Twentieth Century Type Designers

By Sebastian Carter

Book Overview

Although the skeleton shapes of the letters of our alphabet hardly change, many skilled type designers have devoted much time, sometimes their whole lives, to drawing different versions of the outlines. This book serves as an introduction to the concept of typefaces and to some of the personalities who have created them - Goudy, Rogers, Koch, Gill, Morison, Van Krimpen, Trump, Tschichold, Frutiger, and Zapf - and places them in the context of the enormous changes that have occurred the 20th century in the methods of creating and setting type.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393701999
• ISBN13: 9780393701999
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.7" x 0.9" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A good introduction to the century when type design exploded

Carter's book is heavily waited towards the period 1900-1960, which was in a way a golden age for type design. As ATF, Monotype and Linotype reached their ascendancy, new types were commissioned at an unprecedented rate and many of the best designs were created (or re-created) for the current generation of typesetting equipment. The advent of phototype in the 60s brought this first twentieth century golden age to an end, while PostScript opened a new period. Latter day type designers are cursorily treated courtesy of a second edition (which you're looking at here), so for that end of the spectrum you'll have to look elsewhere (the book has not yet been written), but it does at least provide a good overview of the major figures of the end of the metal type era.