Typographic Style Handbook: A Guide to Typography from Libanus Press

by Michael Mitchell, Susan Wightman

An elegant handbook in typography, for the professional and amateur text designer.Typographic Style Handbook is an indispensable new manual for anyone working with text - books, journals, company reports, websites or marketing material - who wishes to develop an understanding of how to produce clean, clear and consistent typography.The handbook is divided into three General typesetting covers the basic rules of setting text Books and journals explains the typographic styles used within the publishing industryCorporate style describes how the treatment of text can be integrated into an organisation's branding guidelines. Typographic rules and styles are copiously illustrated with examples and diagrams Alternative styles are listed and explained to enable users to develop their own 'house style' Includes a glossary and appendices to aid students and self-publishers Typographic Style Handbook is destined to become a classic manual alongside Judith Butcher's Copy-editing, Hart's Rules, The Economist Style Guide and the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.

Genres: Nonfiction

288 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 21, 2017

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Reviews

[H James · Rating 2 out of 5]

This handbook covers a wide spectrum of book‑design related matters, and it does so with mixed success. The late Mr Mitchell was 77 when this book was copyrighted, and while he offers clear and useful guidance on front‑matter ordering, citation styles, and art caption formatting, his attempts to touch on aspects of book‑design that have been subject to change in the digital era go astray with alarming regularity. Discussion of typefaces is firmly stuck in a 1990s, pre‑OpenType conception, with much confusion over how diacritical marks are rendered and no discussion of optical sizes, even when issues of size vs color arise. Optical alignment is neither discussed nor used in the book’s own design. Certain core concepts such as paragraph styles, which have been integral to publishing software for decades, are absent, and—based on some weird design hiccups in the book that would be highly unlikely had paragraph styles been used—I suspect were unknown to Mr Mitchell. And, as much as I appreciate a book that doesn’t attempt to deal with book‑ and web‑design in the same volume, there should have been enough internet‑awareness on the part of the authors or editors to recognize that www.cambridge.org/us/.../Cambridge_st... [sic], which appears in the additional sources section, is not the URL they wanted.

In summation: the second part, “Books and journals”, (chapters 11–14) is a handy reference. All other content should be approached with wariness or avoided entirely.