The Elements of Typographic Style

I try not to blog about blogging. It’s just not the style I’d like my writing to take, but I have to leave a note in response to my last post. And that note is… Booooooringggg.

I’m still working out what I like to blog about, and while Branding vs. Direct Response is interesting in it’s own way, I realized I was avoiding writing because I had two big posts to get through (one on branding, one on direct response) before I could blog what I actually want to write. Meanwhile, the subjects I’m actually excited about, the things I talk to my wife and friends about, are left unmentioned. The Elements of Typographic Style, for example (and segue).

Paul Armstrong recently finished a nice set of articles called 5 Tools Church Designers Need, and in Part 2 of that series he ended with a list of recommended reading. Top of the list: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. To be honest, there’s little chance I’ll make it through this beautiful but intimidating 350+ page book before it’s due back at my local library. Typography technique is not what I’m up for reading when I’m tired, which I almost always am when I have time to read. That said, as much of this book as I can reasonably digest will make me a better designer. And a designer more inspired about type.

I consider myself something of a type geek, but Bringhurst talks about type with a knowledge and eloquence I find surprising and moving. I’ve heard (and said myself) the phrase, “Letters are pictures. Not pictures of things.” But Bringhurst puts it this way,

“Whether the type is set in hard metal by hand, or in softer metal by machine, or in digital form with a computer, every comma, every parenthesis, every e, and in context, even every empty space, has style as well as bald symbolic value. Letters are microscopic works of art as well as useful symbols. They mean what they are as well as what they say.”

If you’re at all interested in knowing/loving typography more, I recommend it.