Fonts and Typography for Writers and Non-Designers »

What are some good resources for non-​designers, who perhaps write, edit or publish professional documents? Somebody recently asked this in the comments to my blog. There are quite a lot of resources I could suggest, but given limited time, we should limit the complexity/​depth/​scope of the resources. So given that….

Before getting into the depths of font selection, teach typography. I think Matthew Butterick’s Practical Typography is a great place to start. Short, straightforward, no-​nonsense, useful, and little I could disagree with.

After that, for an intro to selecting and combining fonts, this article from Smashing Magazine is good.

At the next level of complexity, there are plenty of good longer introductions, mostly aimed at designers. Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type is a good start here. Nothing wrong with reading Butterick first, before moving on to this, btw!

For more advanced thought, the closest thing to a typography bible remains Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style. It is better as a reference book or to read a chapter at a time, rather than try to take it all in at once.

The original query from a business writing teacher at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs:

I teach business writing at a university and we have a document design unit. I try to get the students to understand fonts, but don’t have a good exercise, video, material, etc. about effectively using fonts. DO you have any tips, links, etc. that I might be able to use with the students to help them discover fonts beyond Times Roman and Arial and understand how to use them effectively? Thank!

Intro Type Design Workshops in New York & Singapore »

I had so much fun doing this in Portland, that I am again joining Dave Crossland (pending sufficient registrations) to teach a 2-​day intro type design workshop in New York City at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, July 20–21.

We have essentially a loose anarcho-​syndicalist collective, organized by Dave under the “Crafting Type” banner. Doing this in a tag-​team format turns out to be amazingly effective and fun. Dave comes from a very different perspective than I do in some respects, but we share our love of type and type design. Students really benefit from a variety of viewpoints and expertise.

The Singapore Crafting Type workshop is July 17–19, being taught by Eben Sorkin and Octavio Pardo. They too are knowledgeable instructors with varying perspectives, and it should be a great opportunity! 

Here again is some of my own work:

Hypatia Sans poster on Adobe’s site, click for high-​res PDF.