Type Tricks (Sofie Beier)

Simon Cozens

Anyone read this? Got any thoughts/reviews?

Vitória Neves

I read it and really liked it. It has very succinct and practical information.

Paul Miller

I read it and liked it, my only criticism is that in some sections white lettering on a bright flourescent orange background makes it hard to read.

This is surprising.  I would have thought that Sophie Beier would have avoided this as one of her other books is about how to improve legibility.

Adam Ladd

I recently bought "Type Tricks" but have only thumbed through it so far. I just came across a copy of "Designing Type" by Karen Cheng when I went to the bookstore last night and wondered if it's worth getting also or maybe redundant (only did a quick skim as well and seemed like some good info at a glance).

I've seen some recommend it, and then this comment (which had quite a few agrees) "I was quite underwhelmed and disappointed when I bought Designing Type" from a few years ago in another post.

Thomas Phinney

The two are definitely not redundant. In general, Type Tricks is a fine book that collects a bunch of very specific things, many of which you won’t find elsewhere. But I feel that there is no book that it is a replacement for: it supplements other things.

Designing Type is ok for beginning type designers, but definitely should not be one’s only book. I would tend to suggest How to Create Typefaces: from sketch to screen as the best general typeface design book out there. Everybody who wants to design fonts should have it. Also, Fontographer: type by design is still useful after several decades, even if the antique screen shots are laughable.

My own book list, with details and links is here: http://www.thomasphinney.com/type-design-resources/ I just updated it after starting to write this post, as I didn’t have Beier’s book on there, and I should have!

Adam Ladd

Thanks for the feedback and list link, Thomas!

Simon Cozens

Designing Type is a great book but with a terrible title. It should be called Measurements and Proportions of Various Sans and Serif Latin Letters. It tells you very little about the mechanics of the design process, or spacing, or punctuation, or diacritics, or turning your own design ideas into a font, or... But what it does, it does well.

Adam Ladd

Appreciate that insight, Simon, thanks.