A couple of recent designs have left me wondering whether we should be ’showing our workings’ and display the grid at all, whether subtlety like Jina Bolton’s Sushi & Robots or something more elaborate, like Analog (note: press Alt+G).

Once visible, the precision of the grid acts as evidence of design credibility, and its purity of form has a mystical draw.

A Brief History of Grids, Lucienne Roberts http://www.graphics.com/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=620

Having a visible grid is certainly not new; Here you can see the Vormgevers exhibition poster in 1968 by Wim Crouwel.

I’m certainly not going to say if the grid should be visible or not, but I’d love to hear your thoughts or opinions on the topic, or just to add a link to a site where you have seen a visible grid used well.

Inspiration

Mercedes Benz Typographic Animation
Flickr Pool of Vintage Type
Use Of Effective Typography In Logo Design
Typography Mania #13 by Abduzeedo
Vibrant Wall Typography/Graffiti from Ripo Visuals
The Best Custom Letters of 2009

Web Typography

Typechart: Preview and compare web typography. Retrieve the CSS
Revised Font Stacks
Fontspring: Hundreds of web-ready fonts at your fingertips

Fonts

Today Sans H EF Extra Light
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface by Michael Bierut
Haäfe & Haph presents a selection of custom ampersands

I am hoping to give Typography Links a dedicated website soon, where you will be able to subscribe via RSS and submit your own links. Details in the coming weeks.

Leaving comments to me just shows my appreciation to the writer. It’s not for linking reasons, or to get my name out there, but I feel it’s a way of thanking the writer or expressing an opinion I have on the subject. Most of us write blog posts in our spare time, and I know personally that I enjoy it when someone leaves a comment. It shows that it interested them, or provoked a response; good or bad. I find that the narrative of comments almost always positively extends the actual article, and if it doesn’t then it usually leads to a healthy debate.

We all read blog posts, possibly hundreds in a week, but how many do you actually comment on? Next time take a minute to leave a comment.

Layout and Composition

30 Websites with Lovely Layouts and Typography
The Typography of Neglect
Typography: Readability and Legibility

Website Design

50 Alluring Typography and Grid-Focused Websites

General Design

Beautiful Typographic Business Cards
Typographic Illustration of Obama
15 Great Examples of Artworks based on Typography

Inspiration

Vintage and Retro Typographic Showcase
Typography Mania #13 by Abduzeedo
70+ Design and Typography Inspirations
21 Fresh Inspiring Typography Designs

Designers

Rob Clarke Typography
The Portfolio of Malou Verlomme

Typography Websites

CMYKern.com
typographykicksass.com

Fonts

20 Fonts Ideal for Big and Powerful Headings
Free Font – Sketchetica

Products

Helvetica Cookie Cutters

To keep on top of the latest typography, fonts and lettering on the web, make sure you

follow @typographylinks

Layout and Composition

Typograph – Scale & Rhythm
On Font Pairing In Logo Design
Rules for Good Typography
On The Track of Good Type

Designs, Wallpapers and Posters

21 Big, Bold Typography Website Design
40+ Awesome Typography Wallpapers
Type and Cities – Designers’ typographic posters of New York
TypographicPosters.com

Inspiration

A Treasury of Wood Type Online
Typography & Lettering Flickr Pool
Typeface: The Film
The Beauty of Ampersands
Incredible Typography by Eika Dopludo
21 Fresh Inspiring Typography Designs

Helvetica

40 Excellent Logos Created With Helvetica
The Simplicity of Helvetica

If you have links you would like to share, please leave a comment.

I have some very exclusive Dribbble invites – 2 to be exact.

If you haven’t heard of it before, Dribbble is a site which allows you to upload 400×300px previews of your design work. I have been hugely impressed with it so far, and invites are very elusive.

If you would like the opportunity of winning a Dribbble invite, please leave a comment (with an email address and website/twitter account) below, and later on I will choose the lucky two and contact them directly.

