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The Field Guide to Typography: Typefaces in the Urban Landscape
The Field Guide to Typography explores and explains the myriad typefaces that we see around us in our day-to-day lives, from public transport liveries to computer fonts, from billboard hoardings to road signage. It presents over 125 typefaces - old and new, common and unusual - with photographic references to help 'font spotters' identify particular letter forms in the wild. Accompanying background information explains the origin, usage and key features of each typeface, while 'Field Facts' provide little known nuggets of information to expand your typographical awareness.
Attractive and informative, The Field Guide to Typography is a vital visual reference for novice fans and experienced designers alike, and a celebration of our expanding typographic world.
Attractive and informative, The Field Guide to Typography is a vital visual reference for novice fans and experienced designers alike, and a celebration of our expanding typographic world.
383 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
5 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Peter Dawson
170 books9 followersPeter is the pen name of author Jonathan Hurff Glidden. He was born in Kewanee, Illinois, in 1907, and studied English literature at the University of Illinois. In his career as a Western author, Glidden published sixteen Western novels and over one hundred and twenty short novels and short stories for the magazine market. His first novel, The Crimson Horseshow, won the Dodd, Mead Prize as the 1941 Best Western of the Year. He died in 1957.
Note: "Peter Dawson" was also a pen name used by Frederick Faust (better known another of his pen names, Max Brand). Care should be taken when attributing books.
Note: "Peter Dawson" was also a pen name used by Frederick Faust (better known another of his pen names, Max Brand). Care should be taken when attributing books.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 13, 2015
Think of this as "Applied Typography." Where most books for type geeks show page after page of quick brown foxes, "The Field Guide to Typography" shows each typeface in at least one native habitat. Clarendon? Waypointing signs in the U.S. national parks. Gotham? Obama's iconic advertising. Cooper Black? The easyJet logo.
It also shows overlaid comparisons of a handful of easy-to-confuse typeface pairs. (What's the difference between Arial and Helvetica anyway, and why does Arial even exist?)
This book is a true field guide, focusing on "what it looks like and where it is" rather than where it came from or what its x-height is. Even so, type geeks need this book. There's plenty to learn. And it hates on Comic Sans just as one would expect, while throwing it a bone at the end: It's recommended by dyslexia associations for its simplicity and readability.
It also shows overlaid comparisons of a handful of easy-to-confuse typeface pairs. (What's the difference between Arial and Helvetica anyway, and why does Arial even exist?)
This book is a true field guide, focusing on "what it looks like and where it is" rather than where it came from or what its x-height is. Even so, type geeks need this book. There's plenty to learn. And it hates on Comic Sans just as one would expect, while throwing it a bone at the end: It's recommended by dyslexia associations for its simplicity and readability.
January 12, 2022
interesting selection of typefaces, very good premise for a book imo
i would appreciate a little more background on some of it but i appreciate its beyond the scope of the book!
i really enjoyed the interviews in particular, they nicely broke up the segments and stopped it from being too formulaic a read even though it's mostly a reference material
i would appreciate a little more background on some of it but i appreciate its beyond the scope of the book!
i really enjoyed the interviews in particular, they nicely broke up the segments and stopped it from being too formulaic a read even though it's mostly a reference material
October 17, 2018
Contains all the best fonts. Great book to get some little facts about the fonts that shape our world.
October 9, 2014
Nowadays our familiarity with typefaces derives from the choices we have when writing electronic documents, such as Arial, Book Antiqua, Comic Sans, Courier New, Lucida Console, Palatino Linotype, Times New Roman, Verdana and so on. But did you know that there are well over 150,000 typefaces available, a number that grows with every day? And that many of these typefaces have been around in one form or another since at least the middle of the 15th century, when the printing press was introduced into Europe, and some a lot earlier? Appropriately, this book’s Foreword by Stephen Cole points to ornithology as an analogy, with typography enthusiasts as preoccupied as any birder with identification, classification, distinguishing features and documentation. Even more aptly this guide includes a photo of a pile of books on birdwatching, with an explanatory key to the various typefaces used on the individual spines.
Peter Dawson’s Field Guide is just a little different from those birding books. It lists and describes “125 typefaces — classic and contemporary, common and unusual — found in our modern urban environment and on the day-to-day objects we come into contact with” and provides budding ‘font spotters’ with profiles of each of those typefaces. They’re grouped into five categories (Serif, Sans Serif, Display, Script and Symbols and Dingbats), with each typeface accorded a minimum double-page spread, text on one page, photos on the other. As with bird-spotting guides each also includes a ‘Not to be confused with’ feature. In amongst the entries are double-page comparisons between pairs of key typefaces as well as seven revealing profiles of typeface designers. Along with a visual guide to type anatomy (glyph width, x-height or bracket, for example) are an essential glossary and a typeface classification, plus the usual further reading lists, index and other paraphernalia.
This is such a rich treasury of designs, despite being limited to just 125 typefaces — less than 0.1% of available designs. The main division is between Serif (familiar to us from, say, Times New Roman) and Sans Serif (typically, Arial). Other Serif typefaces include PMN Caecilia (my Kindle has this), the elegant Perpetua (designed by Eric Gill in the 1920s), ITC American Typewriter (dating from the 1970s its chunky look, a bit like the earlier Courier, seems rather clunky now) and Galliard (very corporate, very impersonal to my eyes). Designs based on historic forms are not neglected either: classy Bodoni, Baskerville and the related Mrs Eaves with their 18th-century origins, and Shàngó Gothic plus the upper case Trajan, both modelled on classical inscriptions.
