Book review

This is the latest addition to my design bookshelf – Reinventing Lettering by Emily Gregory.

I never really intended to do book reviews on this blog, but the trouble is, when I buy a new design book, I get so excited I want to tell everyone about it. That’s the child in me. I don’t buy very many, so when I do it’s a real treat, and it rekindles a flame of passion for my job and injects some much needed inspiration.

 It’s a lovely collection of typographic illustrators and designers, broken up into three categories; digitally drawn, hand-drawn and illustrated, and three-dimensional type. There is a brief biography of each person and then examples of their work. Some design books don’t tell you very much about the designer behind the work, so this is nice to read about each person and how they actually go about their job.

 There’s a good mixture of styles, from quirky and colourful to elegant and sophisticated with lots of nods towards vintage, which is always good to see. Also there’s a long list of contributors at the back with websites for each person, so I can see a day happily wasted (sorry, I mean – spent doing important research) using this.

 And it’s good to see a few names that might have been mentioned on this blog before now … just saying … game … ahead of. No actually I’m not, this book was published last year, I’m way behind. Still, better late to the game than never.

By the way, just after I bought this book, I was sat in the pub flicking through it, and a girl who had overheard some of my conversation came over to see what I was reading. When I showed it to her she casually said ‘oh, that’s what I do’. After a bit of chatting, she gave me her details and said to contact her if I needed any help with hand-drawn type. What a coincidence and how sweet of her. Later, when I looked at her website, I was astounded to discover not only some wonderful illustration and typography, but she’s also behind the latest rendition of To Kill a Mockingbird, which I have admired for a while now. What a lovely and very talented lady, glad to have met her. See inkymole.com.