Anyone wanting to save money, if they are willing to wait, can save about US$10 by placing a pre-order at Amazon for November 20 shipping. Current pre-order price is US$31.36 plus tax and shipping when using Amazon Prime.
There is not a specific aspect of Amazon I dislike, but in general I like to support (local) bookshops, and (hopelessly attempt to) prevent monopolies.
I finished reading it this evening. Theory of Type Design is a great introduction to thinking about typefaces and designing them. Incoming students at the various graduate and certificate programs in type design should be required to read this book before the programs start. It’s on the list of books I wish had been around when I was writing my undergraduate thesis about type design. Unger is short and to the point providing a nice example of how academic writing doesn’t have to be so, well, academic. My next journey with this book will be buying items of the bibliography that I don’t already own.
It’s not more than an introduction to anything. Each chapter is a little essay of two or three pages, so there’s not much space to dive in with depth that experienced designers might appreciate. But there is depth in the work overall if you want to understand how a seasoned type designer thinks.
I think there is a theory to it in the same sense that the books of Doyald Young are a theory of lettering and wordmark design and critique and The Stroke is a theory of letterform classification. Unger explains ways of thinking, not what to think. It's very Dutch and catholic. There's a wonderful theory for the utility of typefaces, that they form a solar system like cluster, with the most crystal gobletty types at the center and everything else radiating outward in orbits of novelty.
John, that was my main criticism of the book, its title. It is a book about the operating factors that need to be considered in the process but I got no sense of theory in the notion of Science. My guess is that the publisher had some say in the title and thought it might sell more with that title.
Comments
I read the first several chapters, but then I had to go to LA and have been busy. Should have brought it with me for airplane reading!
The bad thing about in-flight wifi is that I do less reading on airplanes now.
Hey why doesn't TypeDrawers let me hit Disagree on myself?!