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Counterpunch: Making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now
 
 
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Counterpunch: Making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now [Paperback]

Fred Smeijers (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Paperback, Dec 1 1997 --   -- --

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Book Description

Typography is still dominated by letterforms from the first one hundred years of European printing. What were the processes and attitudes that lie behind these forms? Fred Smeijers is a type designer who learned to design and cut punches: the key instruments with which metal type is made. This book is a work of practical history, with much contemporary relevance. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Fred Smeijers is a Dutch type designer, teacher, and writer. After finishing as a student at the school of art at Arnhem, he worked as a typographic advisor to the reprographic company Océ, then became a founding member of the graphic design practice Quadraat, which provided the name for his first published typeface (FontShop, 1992). Smeijers has a whole range of distinctive typefaces to his credit, including Renard (The Enschedé Font Foundry, 1998) and Arnhem, Fresco, Sansa, and Custodia. These latter are all distributed by OurType, the company that he co-founded. His books are Counterpunch (1996) and Type now (2003). He is a winner of the Gerrit Noordzij prize (2001), and is Professor of Digital Typography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
These three lowercase a's belong to one set of punches. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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6 Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars The most important book a type designer will ever read., Mar 30 2002
By 
Raymond Larabie "font jerk" (Vancouver, BC Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Counterpunch: Making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now (Paperback)
I've read a lot of books on type and this is the only one with a practical guide on how to create your own typefaces. I'm sure more people who read this book aren't going to start making their own metal type but the lessons learned in this book easily translate to the world of creating digital typefaces. After reading this it changed the way I design typefaces, completely. Now, instean of merely moving bezier control points, I imagine myself cutting metal and re-using counterpunches. Sometimes I "oversize" my counters a bit, as if I were hammering them in a bit more. If you're a type designer, or just interested in type, put this one in your shopping cart immediately.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Things only a punchcutter could tell us, Jan 17 2002
By 
Peter Marquis-Kyle (Highgate Hill, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Counterpunch: Making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now (Paperback)
This is a wonderful book. To write it, Fred Smeijers looked closely at printed books and type punches in museums. He read contemporary accounts of sixteenth century type making. And, informed by his experience as a digital type designer, he understood the problems the sixteenth century type makers faced and how they solved them. Some of these problems, like readability, economy and visual texture, are still with us.

Most remarkably, he also taught himself to make his own steel type punches - his practical experiments shone new light on the subject and showed the implausibility of some accepted accounts of how things were done.

The book is engagingly written. It's a visual delight too, with text set in the author's 'Renard' type and illustrated with his pencil sketches.

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5.0 out of 5 stars About the cover, July 28 2000
By 
D. Earls (Kingsville, MO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Counterpunch: Making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now (Paperback)
Mr Smeijers has crafted a fine book, as all three other reviews have noted. Incisive, insightful, instructive.

Look closely at the cover of this volume. After you've read it, and understand the counterpunch/punch process, you see that the entire story is told on the cover in a bit of brilliant graphic design.

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