Over at Typographica I’m gathering references for typography and type design courses. If you teach, please share your reading list here or there. I’d also love to hear your opinions on the items already listed.
I wrote this list in 2011. I would no longer recommended Lupton’s Thinking With Type. Jan Middendorp’s Shaping Text is a better introductory text in every respect; it covers more, is better designed, and Middendorp’s no-bullshit Calvinist writing style blows away Lupton’s inability to avoid academic bloviation. Feel free to re-use the text, but don’t bother linking, as my site is being redesigned and the old blog is not moving to the new site.
Generally, I create my own handouts. But it's partly based on other literature. If a student asks me, I recommend a few books, but most of them are in German, like Willberg’s and Forssman’s writings. I only recently discovered Indra’s book, a good and compact compilation of typography basics. Good format too for the classroom, by the way.
Not a reading list per se, but certainly a list from which I would select key readings for a hybrid typography + cognitive psychology course — http://readthetype.com/literature/
And for the ones interested in designing type (we normally don't go that far), this pretty old site by Briem, mentions some of the things to take into account like curve compensation and such. http://66.147.242.192/~operinan/2/2.3.1a/2.3.1.01.notes.htm
I don't do a lot of teaching, but when I do it tends to be focused on understanding writing systems and how they work, rather than design per se. This is a select bibliography and a couple of web resources that I compiled for MA students at Reading in 2008. Possibly there are some newer titles I've not read yet. [I've submitted a proposal to run a version of the relevant workshop before TypeCon this year.]
Books:
Akira, Nakanishi. Writing systems of the world: alphabets, syllabaries, pictograms. 1990. Tuttle.
Campbell, George L. Handbook of scripts and alphabets. 1997. Routledge.
Coulmas, Florian. The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. 1996. Blackwell.
——— Writing systems: an introduction to their linguistic analysis. 2003. Cambridge University Press.
——— The writing systems of the world. 1989. Blackwell.
Daniels, Peter T. & Bright, William, eds. The world’s writing systems. 1996. Oxford University Press.
Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. 1999. Cambridge University Press.
Rogers, Henry. Writing systems: a linguistic approach. 2004. Blackwell.
Sampson, Geoffrey. Writing systems: a linguistic introduction. 1990. Tuttle.
And the web resources:
Omniglot: a guide to the writing systems www.omniglot.com/
Paul Meier Dialect Service Interactive IPA pronunciation charts; Flash player required. www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html
The MA students had great fun with the Paul Meier sound recordings: twelve people in a room with laptops all playing IPA consonant pronunciation examples at the same time sounds like an avant garde music project.
This would be +1 on my list of out-of-print books that need an update. It’s got problems, but I’ve never read a better conceptual framework for planning type families. I think Hess is a painter in the Southwest now, someone should get permission to do an updated edition.
Comments
Basic but lots of nice examples here and also available in spanish
http://typeworkshop.com/index.php?id1=type-basics
And for the ones interested in designing type (we normally don't go that far), this pretty old site by Briem, mentions some of the things to take into account like curve compensation and such. http://66.147.242.192/~operinan/2/2.3.1a/2.3.1.01.notes.htm
Books:
Akira, Nakanishi. Writing systems of the world: alphabets, syllabaries, pictograms. 1990. Tuttle.
Campbell, George L. Handbook of scripts and alphabets. 1997. Routledge.
Coulmas, Florian. The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. 1996. Blackwell.
——— Writing systems: an introduction to their linguistic analysis. 2003. Cambridge University Press.
——— The writing systems of the world. 1989. Blackwell.
Daniels, Peter T. & Bright, William, eds. The world’s writing systems. 1996. Oxford University Press.
Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. 1999. Cambridge
University Press.
Rogers, Henry. Writing systems: a linguistic approach. 2004. Blackwell.
Sampson, Geoffrey. Writing systems: a linguistic introduction. 1990. Tuttle.
And the web resources:
Omniglot: a guide to the writing systems
www.omniglot.com/
Paul Meier Dialect Service
Interactive IPA pronunciation charts; Flash player required.
www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html
The MA students had great fun with the Paul Meier sound recordings: twelve people in a room with laptops all playing IPA consonant pronunciation examples at the same time sounds like an avant garde music project.
One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka.
This offers a simple conceptual framework for understanding the way that different styles of alphabet relate to one another.
An alternative to the stroke-based theory of Gerrit Noordzij.
http://porchez.com/ateliertypo/664/livres-et-publications-autour-de-la-typographie
http://typefacedesign.net/resources/preparation-for-incoming-matd-students/
http://www.tipo-e.com/publicaciones/como-crear-tipografias/