From a drive down the highway or shopping in a grocery store to surfing the web and navigating our PDAs, we are bombarded by words in a plethora of shapes, sizes, and arrangements. It is essential for designers to understand the basics of typography to optimise this communication. This book provides a background in typographic knowledge

• History: in the beginning there was communication
• Birth of the modern written language
• Uses of type
• Type and art
• Type moving forward
• Modern type design
• The next frontier
• Letter: Serif and sans serif
• Parts of a character
• Classification of letterforms
• Type styles
• Typeface design
• Designing with letters
• An interview with Ken Barber
• Letter gallery
• Word: Emotional type
• Choosing the right typeface
• Kerning
• Tracking
• Ligatures
• Case
• Numbers
• Legibility vs. readability
• Designing with words
• An interview with Holly Tienken
• Word gallery
• Sentence: Word spacing
• Leading
• Alignment
• Line length
• Punctuation
• Designing with sentences
• An interview with Jessica Hische
• Sentence gallery
• Paragraph: Visual tone
• Varying sizes
• Initial caps
• Complementary type pairs
• Type issues
• Designing with paragraphs
• An interview with Amanda Geisinger
• Paragraph gallery
• Page: Layout, design and communication
• Gestalt theory
• Relationships
• Grid
• Visual concept
• Designing with pages
• An interview with Steven Brower
• Page gallery
• Screen: Going digital
• Electronic media
• Layout
• Effective typography
• Designing for screen
• An interview with Jason Santa Maria
• Screen gallery