Friday, December 3, 2010

Lettering Art in Modern Use


When using text you really need to find the right font. Anyone can by instinct, see when a font works and when it doesnt. Its weird and it baffles the hell out of me, so I hit the books for ideas and inspiration. This old Lettering Art In Modern Use is a really great, *general* book with lots of examples of text and some really nice things that you dont find in books much anymore, like tracing paper overlays and work sheets. Dont underestimate the power of typography, and take advantage of how lucky we are now a days to have such easy access to an infinitely wide variety of text.
Some people, old people like me may remember lettrasets, and some others might remember even before lettrasets, when people actually had to ink their own fonts and font styles- which is just mind boggling.
I digress- this is a great book on lettering.

Lettering In Modern Use (1952)
Raymond Ballinger
246 pgs HC
Reinhold Publishing