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by tikhonj 4859 days ago
Can you recommend any good overviews of the subject? I'm not a designer, but I've always been very interested in typography.
3 comments

The best book I know on the topic is Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. Highly, highly recommended.

Other great books: Ellen Lupton's Thinking With Type and James Felici's The Complete Manual of Typography. Both are really solid.

Books that would be worth checking out at a library: Richard Hendel's On Book Design and Ruari McLean's Typographers on Type. More philosophical in nature, less practical.

For a practical (but involved) overview, there's this: http://webtypography.net/toc/

It's a classic typography book translated to a web context with the relevant CSS styles. Pretty cool.

For a more easily digestible (and interactive!) overview, the one that comes to mind is the Interactive Guide to Blog Typography: http://www.kaikkonendesign.fi/typography/

If you'd like to check out more resources, hackdesign, a newsletter of curated design-related links, is focusing on typography this month: http://hackdesign.org/courses/

This online version of "Designing for the Web" [1] is a very good (and free!) read. Definitely helped me understand some of the principles of typography, even layout and colour. The "Getting Started" and "Research" sections can be skipped without issue.

[1] http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/book/