Typology: Type Design from the Victorian Era to the Digital Age
Heller, the New York Times's senior art director, and Fili, an independent designer, have authored an attractive but hard-to-categorize guide to type. One finds brief (approximately 300-word) overview essays of seven time periods of typography: pre-modern, early modern, avant-garde modern, commercial modern, late modern, electric modern, and postmodern. Following these essays are shorter sidebar essays that discuss the various international influences within each time period (e.g., "Art Nouveau in Germany, France, The Netherlands, and Austria"). The essays are well written but require some knowledge of artistic and architectural trends. Hundreds of black-and-white and color illustrations from primary sources enrich the text, but, unfortunately, references to their sources are incomplete. The volume concludes with a bibliography of 55 books from the mid-1950s through the early 1990s. All in all, it is difficult to establish the audience for this book: The text is beyond the level of high school and lower-division undergraduates, but there is not enough scholarly apparatus to interest advanced scholars. Recommended for libraries that regularly receive requests for illustrations of historical typefaces or examples of display type.AP. Steven Thomas, Central Michigan Univ. Lib., Mt. PleasantCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.