American Type Design & Designers

[ktinkel]

American Type Design & Designers, a large-format paperback by David Consuegra, is an incredible collection of typographic lore. It includes not only biographical information on American type designers from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries with lists of their typefaces and useful specimens of many of them, but also several articles. These include a long introductory essay on the history of type, a list of type-related events, a comparative American/European type chronology, articles on significant foundries, a glossary of typographic terms, and a useful bibliography.

The articles on designers and their types are illustrated, and the type specimens are annotated. Anyone with an interest in the details of type will find something worth reading in this book.

As seems unfortunately common in books on type and typography these days, American Type Design is set in small, unleaded type. The main text is set in News Gothic (looks like 9/9). The articles on designers are set in one of their typefaces, if possible, or something similar if not. This has its difficulties — I doubt that even Kaufmann would expect anyone to set running text in his eponymous script, for example, but it is used here.

No matter — an entertaining and useful book.