FINER POINTS IN THE SPACING & ARRANGEMENT OF TYPE By Geoffrey Dowding |
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As the title implies, this is not a beginners book on typography. Most of the techniques discussed by Dowding, although sound and well presented, may not be beneficial to the reader without a working knowledge of design and type. Experienced designers, be forewarned; Dowding is unavoidably influential in this tomethe result of his lifetime of experience in the typographic arts. At the same time, he cannot escape that experience. He is an unabashed traditionalist, a master of the craft.
So if you think you might already be too sensitive to type and layout, dont read this book. Im kidding, of course, but let me explain: illustrating with examples, Dowding discusses typographical layout solutions which often suffer from lack of attention to detail, then provides corrected versions for comparison. This method combined with a concise writing style and his authoritative voice, will undoubtedly heighten your typo-senses. You will begin to see mistakes where you read in blissful ignorance before. You will know why a given passage is harder to read than another (and no, its not necessarily the writers fault). And youll begin to realizethere are lots of layouts floating around out there that could use more than a little tweaking.
I dont think that everything he proposes is necessarily right. For example, in the context of setting type for textthe omission of spaces after full points when followed by the capitols A, J, T, V, and Y. Although this is still logically consistent with his other principles, a possible sacrifice of legibility for color defeats what he wanted to achieve.
Still, I enjoyed reading this book and can safely say I will never look at another paragraph, sentence, or word, quite the same again. Having never seen the previous editions of this book, I cannot compare them, but this revised edition suits me just fine. The pages were faithfully composed employing Dowdings own principles, which makes Finer Points in the Spacing & Arrangement of Type a pleasure to behold. Delve Withrington |
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Finer Points in the Spacing & Arrangement of Type (Revised Ed.) Author: Geoffrey Dowding Publisher: Hartley & Marks Publishers [1995] ISBN: 0-88179-119-9 Binding: Paperback, 96pp, 5 3/4" x 9" |
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