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Title: Big Book of 5000 Fonts: (And Where to Get Them) by David E. Carter ISBN: 0-8230-0489-9 Publisher: Watson-Guptill Pubns Pub. Date: February, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Quick Brown Fox is Done Jumping
Comment: Carter's laid out the fonts by category:
Comic book, retro, calligraphic, block letter, roughish, display, pseudo cultural, grunge, script, technological, illustrated and kids stuff, type-label-stencil, ornamental, others sans, other serif. The organization is clean.
Instead of using the boring text sample that litters the letters sampled in font catalogs, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog," Carter gifts us with vignettes. The font Scotty Normal is shown with the sample, "Would I have been a PGA Champion?" This could be read as a stream-of-conscious novel if it weren't a font book. With each sample, he lists the name and which type house sells it. The sources for the fonts are listed at the end, including several listings for free fonts.
It is indispensable for a new designer, or a student of typography. For me, as someone who uses typography as a secondary part of my job, I found it a strong tool for familiarizing myself with font families. I'd say a seasoned might not find it as useful, as much of this kind of information can be found elsewhere.
Anthony Trendl
Rating: 4
Summary: Good for browsing fonts, less so for identifying fonts.
Comment: This is a book of font samples. You won't find any information on making your own fonts or installing and using them on a computer. This book won't outline font history or anatomy. It won't tell you how to design with fonts. It's simply page after page of sentences or sentence snippets, each rendered in a different typeface. Each font's name and manufacturer is listed below each sample.
The book is great if you're a would-be font designer and are looking for inspiration. It's great if you're looking for a font to add pizzazz or personality to a graphic or flyer. It's also great for the casual typeface fan who simply enjoys looking at typefaces.
I agree with the author's statement in the book's introduction that he wanted a font book that "didn't have one mind-numbing sentence repeated time after time" throughout the book. While pangrams such as "The quick brown fox..." are standard and useful in that they (by definition) show every letter in the alphabet, it can become tedious to see the same words again and again. Having the fonts set in different sentences also adds interest to the look of the pages, and benefits those who wish to see how a font looks in a different combination of letters.
There are a few of problems with the book:
1. Fonts are listed by general category and then alphabetically by name. This makes it difficult and time-consuming to search for just one font if you don't know its name and have only a limited idea of what it looks like.
2. There just isn't enough sample text to truly get a good taste the font. The sentences and snippets probably average 8 words long and consist of a dozen different letters, which, in my opinion, is not enough to truly get a sense of the typeface.
Identifying fonts using this book will inevitably prove difficult. Each passage is unique and does not use every letter in the alphabet. So if you are relying in the distinct gap between the strokes of the letter G in a font to help you ID it, you may be out of luck if the sample text doesn't have words with G.
Ideally, font samples should display every letter twice (in capitals and lowercase forms), numbers, and punctuation characters. Granted, it's not realistic to expect that a book covering 5,000 fonts would be able to accomodate such thorough samples.
Of course, these are only problems if you're relying on the book to ID fonts for you. And in this book's defense, these weak points are common to a lot of font books.
On the whole, I found this book a welcome change from other font books that seem to think themselves pieces of art and are bent on showing me how modern and cool typography can be. If you just want a really big font book that will show you nothing but ton of samples, this is the book for you.
Rating: 1
Summary: Hard to find fonts.
Comment: This book is creatively written, but has been really no use to me in finding specific fonts. I wish the book were laid out with the same sentence "The Quick Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Brown Dog" instead of a bunch of free-flowing sentences. I'm not able to find fonts in this book because I can't pinpoint a single letter.
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Title: Color Index: Over 1100 Color Combinations, CMYK and RGB Formulas, for Print and Web Media by Jim Krause ISBN: 1581802366 Publisher: How Design Books Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.99 |
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Title: Adobe Type Library Reference Book by Inc. Adobe Systems ISBN: 0321136462 Publisher: Adobe Press Pub. Date: 07 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Layout Index: Brochure, Web Design, Poster, Flyer, Advertising, Page Layout, Newsletter, Stationery Index by Jim Krause ISBN: 1581801467 Publisher: North Light Books Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.99 |
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Title: Idea Index: Graphic Effects and Typographic Treatments by Jim Krause ISBN: 1581800460 Publisher: North Light Books Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.99 |
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Title: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst ISBN: 0881791326 Publisher: Hartley & Marks Publishers Pub. Date: 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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