It’s a feast for type lovers with dot-font themed collections and a book celebrating FontFont by two who were there

There’s a surfeit of good books for the typophile lately, with a decided accent on history and what makes type work. Adding to this most recently are Mark Batty Publishers, who are gaining a reputation (with this reviewer, anyway) of publishing books that display type and the history of digital type in its best possible settings, with beautifully-designed editions by very readable authors. The three volumes we’ve recently seen go into the nuts, bolts, and critical aspects of digital design.

Made with FontFont

In 1988, Erik and Joan Spiekermann founded FontShop International and began the FontFont library of digital fonts. Amongst the first (if, indeed, not the first) concerns who marketed digital fonts, Font Shop and FontFont have since gone round the world with now familiar digital stalwarts such as FF Meta, FF DIN, FF Danubia, FF Zine…the list goes on and on and on. And Made With FontFont tries to show it all.

This is definitely not a bad thing. The history of FontFont faces is a large part of the history of modern digital font design. FF Meta, originally developed for MetaDesign’s corporate image, became a widely popular font well known for its pleasant and readable yet no-nonsense style (and there’s a photo of the original diskette on page 20). FF DIN was of course derived from DIN Mittelschrift, the “Autobahn” typeface, and its popularity predates the current interest in “un-designed” fonts.

The pages are generously designed, many awash in color and in gleeful letterform, graphic and color play which harkens back to such publications as U&lc at its height, and each separate text piece is set in an appropriate FF font (Spiekermann’s foreward is set in FF Meta Pro, and care is taken to mention that Discretionary Ligatures are switched on).

The book, which clocks in at 351 pages (including credits and index) is hard to describe simply; it is, after all, an anthology, but it’s more like attending a big party full of typographical die-hards, each of whom have something valuable (or at least interesting) to say. There’s a lot of insight and history amongst the pages; it’s the kind of book you’ll take down from your shelf, open to a random page, and simply start reading and absorbing, and do it over and over again.

The Baseline: Made With FontFont, ISBN 978-0-9779850-4-3, by Erik Spiekermann and Jan Middendorp, 368pp, street price USD $65.00, Availible from publisher ([1] www.markbattypublisher.com) or from [2] Amazon.

Travels With John

For a long time now, John D. Berry has been authoring the “dot-font” series of columns at [3] CreativePro.com, and they’ve become widely popular even outside of design; on the back cover of a new volume of the ongoing dot-font series, author Bruce Sterling is quoted as saying “his writing is truly engrossing; I should have wiped my reddened eyes and stopped reading him, but I couldn’t.”

The esteemed Mr. Sterling only had a ‘dot-pdf file on a grimy laptop’ to read from; we book consumers are more lucky, in that we have access to some really appropriately-designed books to lug about. And we don’t have to plug ‘em in!

The appeal of Berry is found in his wit and opinionated views, as witness this excerpt from a 2001 column on the trend of “undesigned” typefaces:

In this way, Barry plays his own provocateur, and gets us thinking on the question.

The dot-font series has him selecting his best columns from its run (so far) and grouping them together according to themes. The first volume, dot-font: Talking About Fonts stays true to its title and explores the history and mystery of fonts and how they’re used, and the second volume, dot-font: Talking About Design, looks at the influence of design in our culture at large. Though it does tend to touch on font use (in areas such as transit design), the theme is served very well here, including columns on book design, the Vico collaboration, and the Parmenides Project of Peter Koch and collaborators.

The dot-font books are designed to be portable (5.5 x 8 inches and 128 pp) and accessable (each volume retails at USD $16.95), and should serve as an appropriate vehicle to make his columns available to anyone who may benefit from his insights. John Berry has long been an admired critical voice on fonts and design in general, and now the world can find out why. We shouldn’t mind sharing him.

The Baseline:dot-font:Talking About Fonts, ISBN 978-0-9772827-0-8, by John D. Berry, 128pp, street price USD $16.50, Availible from publisher ([1] www.markbattypublisher.com) or from [5] Amazon; dot-font:Talking About Design, ISBN 978-0-9772827-1-5, by John D. Berry, 128pp, street price USD $16.50, Availible from publisher ([1] www.markbattypublisher.com) or from [7] Amazon