An Essay on Typography was first published in 1931, instantly recognized as a classic, and has long been unavailable. It represents Gill at his best: opinionated, fustian, and consistently humane. It is his only major work on typography and remains indispensable for anyone interested in the art of letter forms and the presentation of graphic information. This manifesto, however, is not only about letters "š€š" their form, fit, and function "š€š" but also about man's role in an industrial society. As Gill wrote later, it was his chief object "to describe two worlds "š€š" that of industrialism and that of the human workman "š€š" and to define their limits." His thinking about type is still provocative. Here are the seeds of modern advertising: unjustified lines, tight word and letter spacing, ample leading. Here is vintage Gill, as polemical as he is practical, as much concerned about the soul of man as the work of man; as much obsessed by the ends as by the means.

Modern Typography, 2nd Edition is a completely updated and revised edition of Robin Kinross's classic survey of European and North American typography since 1700, first published in 1992. In addition to numerous new illustrations and revised text, Modern Typography has been re-scaled to a new, convenient pocket format. Kinross's overview breaks ground by focusing on the history of typography as an intricate web of social, technical, and material processes, rather than a parade of typeface styles. Eye magazine calls Modern Typography the book that tells "how modern typography got to be the way it is." Together, Kinross's clear, concise writing combined with his extensive knowledge of the history of typography create a gold standard for how design history ought to be written.

Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design brings together the best of designer Michael Bierut's critical writing—serious or humorous, flattering or biting, but always on the mark. Bierut is widely considered the finest observer on design writing today. Covering topics as diverse as Twyla Tharp and ITC Garamond, Bierut's intelligent and accessible texts pull design culture into crisp focus. He touches on classics, like Massimo Vignelli and the cover of The Catcher in the Rye, as well as newcomers, like McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and color-coded terrorism alert levels. Along the way Nabakov's Pale Fire; Eero Saarinen; the paper clip; Celebration, Florida; the planet Saturn; the ClearRx pill bottle; and paper architecture all fall under his pen. His experience as a design practitioner informs his writing and gives it truth. In Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, designers and nondesigners alike can share and revel in his insights.

Presents more than fifty texts, familiar and rare, about the history, aesthetics, and practice of type design and typography. Includes essays by such leading type masters as Frederic W. Goudy, Hermann Zapf, and Paul Rand. [back cover].

In a career that has spanned more than forty years, Matthew Carter has designed many of the typefaces that we see every day in and on publications, books, signs, and screens. Carter's celebrated typefaces include such stalwarts as Galliard, Mantinia, and Verdana. In 1975, he created the now-pervasive Bell Centennial specifically for use in phone books. Publications including Sports Illustrated, the Daily News, Wired, and the Washington Post, along with cultural institutions such as the Walker Arts Center and The Victoria & Albert Museum, have all commissioned Carter fonts. Typographically Speaking: The Art of Matthew Carter entered the field in the days of hand-cut punches and hot-metal type, and has continued to innovate through the eras of photocomposition and digital design. Essays discuss the form of his work, his position and use of typographic history, and his technological innovation. All of his fonts are reproduced in full for reference, and illustrations place his designs in context. Published in conjunction with the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times