Unlike the case of Serif designs where much variety can be created by more obvious visual changes, distinguishing Sans Serif typefaces can require more skill: subtle changes are effected by stroke contrast, shapes of bowls, size of eyes or alignment of terminals. Having said which, distinctive forms have been created as a result of commercial commissions such as Channel 4’s bespoke typeface, Bath City’s custom signage design or Neutraface for architect Richard Neutra’s buildings; and innovative solutions have resulted in such idiosyncratic designs as Jeremy Tankard’s Fenland design and Chalet with its distinctive circular lower case forms.
Display typefaces differ from those designed for large bodies of text. Standouts for me are the ‘futuristic’ Amelia expressing the 60s zeitgeist; the Art Nouveau spirit of the historic Arnold Böcklin and the 1970s ITC Benquiat; the jazz age typeface of Broadway; the much maligned Headline 2012 designed for the London Olympics; and FF Trixie with its distressed typewriter look popularised by TV series The X-Files. Script typefaces include Bickley Script originally designed for Letraset transfers so that lower case glyphs could look joined up; Fette Fraktur and Old English based on Black letter Gothic scripts; Macmillan Headline created for advertising a British cancer charity; and Owned, looking like graffiti lettering with a variety of ligatures and character variants. Finally, the short Symbols and Dingbats category features for example Carta (with its map-specific glyphs) and pictograms designed in conjunction with the Latin American typeface Kakaw 2013.
I can only scratch the surface but Dawson’s fascnating text is full of interesting titbits and ‘Field Facts’. He is fair in pointing out criticisms of designs, such as Helvetica, but also indicates the virtues of the otherwise despised Comic Sans for dyslexia sufferers. Anybody who has eyes to see can’t help viewing the urban landscape in a different way, but I would only warn you: at 384 pages this hardback is not a field guide you can easily slip into your pocket. It’s a visually attractive book, however, and one you might hope would be given to you — as it was to me — as a present.
http://wp.me/s2oNj1-type
Peter Dawson’s Field Guide is just a little different from those birding books. It lists and describes “125 typefaces — classic and contemporary, common and unusual — found in our modern urban environment and on the day-to-day objects we come into contact with” and provides budding ‘font spotters’ with profiles of each of those typefaces. They’re grouped into five categories (Serif, Sans Serif, Display, Script and Symbols and Dingbats), with each typeface accorded a minimum double-page spread, text on one page, photos on the other. As with bird-spotting guides each also includes a ‘Not to be confused with’ feature. In amongst the entries are double-page comparisons between pairs of key typefaces as well as seven revealing profiles of typeface designers. Along with a visual guide to type anatomy (glyph width, x-height or bracket, for example) are an essential glossary and a typeface classification, plus the usual further reading lists, index and other paraphernalia.
This is such a rich treasury of designs, despite being limited to just 125 typefaces — less than 0.1% of available designs. The main division is between Serif (familiar to us from, say, Times New Roman) and Sans Serif (typically, Arial). Other Serif typefaces include PMN Caecilia (my Kindle has this), the elegant Perpetua (designed by Eric Gill in the 1920s), ITC American Typewriter (dating from the 1970s its chunky look, a bit like the earlier Courier, seems rather clunky now) and Galliard (very corporate, very impersonal to my eyes). Designs based on historic forms are not neglected either: classy Bodoni, Baskerville and the related Mrs Eaves with their 18th-century origins, and Shàngó Gothic plus the upper case Trajan, both modelled on classical inscriptions.
Unlike the case of Serif designs where much variety can be created by more obvious visual changes, distinguishing Sans Serif typefaces can require more skill: subtle changes are effected by stroke contrast, shapes of bowls, size of eyes or alignment of terminals. Having said which, distinctive forms have been created as a result of commercial commissions such as Channel 4’s bespoke typeface, Bath City’s custom signage design or Neutraface for architect Richard Neutra’s buildings; and innovative solutions have resulted in such idiosyncratic designs as Jeremy Tankard’s Fenland design and Chalet with its distinctive circular lower case forms.
Display typefaces differ from those designed for large bodies of text. Standouts for me are the ‘futuristic’ Amelia expressing the 60s zeitgeist; the Art Nouveau spirit of the historic Arnold Böcklin and the 1970s ITC Benquiat; the jazz age typeface of Broadway; the much maligned Headline 2012 designed for the London Olympics; and FF Trixie with its distressed typewriter look popularised by TV series The X-Files. Script typefaces include Bickley Script originally designed for Letraset transfers so that lower case glyphs could look joined up; Fette Fraktur and Old English based on Black letter Gothic scripts; Macmillan Headline created for advertising a British cancer charity; and Owned, looking like graffiti lettering with a variety of ligatures and character variants. Finally, the short Symbols and Dingbats category features for example Carta (with its map-specific glyphs) and pictograms designed in conjunction with the Latin American typeface Kakaw 2013.
I can only scratch the surface but Dawson’s fascnating text is full of interesting titbits and ‘Field Facts’. He is fair in pointing out criticisms of designs, such as Helvetica, but also indicates the virtues of the otherwise despised Comic Sans for dyslexia sufferers. Anybody who has eyes to see can’t help viewing the urban landscape in a different way, but I would only warn you: at 384 pages this hardback is not a field guide you can easily slip into your pocket. It’s a visually attractive book, however, and one you might hope would be given to you — as it was to me — as a present.
http://wp.me/s2oNj1-type
February 15, 2014
Excellent book, well illustrated and with good descriptions of the typefaces and their uses. Interesting interviews with type designers too.
Just one thing that would make it better would be a full font print of each example but I suspect this might have copyright/royalty implications.
Just one thing that would make it better would be a full font print of each example but I suspect this might have copyright/royalty implications.
October 23, 2013
fantastic little reference book, a must have on my shelf
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews