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Question: Font Combinations Book?

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If you are dropping by looking for the posts on typeface combinations or most popular fonts, welcome! Have look see at the most popular posts in the right column. But I have a question for you: would a new font combinations book be useful to you? Low on theory, high on example? Some ideas:
  • Would bad examples in a font combinations book be as useful as good ones?
  • How much written theory would be useful?
  • Do you care about x-heights and units and what-not, or just pictures and point sizes?
  • How many examples should a book like this include?
  • What typefaces or fonts should a type combination book focus on?
  • What would not be useful or necessary in a book like this?
  • If you ordered a typeface combination book and to your dismay it was missing ______, what would ______ be that would make you think it was the greatest recent book on the subject?
  • Are there any other posts or web pages you found helpful while researching this?
  • Any other opinions on the topic?
Please leave a comment as it would be very much appreciated. I’d love to get a dialogue going on this…

About Douglas Bonneville

Douglas has been a graphic designer since 1992, in addition to software developer and author. He is a member of Smashing Magazine's "Panel of Experts" and has contributed to over 100 articles. He is the author of "The Big Book of Font Combinations", loves cats, and plays guitar.

Comments

  1. Laura says

    Hi, I stumbled across your blog and found this post especially interesting. I’m a design student and feel like I’m randomly combining typefaces often. I know serif with sans serif but more than that it’s guesswork. So this is a good idea! I like to see examples WITH explanation.

  2. Douglas Bonneville says

    Hi Laura: I’m so glad you found the graphics useful. I have more font combination articles and tutorials in the works so keep tabs on the blog, if you’d like! Thanks for stopping by!

  3. John S. Hall says

    Hi Doug,

    I think a font combination book would be extremely helpful, especially one that includes more current / up-to-date fonts in addition to the tried ‘n’ true classics. (In other words, fonts from companies like FontFont, FontShop, Emigre, P22, etc., as well as Adobe’s library and so on.)

    And I think that “bad examples” would be very helpful to designers of all levels — a picture being worth a thousand words and all that.

    I would say that type examples for printed newsletters / newspapers would be a definite, and so should type examples for letterhead / envelopes / business cards, and for menus too.

    There should also be type examples for web sites / blogs / electronic media as well, IMHO.

    Cheers,
    John the Fontaholic

  4. Douglas Bonneville says

    Hi John: I’m personally very intrigued by the “bad examples” idea. I recently did a post, the first of a series, focusing on bad typography examples, from humorous to serious. The idea of examples by genre is one I had not considered. I like that a lot! Funny, I get type size questions about business cards more than any other pieces I have worked on over the years…

  5. Kevin Cullis says

    How about font type essentials, like music essentials from iTunes. Also, how about discussing the quality of fonts and where to steer away from buying bad quality stuff.

  6. Douglas Bonneville says

    The fonts I’m using for the book and iPhone app are a core set – no fluff, all quality stuff. There are only a handful, very small handful, of fonts I’d add to my own core for any practical usage. There is always the oddball project that benefits from a strange one off distressed font. But by and large, out of the hundreds of typefaces (which translates into who knows how many thousand individual fonts) I routinely use less than 20 I’d say. So yes, I’ll focus on the essentials. There are some designers that don’t use more than about 10 typefaces for their whole career. Less is more in many cases!