I am forever indebted to my very first Creative Director, John Bradford. After working for a little while in the pre-Mac days, a time that I feel was crucial to my development as a designer, I nevertheless embraced the new technology that was soon to be installed in studios everywhere. John would draw up an "old style" type specification and I would endeavour to set it on my Mac SE (with seperate "Mega Screen") using one of the earliest versions of QuarkXpress (black and white only!). Why, I often wondered, did he reject my efforts in favour of the then traditional typesetters? Simple, my output was utter rubbish and I didn't know why.
Soon enough I realised I needed to do something about it. The first copy of Oliver Simon's book I found was a Pelican paperback and very informative it was. Later I found the larger, still paperback format Faber and Faber edition. Later still, I found this copy with it's beautifully printed dust jacket and partly uncut inner pages, printed on a thick, off-white, uncoated stock. Best of all, it's printed by letterpress.
Introduction to Typography has become one of many pre-Mac typography books in my library. Why I like pre-Mac typography books is that they deal with the finer points of typography regardless of the prevailing technology so it's the end result that is the focus. They're also written in a time when the subject was treated as a revered dark art. There are, of course, many excellent Mac-era books, David Jury's About Face for example, but I have learnt enormous amounts from books such as Simon's.
Incidentally, it was Oliver Simon that suggested to Allan Lane (Penguin mastermind) to call Jan Tschichold in to sought out Penguin's typography. Both Simon and Lane flew to Switzerland to pursuade the man to come to England for a while.
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