in legal documents, the titles on book covers, in advertisements and in newspaper headlines. Short strings of words in capital letters appear bolder and "louder" than mixed case, and this is sometimes referred to as "screaming" or "shouting". All caps can also be used to indicate that a given word is an acronym.

Zuzana Licko is a Slovak-born American type designer and visual artist known for co-founding Emigre Fonts, a digital type foundry in Berkeley, CA. She has designed and produced numerous digital typefaces including the popular Mrs Eaves, Modula, Filosofia, and Matrix. As a corresponding interest she also creates ceramic sculptures, textile prints and jacquard weavings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vincent Connare</span> American typographer (born 1960)

Vincent Connare is an American type designer and former Microsoft employee. Among his creations are the fonts Comic Sans and Trebuchet MS, as well as the Man in Business Suit Levitating emoji. Besides text typefaces, he finalized and hinted the font Marlett which has been used for scalable User Interface icons in Microsoft Windows since 1995 and created portions of the font Webdings that was first shipped with Internet Explorer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Didone (typography)</span> Classification of serif typefaces

Didone is a genre of serif typeface that emerged in the late 18th century and was the standard style of general-purpose printing during the nineteenth. It is characterized by:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luc(as) de Groot</span>

Lucas de Groot, known professionally as Luc(as) de Groot, is a Dutch type designer. He is the head of the type foundry Fontfabrik, also trading as LucasFonts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitstream Charter</span> Typeface

Bitstream Charter is a serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter in 1987 for Bitstream Inc. Charter is based on Pierre-Simon Fournier’s characters, originating from the 18th century. Classified by Bitstream as a transitional-serif typeface, it also has features of a slab-serif typeface and is often classified as such.

Legibility is the ease with which a reader can decode symbols. In addition to written language, it can also refer to behaviour or architecture, for example. From the perspective of communication research, it can be described as a measure of the permeability of a communication channel. A large number of known factors can affect legibility.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slate (typeface)</span> Typeface

Slate is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface designed by Rod McDonald at Monotype Corporation in 2006, which was designed for high levels of legibility.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hamburgevons</span> Text used as a sample for assessing fonts

The word Hamburgefonts is a short piece of meaningless filler text used for assessing the design and the appearance of a typeface. It contains all essential forms in a Latin alphabet, so that the character of the respective font can be recognized quickly. It consists of the letters that are often first designed when designing a typeface.

References

  1. Holland Jessica (2 October 2011). "Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield – review". The Guardian . Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  2. Maslin, Janet (21 August 2011). "Font Pain and Poetry: So Much Depends on a Curve". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  3. Gompertz, Will (18 October 2010). "BBC - Gomp/arts: Simon Garfield: A man of letters". BBC. Retrieved 13 September 2012.
  4. Glancey, Jonathan (4 December 2010). "Just My Type by Simon Garfield and Manuale Tipographico by Giambattista Bodoni - Review". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 September 2012.
  5. Shaw, Paul (2011). "Blue Pencil no. 17—Just My Type—Part One". Paul Shaw. Retrieved 15 February 2022.
  6. "Amazon.com: Best Books of the Month, September 2011". Amazon. Retrieved 12 September 2012.