Reverting to type

ANNO D[OMINI] 1701 is the year this façade was built, now part of Bristol Galleries shopping mall

The Field Guide to Typography:
typefaces in the urban landscape
by Peter Dawson.
Thames & Hudson, 2013.

Nowadays our familiarity with typefaces derives from the choices we have when writing electronic documents, such as Arial, Book Antiqua, Comic Sans, Courier New, Lucida Console, Palatino Linotype, Times New Roman, Verdana and so on. But did you know that there are well over 150,000 typefaces available, a number that grows with every day? And that many of these typefaces have been around in one form or another since at least the middle of the 15th century, when the printing press was introduced into Europe, and some a lot earlier?

Appropriately, this book’s Foreword by Stephen Cole points to ornithology as an analogy, with typography enthusiasts as preoccupied as any birder with identification, classification, distinguishing features and documentation.

Even more aptly this guide includes a photo of a pile of books on birdwatching, with an explanatory key to the various typefaces used on the individual spines.

Peter Dawson’s Field Guide is just a little different from those birding books. It lists and describes “125 typefaces — classic and contemporary, common and unusual — found in our modern urban environment and on the day-to-day objects we come into contact with” and provides budding ‘font spotters’ with profiles of each of those typefaces. They’re grouped into five categories (Serif, Sans Serif, Display, Script and Symbols and Dingbats), with each typeface accorded a minimum double-page spread, text on one page, photos on the other. As with bird-spotting guides each also includes a ‘Not to be confused with’ feature. In amongst the entries are double-page comparisons between pairs of key typefaces as well as seven revealing profiles of typeface designers.

Along with a visual guide to type anatomy (glyph width, x-height or bracket, for example) are an essential glossary and a typeface classification, plus the usual further reading lists, index and other paraphernalia.

This is such a rich treasury of designs, despite being limited to just 125 typefaces — less than 0.1% of available designs. The main division is between Serif (familiar to us from, say, Times New Roman) and Sans Serif (typically, Arial). Other Serif typefaces include PMN Caecilia (my Kindle has this), the elegant Perpetua (designed by Eric Gill in the 1920s), ITC American Typewriter (dating from the 1970s its chunky look, a bit like the earlier Courier, seems rather clunky now) and Galliard (very corporate, very impersonal to my eyes). Designs based on historic forms are not neglected either: classy Bodoni, Baskerville and the related Mrs Eaves with their 18th-century origins, and Shàngó Gothic plus the upper case Trajan, both modelled on classical inscriptions.

Unlike the case of Serif designs where much variety can be created by more obvious visual changes, distinguishing Sans Serif typefaces can require more skill: subtle changes are effected by stroke contrast, shapes of bowls, size of eyes or alignment of terminals. Having said which, distinctive forms have been created as a result of commercial commissions such as Channel 4’s bespoke typeface, Bath City’s custom signage design or Neutraface for architect Richard Neutra’s buildings; and innovative solutions have resulted in such idiosyncratic designs as Jeremy Tankard’s Fenland design and Chalet with its distinctive circular lower case forms.

Display typefaces differ from those designed for large bodies of text. Standouts for me are the ‘futuristic’ Amelia expressing the 60s zeitgeist; the Art Nouveau spirit of the historic Arnold Böcklin and the 1970s ITC Benquiat; the jazz age typeface of Broadway; the much maligned Headline 2012 designed for the London Olympics; and FF Trixie with its distressed typewriter look popularised by TV series The X-Files.

Script typefaces include Bickley Script originally designed for Letraset transfers so that lower case glyphs could look joined up; Fette Fraktur and Old English based on Black letter Gothic scripts; Macmillan Headline created for advertising a British cancer charity; and Owned, looking like graffiti lettering with a variety of ligatures and character variants.

Finally, the short Symbols and Dingbats category features for example Carta (with its map-specific glyphs) and pictograms designed in conjunction with the Latin American typeface Kakaw 2013.

I can only scratch the surface but Dawson’s fascnating text is full of interesting titbits and ‘Field Facts’. He is fair in pointing out criticisms of designs, such as Helvetica, but also indicates the virtues of the otherwise despised Comic Sans for dyslexia sufferers. Anybody who has eyes to see can’t help viewing the urban landscape in a different way, but I would only warn you: at 384 pages this hardback is not a field guide you can easily slip into your pocket. It’s a visually attractive book, however, and one you might hope would be given to you — as it was to me — as a present.