Type is a guide through the history of our letters and a study of their power. From fashion through propaganda and the development of mass literacy, author Simon Loxley shows how typography has changed our world.

This book tells a great story on the advancements of printing; from the Gutenberg press to digital PostScripting, it’s narrative flows more like a story than a history book. It catalogues the tastes and trends have changed over the years, from ‘Old English’ Blackletter and Fractur styles to sans-serifs like Futura and Helvetica, detailing the social changes that affected them.

It’s not only the faces that changed, but the way the letters were typeset. Due to the physical constraints of the movable type, negative letter-spacing and leading wasn’t possible until the inset of digital technologies, but it soon became a fashionable trend.

There certainly were some interesting characters in the world of type design over the years. From the self-promoting Frederic Goudy to the eccentric Eric Gill, who liked to wear medieval-style smocks and lived a controversial personal life.

The technologies that fell by the wayside are also catalogued; technologies such as Letraset and Photosetting, which are now obsolete thanks to the capabilities of the Personal Computer.

It took me a while to get into the book, mainly as I wasn’t as interested in the very early history of Gutenberg, but the history from the 1900’s onwards really made up for it, and the changes that happened over the last 100 years were fascinating and also insightful.

Buy This Book if…

Want to know a little more about the history of printing and the people behind the letters? Don’t know your Caslon from your Goudy, or your Zapf from your Frutiger? I found it a fascinating read, with some real gems, giving you a real insight into the history of typography.

Simply go to your browser, type in the letters A-Z and blog the results. So here are mine:

1. amazon.co.uk
2. bucket.unstoppablerobotninja.com
3. cufon.shoqolate.com
4. delicious.com
5. entitycode.com
6. flickr.com
7. google.com
8. hootmonitor.com
9. ilovetypography.com
10. jasonsantamaria.com
11. kitbag.com
12. logooftheday.com
13. maban.co.uk
14. next.co.uk
15. o2.co.uk
16. prandall.com
17. n/a
18. readernaut.com
19. scrunchup.com
20. twitter.com
21. n/a
22. viget.com
23. n/a
24. xavierencinas.com
25. youtube.com
26. n/a

But rather than just knock them up in a UL like some, and being that kind of person I had to make an ordered list and use capitalised letters. The CSS to do that is:

.alphabet-list{list-style:upper-alpha}

So play along and leave your results as a comment!

Merry Christmas everybody! After a short delay due to a holiday, the December wallpaper is now live. The wallpaper is based on a present, complete with wrapping paper, ribbon and tag.

The tiling pattern is actually based on the Koch Snowflake. It’s mathematical basis allows it to be tiled in a number of ways, which can be seen on this Wolfram Alpha page.

I’m really excited with the possibilities 2010 brings, so expect more wallpapers, blogs and other goodies still in the pipeline.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate all the comments and tweets and wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Close Up

I hope you like the wallpaper. If you have any feedback or messages, please do leave a comment below.

Download the Wallpaper

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After becoming increasingly interested in typography, I felt I needed a book that set out the fundamentals. After doing some research, I found Thinking with Type: A critical guide for designers, writers, editors and students.

This book is divided into three main sections, Letter, Text and Grid. Starting off with a little history lesson on letterforms, leading into the anatomy of type with great examples along the way. It then goes into more detail, covering spacing and alignment, followed by layouts and grids.

Each section has real-world examples to draw upon and feels much more than just a theory book; it is more than that! The way the book is written makes you appreciate the effort that goes into great typesetting.

“Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking. The typographer’s art concerns not only the positive grain of letterforms, but the negative gaps between and around them.”

If you are a newcomer to typography and want to learn more, I highly recommend this as a great book to get started on. For a more in-depth book on type, many people recommend The Elements of Typographic Style, which is on my bookshelf and awaiting a read. Expect a review shortly!

Buy This Book if…

If you are looking to know your stem from your bowl, or your leading from your kerning this book covers it all, and all in a way that doesn’t feel at all technical. If you work with type, or just want to know more and don’t have a book on it yet—this is the one to get.