9 /10 1 Votes9
3.9/5 abebooks Pages 428 OCLC 14068305 LC Class Z250 .L34 1990 | 5/5 Barnes & Noble Publication date 1990 ISBN 978-0-87923-333-4 Dewey Decimal 686.2/24 19 Originally published 1990 Page count 428 Country United States of America | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Publisher David R. Godine, Publisher Similar Printing types - their history - fo, Revival of the Fittest: Digital Ve, Type, A Tally of Types, Letters of Credit: A View of T |
Anatomy of a Typeface is a book on typefaces written by Alexander Lawson. The book is notable for devoting entire chapters to the development and uses of individual or small groupings of typefaces. Beyond Anatomy of a Typeface Lawson has considered and discussed the classification of types. Within Anatomy, Lawson arranges the typefaces by classification. In his preface, Lawson qualifies his classification: "After using this system in the teaching of typography over a thirty-year period, I know that it is reasonably effective in the initial study of printing types. I am not disposed to consider it faultless by any means. A classification system, after all, is simply a tool ... Its primary purpose is to help people become familiar with these forms preparatory to putting them to effective and constructive typographic use."
Following are the thirty-one chapters of Anatomy of a Typeface: the Black-letter Types: Goudy Text and Hammer Uncial; Old Style Types: Cloister Old Style, Centaur, Bembo, Arrighi, Dante, Goudy Old Style, Palatino, Garamond, Galliard, Granjon, Sabon, Janson, Caslon, Baskerville, Bodoni, Bulmer, Bell, Oxford, Caledonia, Cheltenham, and Bookman; Newspaper Types: Times Roman; Twentieth-century Gothics: Franklin Gothic; Square-serif Revival: Clarendon; Humanist Sans-serif Types: Optima; Geometric Sans-serif Types: Futura; and Script, Cursive, and Decorated Types; Type Making from Punch to Computer.
The third printing of Anatomy appeared in 2002.