Product Description
An Essay on Typography was first published in 1931, instantly recognized as a classic, and has long been unavailable. It represents Gill at his best opinionated, fustian, and consistently humane. It is his only major work on typography and remains indispensable for anyone interested in the art of letter forms and the presentation of graphic information.
This manifesto, however, is not only about letters their form, fit, and function but also about man’s… More >>
Tags: Essay, essay on typography, fustian, manifesto, Typography
This book has the details and history anyone drawn to printing and writing will savor.
Rating: 5 / 5
Abolutely exciting.
Is get in, in the mind of Eric Gill, know more for him, and the world of this time.
Rating: 4 / 5
As a type enthusiast, everything about this book made it enjoyable to read — the form factor, Gill’s distinctive typesetting, and wide-ranging subject matter. While there is still plenty of hard advice about how to properly use type, I found Gill’s exploration of the man-versus-machine design conundrum far more engaging: it’s a profound look at the role of the artisan in an increasingly automated world.
Rating: 5 / 5
Aunque Eric Gill es un personaje de grandes claroscuros, su trabajo como artista es impresionante. Este libro no solo toca el tema tipográfico, sino sus ideas del arte y la relación con la industria de su época.
Es un poco difícil separar los grandes ideales que escribe y la realidad de su vida, en algunos momentos suena falso y vacío.
Aun así es un gran libro, un clásico de la tipografía. Escrito por alguien que no logró integrar en su vida lo que decía y lo que hacia.
Rating: 5 / 5
This essay on typography is actually an essay on far more. It goes well with William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, in its nostalgia for the ‘humane’ individual craftsman over the commerce and industry. Gill comes back, again and again, to question the proper places of mass production and handwork with respect to each other. He was an idealistic, but still realized that industry was here to stay – it could not (and still can not) simply be wished away. The real goal is “an industrialism … [with] many noble and admirable features.”
Gill uses typography and printing as the vehicle for his social thoughts, and offers a good bit of advice on typography throughout. He discusses letter forms as ethetic, practical, and historical objects – especially interesting from a man who made so much typographic history himself.
I never did quite work my way through all of his social arguments, however. He seems to hold “engineers” as the opponents of art and perhaps creativity. I known that many engineers then and now lack training in esthetics and visual presentation. Anyone who’s seen the Brooklyn Bridge or Eiffel Tower knows, however, that engineering is also a creative act. Gill ridiculed the practice of one worker designing a font, a second preparing it for transfer to metal, another cutting the master tools for each letter, and so on. I have to agree, the assembly line mentality is not suited to all tasks, especially when each product is as unique as a letter form. Still, among all arts, printing is perhaps the one most typified by team effort and division of labor. It would be a very rare individual who could create a text worth reading, create the font in which it is presented, set the type and run the press, and carry out all the other tasks needed to create a bound book. The question is not whether parts of a job should be handed to different specialists, but which jobs should be subdivided – a question I never saw answered.
This is a wonderful work by a man whose livelihood, art, and spiritual life all worked closely together. I recommend it to anyone who works in the arts, not just those with an interest in type.
Rating: 5 / 5