Designing a typeface
http://www.typophile.com/cgibin/show.pl?4100/47342


1. Writing and graphic notations

Roy Harris, The origin of writing, Duckworth, London 1986.
Elizabeth Hill Boone, Stories in red and black: pictorial histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs, University of Texas Press, Austin 2000.
Giovanni Lussu, La lettera uccide, Nuovi Equilibri, Viterbo 1999.
Giovanni Pozzi, La parola dipinta, Adelphi, Milano 1981.
Andrew Robinson, The story of writing, Thames and Hudson, London 1995.
Yasin Hamid Safadi, Islamic calligraphy, Thames and Hudson, London 1978.
Edward Tufte, The visual display of quantitative information, Graphics Press, Cheshire (Connecticut) 1992.
Edward Tufte, Envisioning information, Graphics Press, Cheshire (Connecticut) 1991.
Edward Tufte, Visual explanations, Graphics Press, Cheshire (Connecticut) 1997.
Yin Binyong, Modern Chinese characters, Sinolingua, Beijing 1994.



2. Theory & history of tipography

Robert Bringhurst, The elements of typographic style, Hartley & Marks, Vancouver 2001. (Nella traduzione italiana, Gli Elementi dello stile tipografico, Sylvestre Bonnard)
Geoffrey Dowding, Finer points in the spacing and arrangement of type, Hartley and Marks, Vancouver 1996.
Eric Gill, En essay on typography, David R. Godine, Boston 1988.
Robin Kinross, Modern typography: an essay in critical history, Hyphen Press, London 1992.
Ruari McLean (edited by), Typographers on type, Lund Humphries, London 1995.
Gerritt Noordzij, Letterletter, Hartley and Marks, Vancouver 2001.
Fred Smeijers, Counterpunch: making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now, Hyphen Press, London 1996.
Adrian Frutiger,

Alessandro,

I was hoping that I could get a more revised list, or rec on what to start with. While I don't doubt those are great books, there has to be a few that are best to start off with...

thank you for the link though, as well.

you bring up a good point...

I'm a student right now. I love typography (obviously or I wouldn't be here.) Designing a type face appears to be a daunting task at this point, but is something I'd love to accomplish. Having a background in newspapers and communications has me in love with the functionality of any typeface.

I just don't know where to start. I didn't know if there were books or other tools that gave a walk through on type design or if there are certain standards a typeface should possess.

Hopefully that is a clearer explaination than my original post...

I would suggest an exercise: something less daunting than designing a whole new typeface from scratch, but which will teach you a number of useful things. Find an existing typeface and make an adaptation of it for a specific purpose, e.g. a newspaper version of a traditional book face, or a headline version of a text face, or a lighter or heavier version of a face. This is only an excercise, of course, and you won't end up with anything sellable (unless you want to offer it to the owner of the original font), but I think you can learn a lot in this way. Also, if you are ever interested in getting a job in type design, you are likely to find this sort of work to be among the things you are asked to do.

In preference to Type by design, which is both out of print and also too Fontographer-centric to be an optimal help with up to date tools, I recommend Leslie Cabarga's Logo Font & Lettering Bible and Learn FontLab Fast.

I would recommend two places to start, both of which reduce the sheer number of design parameters to be dealt with.

1. A casual face (eg Fontesque, which was my first digital font). You don't have to worry about conforming to what the "proper " character forms are and how they fit together -- sophisticated cultural/technical nuances which are a big hurdle to start with. At the same time, you do have to find a way to get your casual shapes to combine -- but you have some leeway. Drawing and scanning is a good place to start , because one expresses oneself authentically in the drawn form.

2. A monoline "techno" face (eg Matt Desmond's new Variable). Basically a stroked path. This means that considerations of weighting (contrast, stress, and joint thinning) are not an issue. And being condensed, fit and proportional width are simplified. Techno construction is also a good place to start, because the way one focuses on the basic capabilities of the vector tools is also authentic, "true to materials", when the tool is Illustrator/Fontographer/FontLab.

Typebooks.org is good, but the main problem is at the top of the page: Updated March 19, 2002.

thank you all for the help... I feel like a kid in a candy store.