Annotated Bibliography
Typography Class
Fall 2010
1. Barker, Nicolas. Stanley Morison. London: Macmillan London, LTD., 1972. Print.
This book was pretty dry, it was far too long and factual. Morison was an interesting guy, but not interesting enough to justify a book that’s over 500 pages long! I found this book in the rare book room and I have to say I’m not surprised that it stopped being printed and is now a rare book… Once sifted through, it was useful for factual information.
2. Brewer, Roy. Eric Gill: The Man Who Loved Letters. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, 1973. Print.
This book provided useful and extensive information about Eric Gill’s life and work. It’s another book that I found in the rare book room. It was written before Gill’s diaries were published and therefore, the dark part of his life – the fact that he was a pedophile, a rapist, etc. etc. – was not discussed. Knowing what we know about Gill now, this book is horrifically out of date.
3. Frampton, Kenneth. Le Corbusier: Architect of the Twentieth Century. New York: Abrams, 2002. Print.
This is a beautiful book that celebrates the work of Le Corbusier. It shows his works from sketch to completion in full page, full color photos. It also gives interesting analysis and information about who Le Corbusier was and why he is such an important figure. I found Le Corbusier fascinating, and this book was by far the most enjoyable source I used in this project.
4. Identifont.com
This isn’t the most traditional “academic source” but it has been extremely useful as a database for information about typefaces. You can search it’s database by designer, font name, font appearance, and font similarity. It has information about each font’s designer, creation, date, what fonts it was influenced by, what fonts it is similar to, what fonts it’s an influence on, where you can buy it and more. It has been extraordinarily useful.
5. Lupton, Ellen. Thinking With Type. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004. Pgs 34-43.
Lupton’s break down of the parts of type is helpful to a limited extent. Her chart is helpful in identifying and naming the parts of type but because Lupton neglects to define the parts of type, her illustration isn’t helpful in understanding the parts of type. The lack of definition also leaves some grey areas when one starts to learn more about the anatomy of type and starts trying to distinguish between similar pieces; for example it’s hard to distinguish between a bowl and a loop but because there are no definitions, it’s even harder. Lupton’s break down of type anatomy is very “bare bones” and doesn’t name very many pieces of type. Perhaps it’s to avoid the confusions that would require her to define the names.
6. Moran, James. Stanley Morison: His Typographic Achievement. London: Lund Humphries Publishers Limited, 1971. Print.
This was a much better book about Stanley Morison than Barker’s book. It is under 200 pages and focuses on what Morison did in the world of Typography. The information about his professional accomplishments was a nice compliment to the biographical information I already had about Morison.
7. Morison, Stanley. Type Designs of the Past and Present. London: The Fleuron, LTD., 1926. Print.
This was useful because it’s a first hand source. The book shows how passionate and educated Morison was about typography, especially historical type faces.
8. “Morris, William / Artist Index / Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History / The Metropolitan Museum of Art.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Metmuseum.org. Web. 1 October 2010. <www.metmuseum.org/toah/hi/hi_morriswilliam.htm>.
I used this for pictures of William Morris’s works. I grew up three blocks from the Met Museum in New York City so I’ve also been many times. When I went back to New York, I went specifically to see the Morris works that I saw on the website in person. They were even more impressive in person than they are online. The detail is incredible.
9. Toxel.com
This website has been a long time favorite of mine. It has the coolest new things on it that inspire me and spark my creativity. I first saw the typography maps that I wrote about on my blog on this website. I also chose this website to place my Meta web banner on.
10. Withrington, Delve. “Review: An Essay On Typography.” Type Books: For the Well Read Typographer. 2002. Web. 1 October 2010. <www.typebooks.org/r-essay.htm>.
This review of Eric Gill’s book An Essay on Typography helped me to appreciate Eric Gill more. Before reading this, all I could see was Gill the pedophile; after reading this review, I was able to appreciate that he was talented and intelligent on an artistic level. The article his posted on a website that has many articles and reviews on typography books.
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