The Visual History of Type

Ive always felt that good typography is the most undervalued and underappreciated elements in modern product design. Text is never just text. It often goes unnoticed in good design, but good type design can elicit emotion, guide attention and even create a typographical identity. The designers at Mailchimp valued to the power of typography and typographical identity in their recent rebrand when they selected an old-style serif, Cooper Light, as their primary typeface. Cooper Light was originally released over 100 years ago, and the slightly ironic choice (for a tech company) has become synonymous with Mailchimps brand in just a couple of years. Bad typography, by contrast, sticks out. Even to non-design oriented folks, bad typography is easy to spot, reflects badly on the brand and leads to a poor user experience. Often (and Im the first to admit I do this), designers fall back on trends rather than carefully considering the best typography for a design. Partly, because good typography skills are difficult to master. Paired with great copywriting, understanding the basics of effective typography is a powerful force multiplier to help you stand out and improve user experiences. The Visual History of Type traces the evolution of typeface design over the last 200 years. As much a beautifully-design coffee table as an exhaustive and thorough history of type, The Visual History of Type is a great primer for levelling up on your typography knowledge. This is my favorite type book that I own—yes, even more so than Bringhurst. It’s not about typography; it’s about typefaces. But it is a monumental work that showcases the evolution of type from the days of Gutenberg to modern times, and reading it will expose you to the entire history of typography and give you a new perspective on graphic design. —Jeremiah Shoaf, founder of TypewolfIf youre interested in a more practical book dedicated to improving your web design typography, an honourable mention goes to Better Web Typography for a Better Web by Matej Latin which I highly recommend!