James Filici’s ’The Complete Manual of Typography’ is an excellent technical manual for setting type properly, and your on the right track w/ Bringhurst.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321127307/qid=1134188374/sr=2-1/ref=pd...

Cheers

One good technique for learning type usage and combination is documenting what is around you. Take pictures of things that work. thats what it is all about; what works. Photograph a magazine layout that is striking, or a book that reads easily, or signage that clearly communicates. When the time comes for you to solve a type problem you will have a reference library. It is good to have work not to copy but to emulate. Observe what the artist did in terms of combination of type styles, proportion, spacing.

It is good to know what the masters think about type usage and combinations. It is also important, in my opinion, to see what others are doing; type in action. What does/doesn’t work.

I would recommend these two books:

Jost Hochuli: Detail in typography
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00072738I/qid=1125841233/sr=1-3/ref=sr...

Jost Hochuli: Designing books
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0907259235/002-9225507-9704050?Subscrip...

’Detail in typography’ is essential, but out of print.
If you are lucky, you can find it online in antiquarian bookshops
or in an university library. It’s absolutely worth searching for it.

If you are interested in a structural approach and the connection between typography and graphic design as seen by a Swiss modernist designer see also:
Willi Kunz: Typography: Macro- and Microaesthetics
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3721203488/qid=1134250494/sr=2-1/ref=pd...

Bringhurst is also useful and a good reference.

If you follow the link to this thread:
Recent Hyphen Reprints
Designing Books and Modern Typography
on the Typographica site, you will find several comments that will lead you to copies/reprints of Jost Hochuli’s books.

I am very fortunate to have copies of his Detail in typography, Designing Books, and his whimsical Alphabugs from the original first printings in both German and English.

>I’m trying to get through The Elements of Typographic Styles,

If you’re finding it all rather dry and tedious, then might I recommend Spiekermann and Ginger’s “Stop Stealing Sheep” (please, no more digressions on this!)

Thanks for the suggestions. I read Stop Stealing Sheep but found it rather surface. Bringhurst’s book is really good, but it’s hard to get throuugh with so much information all at once.
I also have Ellen Lupton’s Thinking with Type”. I think I need a book that’s somewhere in between.

I just bought Kunz’s book on Amazon last night, so we’ll see if it’ll do the job for me.

Cheers!

Tsongtze, this is probably obvious, but as you are reading, design a visually demanding project or projects and get critiques from teachers and professional designers. I see you are in New York, a mecca for graphic design, so you can get plenty of feedback.

ps. Do you just love eating Tsongtze? Or is there some story?

Follow this link: http://www.thetypestudio.com/writtenword.html and download all the PDF articles. This should give you a good base to start from and they’re free!

> I just bought Kunzs book on Amazon last night, so well see if itll do the job for me.

Kunz’s book is basically an updated and more refined version of the same methods as used and described by Mueller-Brockmann in ’Grid Systems in Graphic Design’, but it has additionally some very useful information on micro-typography.

The good thing about this book is that it shows how to set up a system which enables the designer to organise content in a more coherent and logical way. Every serious typographical work which has to convey complex information on several different levels requires a systematic approach which helps both the designer (to organise the content) AND the reader (to understand the content easier), and this applies for a book and for a signage system in the same way.

Kunz’s own work (which is also shown in this book) is clearly based in modernist Swiss typography, and this is where the reader has to be a little bit careful. Whereas his work - which I consider to be brilliant - perfectly exemplifies that introducing order and logic into typographic design does not mean that creativity has to suffer, it is nevertheless in a specific style, and the reader of this book is well advised to copy methods rather than the resulting style.

Tsongtze, let me know whether you find the book useful.

Tsongtze,

If I could add another title to the reading list it would be ’Finer Points in the Spacing and Arrangement of Type’. Geoffrey Dowding. Published by Hartley and Marks, the same as Bringhurst. Quite difficult to fing through, in the UK at least.

Nick.

Tsongtze is kind of my Chinese name. Is there Tsongtze really a kind of food?

I think Sheep is a great start, but then it’s pretty
important to move up to huma... I mean, Bringhurst. ;-)
However, I don’t advocate cannibalism like William. ;->

hhp