Complete Manual of Typography, The: A Guide to Setting Perfect Type

I am a typography maven and find this sort of graphic design relaxing. This book takes you through some history of fonts and their relation to available papers. Rather than reiterate what this book says, just get it and enjoy a journey through art history. From Trajan classic serifed fonts, calligraphic styles and formal typefaces, Jim Felici gives us some lovely furniture to hold in our minds. In my own time, I have gone from slugging a dingbat to digital type made easy by the technological changes that have given us 200,000 fonts (and counting).Typographers are a sensitive group: they are acutely aware of the tension between readability and decoration. His illustrations are precise and clear while each page is lovingly laid out in white space, image and type.If you like this book, consider Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern." Fonts mean so much more than beauty: they embody fluid creativity. My personal favorites for elegance in decoration are Hofstadter's 'Magnificat' and Adobe's Master font 'Bickham Script.' I also have some personal favorites in the "grunge font" realm. For readability I go with unserifed fonts such as 'Arial.'However, as the Spanish say, "It takes taste to know taste!" After all, fonts are patterns in the formal sense of motif and design. If the mathematics of this aspect of typography are of interest, I suggest Grunbaum and Shephard's abundantly illustrated "Tilings and Patterns" now available in an affordable edition. Get the 1987 version and wallpaper your brain.

This book has the basic technical information and historical development of type from the beginning up to the present. It a very good book for that kind of information.

If you want to know the the history of why type is set as it is in books, posters , etc , you know, The stuff we see every day. This book will explain the typeface styles, what to look for and what to lookout for. The reader will get an introduction to the nuts and bolts that produce great graphic design

Please be careful when purchasing this book. I did not realize it was only for the kindle fire and other tablets, and not for paperwhite or even available in the cloud. I can only read this book on my pc kindle app. I have to get a refund and order the physical version because I need it for school. I cannot read it at school because it does not support cloud reader. Disappointed. Please fix this soon.

If you read this book and put it into practice, you will handle type better than 90% of working designers. You'll also know more about how to handle type than those 90%. I cannot recommend this book more enthusiastically.

Great book, really digs into and dissects the root of typography.

Having studied typography for three full years now I can say that this book will help you set type and understand good typography. However, this only applies if you are just starting out in the field of typography.If you have even a year of knowledge in typographical study then I would suggest buying a cheaper version of this book. The 2nd edition of this book adds some chapters on web typography. Sadly these are not as useful as one would think. The better option would be to buy a typography book dedicated to web typography.Overall, the book isn't bad, however, if you can save your money it would be best to do so. You're not learning anything new that you couldn't learn from free articles on the internet or videos.

This is an excellent book which was required by my instructor to purchase. The price was excellent for a student vs. the higher cost at the college bookstore. Thank you

Il testo di Felici si pone all'apice dei manuali tipografici. Molto più tecnico del classico di Bringhurst, la sua peculiarità è proprio in questa concretezza: spiega nel dettaglio gli strumenti da utilizzare per la tipografia (non intesi come programmi specifici ma funzionalità di essi), e perché siano importanti sia storicamente sia dal punto di vista visuale. Se Bringhurst ha specificato norme di stile e idee di design, Felici riesce a concretizzare queste idee "sporcandosi le mani" con dettagli tecnici. Direi che non può mancare sulla scrivania degli appassionati.Manca la quinta stella per alcuni motivi:1) il formato di stampa è incredibilmente scomodo da sfogliare e usare (sebbene sia utile a contenere le svariate illustrazioni e figure)2) non ne esiste una versione rilegata in copertina rigida e non brossurata3) secondo me la scelta del carattere e dell'interlinea sono molto infelici e rendono la lettura un po' difficile.Sicuramente resta un prodotto di qualità eccelsa.