What Book Should Type Designers Start With?

Tom Foley tells type designers to start with books, and the one he always recommends to students is Designing Type by Karen Cheng.

He says there is a lot of type design material online, but a book engages the theory and the method differently. Designing Type explains the work in plain language, with strong visual examples, and it brings process in early. Karen Cheng shows how the first letters are drawn. When you draw an O, you also start to solve a C and a G. She covers proportions and structure, then spacing, and builds the work up as a process. Foley says a typeface designer needs systematic thinking. You can have crazy ideas that are brilliant, but at some point you have to systematize them so they work inside a typographic system.

He has been reading Type Revivals by his friend Michele Patanè, a little yellow book on how to analyze a historical model. The example he gives is Caslon at 8 point, from a facsimile or an impression: photograph it, analyze it, rationalize it, and develop digital drawings. He says a young designer gains a lot by taking a classic such as Caslon, Bodoni, or Baskerville and recreating it as a personal revival. He still uses Detail in Typography by Jost Hochuli, a small book by a Swiss book designer, as a practical manual for rag, line length, and leading. He never enjoyed Robert Bringhurst's book. He says he is dyslexic, the language is beautiful but too complex, and Hochuli's book is the plainer one he can use.