7. "Just my Type" by Simon Garfield (Profile Books, 2010)
Not just for font geeks or graphic designers, my second non-fiction read of the year "Just my Type" reveals the fascinating stories behind typefaces. Written with a healthy dose of sarcasm, Garfield describes how type has evolved over time, how our best-known fonts came into being and the role of typefaces in branding and advertising before naming and shaming the world's ugliest fonts.
My favourite aspect of the book is all of the quirky little stories featured, I particularly enjoyed the tale of a hoax, run by The Guardian, which imagined an entire island composed of towns, rivers, beaches, etcetera which shared their names with popular typefaces. After this feature was run in the newspaper, travel agents were apparently inundated with requests to fly to Bodoni airport!
"Just my Type" is witty, interesting and really insightful, and what's more it may have just helped me conquer my fear of non-fiction.
"Just my Type" is witty, interesting and really insightful, and what's more it may have just helped me conquer my fear of non-fiction.
1 comment:
I hardly read non-fiction but I guess this could be the starting point of helping me also to conquer that fear. Thanks for this review.
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