Lettering & Type: Creating Letters & Designing Typefaces - Softcover

Willen, Bruce; Strals, Nolen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156898765X ISBN 13: 9781568987651

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009

Synopsis

No component of graphic design has attracted as much interest or inspired as much innovation in recent years as lettering and type. These fundamentals of design, once the exclusive domain of professional typographers, have become an essential starting point for anyone looking for a fresh way to communicate. Practical information about creating letters and type often amounts to a series of guidelines for executing a particular process, font program, or style. But what makes lettering and type endlessly fascinating is the flexibility to interpret and sometimes even break these rules. Lettering & Type is a smart-but- not-dense guide to creating and bending letters to one's will. More than just another pretty survey, it is a powerful how-to book full of relevant theory, history, explanatory diagrams, and exercises. While other type design books get hung up on the technical and technological issues of type design and lettering, Lettering & Type features the context and creativity that shape letters and make them interesting.

Authors and designers Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals examine classic design examples as well as exciting contemporary lettering of all stripes—from editorial illustrations to concert posters to radical conceptual alphabets. Lettering & Type is ideal for anyone looking to move beyond existing typography and fonts to create, explore, and use original or customized letterforms. This latest addition to our best-selling Design Briefs seriesfeatures a foreword by Ellen Lupton and hundreds of images and examples of work by historical and contemporary designers, artists, and illustrators, including Marian Bantjes, Stefan Sagmeister, Matthew Carter, Christoph Niemann, Steve Powers (ESPO), House Industries, Christian Schwartz, Margaret Kilgallen, James Victore, Abbott Miller, Sibylle Hagmann, Ed Fella, and many more. Throughout the book interviews with type designers, artists, and graphic designers provide real-world perspective from contemporary practitioners.

About this title

About the Author

For nearly a decade, Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals have collaborated under the label Post Typography on creative projects encompassing graphic design, illustration, typography, lettering, and printmaking with additional forays into art, apparel, music, curatorial work, design theory, and vandalism. They both live in Baltimore.

Review

"Party in honor of the release of the new book 'Lettering & Type' which will include the exhibit 'Fan Letter (26 Artists and Designers Present Their Favorite Letter or Typographic Character)'" --Designrelated

"First off... no, Post Typography is not us. I know... we should have thought about it but we didn't. Even if we did, these other cool dudes did almost a decade ago." -- Chad Kouri --The Post Family

"Were pleased as punch to have our work included in the book Lettering & Type: Creating Letters and Designing Typefaces by Bruce Willen and Noel Strals, which was just published by Princeton Architectural Press. The book includes work by so many people we admire, including Margaret Kilgallen and Stefan Sagmeister." --Visualingual

"Just received my copy of Lettering & Type: Creating Letters & Designing Typefaces by Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals. Smaller than I had expected (7x8.5" with only 130 pages), but beautiful with lots of typographic eye candy and some useful information for beginning type designers and anybody else who wants to develop a more critical eye for the subtleties of letterforms." --A Type Designers Journal

"Lettering & Type is a smart-but-not-dense guide to creating and bending letters to ones will. More than just another pretty survey, it is a powerful how-to book full of relevant theory, history, explanatory diagrams, and exercises. While other type design books often get hung up on the technical and technological issues of type design and lettering, Lettering & Type features the context and creativity that shape letters and make them interesting." --Typegoodness

"More than just another pretty survey, Lettering & Type is a powerful and essential how-to book full of relevant theory, history, explanatory diagrams, exercises, and inspiring examples of contemporary lettering and typeface design." --Entropy

"Another solid read from the Design Brief series. Great visuals and a good range of information from history to creating lettering and type design." -- Dave Aquino --Inspiration Explosion

"While other type design books get hung up on the technical and technological issues of type design and lettering, Lettering & Type features the context and creativity that shape letters and make them interesting." --Books Variety

"Lots of typographic eye candy and some useful information for beginning type designers and anybody else who wants to develop a more critical eye for the subtleties of letter forms." --A Type Designers Journal

"Fans of Post Typography and Double Dagger will already be familiar with Bruce Willen and Nolan Strals. For those uninitiated, the graphic design/teacher/rock stars will have a new label on Thursday: authors.Their book, Lettering & Type: Creating Letters and Designing Typeface, is a collection of essays by designers and artists, detailing the history, theory and art of the letters of the alphabet." -- Nancy Johnston --The Baltimore Sun

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 156898765X
• ISBN 13: 9781568987651
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 141