A Tally of Types: With Additions by Several Hands ; And With a New Introduction by Mike Parker

Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth reading
Review: This book provides a great insight into the history and design of type, and quite a bit of the commentary is useful even today. Morison is well known, of course, for the Times New Roman face - and there is a section in the book on that face. But his commentary on the designing of faces like Plantin and Bembo is much more interesting, if you ask me. Also, if you are at all a fan of Eric Gill, you will like the section on Perpetua and Felicity. Anyone interested in the history of type should have this book, that much is certain.

Rating:
Summary: Visual and historical information
Review: Typography may be unique among arts in its historical ties to commerce. Type foundries create and sell fonts as a matter of business. Trades like printing and advertising have historically publicized type by using it, and driven the creation of new fonts. Typography is also distinctive in that, for such small field, it has so many large personalities.

Stanley Morison is one of those personalities, and one of the people who made 20th century typography what it was. He had a unique insight into the type trade of the first half of that century, as well as a wealth of history about several other centuries of type design and designers.

The most strinking feature of this book is the way each chapter about some important typeface is set in that face. Seeing and reading a whole page of body text, set and spaced in the usual way, is fundamentally different from seeing menu of "quick brown foxes" or pages of nonsense words. Reading the type is different from looking at letterforms, so this gives real information that specimen books can never provide. (As a personal matter, I realized just how much I dislike the italics with slope angles different in the capitals than in the lower case.)

Don't pick this up as a text on typography; beginners won't get much they can use. If you already appreciate that subtle art, if you want to learn more about its history and practice, this is a very enjoyable way to learn.