Monday 31 March 2008

Review: The Encyclopedia of Fonts by Gwyn Headley

This is the second art/design/whatever book I've read this year (which makes me about a month - or one book - behind atm...) It *could* have taken me 30 minutes if I'd only read the introduction (which is pretty short). However, *I* was going to do this properly!

And *properly* meant that I pored through every one of the 453 pages of fonts (2000 plus examples!) on and off over a period of several weeks. How many fonts of that do I remember? Eh - not many, but I'm not sure that's the point (though I'm not sure... :-)

I'm fascinated by the way the Headley has separated the fonts - not always obviously so I'm interested in finding out more about the classifications he (and others) use. In most cases the fonts are displayed using a 'font sample' (e.g. 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' but more interesting...), but every now and then Headley has gives description of the font - what the name means or something about the designer. And *every* now and then he makes a somewhat bitchy comment about the font (which was rather fun :-)

*LOTS* of fonts look the same as each other, and it was good to see development over time. Most of the 'common' fonts have been around a long time (perhaps it's a copyright thing??). I'm not sure what I'll do with the book now. I don't think it'll make picking fonts any easier, particularly when this is only a small selection of what's available! In fact, my head hurts (but I still like fonts :-)

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