10 Recommended Books on Typography
In the past few years, I have read every book on typography I could get my hands on, but these are the books that I found most useful and almost all of them I have read more than once. If you’re interested in learning about typography, check them out.
- Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style: A typographer’s bible to be read at least once a year.
- Adrian Frutiger Typefaces: The Complete Works: A comprehensive documentation of Frutiger’s typographical work with detailed analysis from Heidrun Osterer and Philipp Stamm.
- Karen Cheng’s Designing Type: With over 400 type specimens and diagrams, this book examines each letter in great details.
- Sofie Beier’s Reading Letters: A thorough research on legibility and readability.
- Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type: A must-read to learn the fundamental concepts of typography
- Stephen Coles’s The Anatomy of Type: The most useful coffee table book I have ever read.
- Denise Bosler’s Mastering Type: From kerning, tracking, leading, word spacing, aligning to legibility and readability, this book provides insightful guides and the best parts are the good-vs.-bad illustrations.
- Erik Spiekermann’s Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works: It’s a quick read, yet informative and entertaining.
- Butterick’s Practical Typography: Insightful and opinionated. You’ll learn typographic details such as the difference between straight and curly quotes.
- Simon Garfield’s Just My Type: An engaging read even for the folks outside of the typographic geeks.