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Title: Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works, Second Edition by Erik Spiekermann, E.M Ginger ISBN: 0-201-70339-4 Publisher: Adobe Press Pub. Date: 15 July, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00

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Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (24 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Raises good questions ...
Comment: This book is a fair introduction to the questions that typography addresses. It shows a number of ways that typography affects the sense and understandability of text. It shows how type can solve technical problems in display media, including mosaic, LCD display, or neon. It even gives a little typographic history, including the people and technologies that formed modern use of text. As an aside, the book also catalogs brief samples of a wide variety of type faces.

The book itself is a sample of typography, and the appearance of every page is intended as an example. I'm not sure that the examples are all good ones, though. The layout is dense to the point of crowding. The book's layout follows a regular rhythm, examples on the left of each spread and text on the right. That rhythm could have been relied on to carry more of the book's information. For example, text pages reserve the right margin for additional notes. Those rubrics are distinuguished from the body text by placement, type face, letter size, color, and the density of the text's "gray." I find that a bit heavy-handed; two or three distinguishing features would have sufficed. The book's ongoing catalog of type faces could also have been more effective. The samples were too small to display real nuances of difference, and could have helped more in showing good and bad combinations of letter forms.

I think this book's value is in training the eye to problems that type can solve (or create). Recognizing the problem is the first step in solving it. Unfortunately, the reader must look elsewhere for the second and later steps. This raises the questions but provides very few answers.

Rating: 3
Summary: good at the basics but unsatisfying, hard to read
Comment: This book was required for my Typography I class and at first I really enjoyed the stylish layout and color. But eventually I began to hate it because all the important info is flushed to the right side of the page, in red and, worst of all, italicized. I do have to mention that the book has very good visual examples, which is probably the best aspect of the book altogether. This book has tons of great info for beginners in type or graphic design, it just needs to have a less flashy layout.

Rating: 3
Summary: Not bad, but definitely not great
Comment: If you know nothing at all about type, this is a fine introduction. But it stops at the surface. It does cover the various attributes and functions of type, and it's a very quick read (every other page is a picture), so it's definitely not useless. But it's a scattered book that avoids depth at the expense of flashiness. If you're serious about learning about typography, this is probably not the text for you. If you're bored on a subway, or just curious about graphic design, it might be a fun read. Though it serves its purpose as a typography book for the masses, I was left unsatisfied with this "timeless classic on typography."

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