"This book is an attempt to give a comprehensive sense of Emery Walker as a person, along with his career and achievements, in part through correspondence with important people in his life. The letters are accompanied by brief biographies of the correspondents and essays that examine some of the key stages and achievements of Walker's career"--
Until now scantily documented, Warde is the missing piece in the story of design, type, and printing in the interwar years, and this book will make essential reading for anyone interested in that critical period, one that saw the final era of hot-metal composition and printing combined with the emergence of graphic design as a distinct profession. Warde laid many false trails about his personal history, but the author has drawn upon a surprisingly large body of surviving documentation to piece together a fascinating picture of his life and of the complex, frustrating, sometimes dislikeable, but often inspiring, figure at its center. The best of Warde's extensive body of work displays a restraint and economy linked with an often striking color sense that feels thoroughly modern in its approach. This output was maintained, sometimes erratically, against the backdrop of Warde's mercurial and fragmented professional and personal life.
This book traces the history of fifty remarkable fonts. Thoroughly researched and visually exciting, it takes readers through the story of each font's creation and distinct characteristics, as well as why it succeeded or failed. Some of the fonts were commissioned for major commercial or cultural projects. Other fonts became culturally significant unintentionally. This book gives readers an unforgettable cast of characters, including Johannes Gutenberg, William Caslon, Nicolas Jenson, Stanley Morison, William Morris, and Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, the English artist and bookbinder who famously "bequeathed" the unique metal type created for his failed Doves Press to the Thames, casting the type into the river to prevent its future use