Letter are Things, Not Pictures of Things, But...

Insights from Robert Bringhurst (see The Elements of Typographic Style) noted while reading The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind, and Ecology on the train to work this morning:

"I beg to remind you, however, that what you find on the font of a photosetting machine is the photographic image of a letter, and what you set with photosetting equipment is not in truth a letter but a picture of a letter. More precisely: a picture of a drawing of a letter. What you find on a digital font is likewise not a letter but a Bézier or cubic-spline description of a letter. What you set with your computer and print with a laser printer is a digital simulation of a letter. What you find in a California job case (see above) is also not a letter but a sort, which is a sculpture of a letter. What you print with a Vandercook or an Albion is the imprint of a sculpture of a letter. Where is the letter itself? This is the mind-body problem of the philosophers writ small."

And then I got to my stop. [NOTE: This book is a delight]. 

The History of Typography

Lovely animated short by Ben Barrett-Forrest about the history of fonts and typography. 291 paper letters, 2,454 photographs, 140 hours of work. Totally engaging–and you might actually learn something about typography (see The Elements of Typographic Style and Helvetica). [NOTE: Perfect for a freezing, snowy day in New York. Like today].

The Elements of Typographic Style

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst is considered by many (including me) to be "the finest book ever written about typography". But it's much more than that. It's a book about making books beautiful–and useful. It a book about book design and layout and white space and calligraphy and the golden ratio and Henry David Thoreau (really). And it's also a beautiful book in it's own right. Every page is a marvel of design, the paper feels good, the author is a poet. Truly a rare example of embodying human language with an elegant visual form. Illuminating.