Type - The secret history of letters

Simon Loxley

248 pages, parution le 12/05/2004

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Résumé

Type is the bridge between writer and reader, between thought and understanding. Type is the message-bearer: an art-form that impinges upon every [iterate being and yet for most of Its history it has conformed to the old adage that 'good typography should be invisible'; it should not distract with its own personality. It was only at the end of the nineteenth century that designers slowly realised that they could say as much with their lettering as writers could with their words. Form, of course, carries as much meaning as content. Now, anyone within reach of a computer and its limitless database of fonts has the same power.

Type: The Secret History of Letters tells its story for the first time, treating typography as a hidden measure of our history. From the tempestuous debate about its beginnings in the fifteenth century, to the invention of our most contemporary lettering, Simon Loxley, with the skill of a novelist, tells of the people and events behind our letters. How did Johann Gutenberg, in late 1438, come to think of printing? Does Baskerville have anything to do with Sherlock Holmes? Why did the Nazis re-invent Blackletter? What is a Zapf?

Type is a guide through the history of our letters and a study of their power. From fashion through propaganda and the development of mass literacy, Loxley shows how typography has changed our world.

Sommaire

The adventure and the art: the obscure origins of a revolution
Dynasty: in which William Caslon makes Britain the type centre of the world
Garamuddle: when is a sixteenth-century typeface not a sixteenth-century typeface?
The maverick tendency: the type and strange afterlife of John Baskerville
Detour | Meltdown: a stroll around a fallen giant
'Hideous Italians': thicks, thins, and the rise of advertising type
American spring: creating the modern age
An awful beauty: the private press movement
Under fire: Frederic Goudy, type star
Detour | Typecast: on the trail of the metal fanatics
Going Underground: Edward Johnston's letters for London
The doves and the serpent: Stanley Morison and the Wardes
Dangerous passions: radical European typography in the inter-war years
Leper messiah: Gill semi-light, Gill heavy
Europe after the rain: rebirth and twilight
Detour | Portable serenity: the precision and the passion of the letter cutter
Two ghosts: forgotten technologies from the dustbin of history
Motorway madness: David Kindersley and the great road sign ruckus
A company man: Herb Lubalin and the International Typeface Corporation
The twenty-six soldiers: fiddling with the format
New gods: Neville Brody and the designer decade
Revolution again: liberating the letter
Detour | Inside the micro-foundry: twenty-first-century type
Typocalypse

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	I.B.Tauris
Auteur(s)	Simon Loxley
Parution	12/05/2004
Nb. de pages	248
Format	16 x 24
Couverture	Relié
Poids	538g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9781850433972
ISBN13	978-1-85043-397-2