“Thinking with Type”, by Ellen Lupton, is a “critical guide for designers, writers, editors & students” about typography. You receive 172 pages full of inspiring page layout and discussion about typography.

What this book teaches you is the anatomy of type, a brief history of typography, page layout, legibility and creative uses in type. The page layout in the book is very inspiring, not boring, and is a good example of creativity in page layout.

I actually kept this book at work when going through the process of designing the content in some magazines. We were going back and forth with the editors and the editor, whose insight was incredible, had worse handwriting than me. It was very essential at that time that I knew the editor’s language in editing copy, those little squiggly marks in red ink everywhere. I hadn’t been involved with too many editors till this time and kept this book handy because in the appendix you will find a “Editing Hard Copy” and “Proofreading” section that covers the language used by editors in editing content within copy. Very handy stuff. To me, some of the most useful information to use as reference is listed in the back of the book which includes sample grid layouts, advice, some helpful hints into the golden rule, and punctuation.

The most important advice I could grab out of the book for beginners would have to be the anatomy of type. Knowing the anatomy, discussion about font becomes so much easier with other designers. So even if you don’t know a lot of font choices, knowing that you would like a low x-height serif, for instance, can assist you into finding a font that’s perfect for your situation. There isn’t a week that goes by that I’m not involved in font discussion with another designer and knowing the simple anatomy really helps each other out in communicating. So, I bring you a less refined version of the material you can find on pages 34-35 in the book “Thinking with Type” that covers type anatomy. Click on the image for full view please.

Hope you find this useful!

Buy it on Amazon.com - they rated it 4.5 out of 5 stars and have search inside available.