Thinking with Type - 3rd Edition by Ellen Lupton (Paperback)

About the Book

"Revised and expanded third edition of the essential guide to how typefaces are constructed and how to use them"--

Book Synopsis

The essential and bestselling guide to typography from beloved design educator Ellen Lupton--revised and expanded to include new and additional voices, examples, and principles, and a wider array of typefaces.

"Thinking with Type is to typography what Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time is to physics."--I Love Typography

The bestselling Thinking with Type in a revised and expanded third edition: This is the definitive guide to using typography in visual communication. Covering the essentials of typography, this book explores everything from typefaces and type families to kerning and tracking to grids and layout principles.

Ellen Lupton provides clear and focused guidance on how letters, words, and paragraphs should be aligned, spaced, ordered, and shaped. Historical and contemporary examples of graphic design show how to learn the rules and how to break them. Critical essays, eye-opening diagrams, helpful exercises, and dozens of examples and illustrations show readers how to be inventive within systems that inform and communicate.

Featuring 32 pages of new content, the third edition is revised and refined from cover to cover:

• More fonts: old fonts, new fonts, weird fonts, libre fonts, Google fonts, Adobe fonts, fonts from independent foundries, and fonts and lettering by women and BIPOC designers
• Introductions to diverse writing systems, contributed by expert typographers from around the world
• Demonstrations of basic design principles, such as vi­sual balance, Gestalt grouping, and responsive layout
• Current approaches to typeface design, including
  • Variable fonts and optical sizes
  • Tips for readability, legibility, and accessibility
  • Stunning reproductions from the Letterform Archive

Thinking with Type is the typography book for everyone: designers, writers, editors, students, anyone who works with words on page or screen, and enthusiasts of type and lettering. Readers will also love Ellen Lupton's book Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers.

Review Quotes

"This new edition of Thinking with Type is an important and critical must read for anyone interested in typography and design. It presents, expands, and also challenges the typographic canon with international and thought-provoking contents. A compelling, amazing book!"

--Loraine Furter, graphic designer and researcher

"Thinking with Type presents the fundamentals of typography and page design with style and wit. What is particularly exciting is that this new edition advances the material significantly with global, more inclusive examples of how type works and for whom. I'm excited to update my curriculum with the 3rd edition!"

--Briar Levit, designer and Professor of Graphic Design at Portland State University

"Lovingly made and expertly written, the third edition of Thinking with Type is a tour-de-force of Latin typography with a serious nod towards global scripts. This is a must-read for both novices and experts in the world of type. The book itself is beautifully designed and is a joy to read through."

--Nadine Chahine, typeface designer and Director of ArabicType Limited

"Bursting with incredible illustrations and diagrams, Thinking with Type offers a practical guide for designers of all levels who want to understand the nuances of typographic communication. More excitingly, Lupton's 3rd edition of the book is the inclusive typography guide the industry deserves as it embraces the humanity behind some of the world's diverse writing systems, and the languages and cultures who have contributed to its rich history."

--Kaleena Sales, Associate Professor of Graphic Design and Chair of the Department of Art Design at Tennessee State University

About the Author

Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. She has written numerous books about graphic design, including Thinking with Type, Graphic Design Thinking, and Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA), where she proudly serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair. She is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where her exhibitions included Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master and The Senses: Design Beyond Vision. Lupton loves reading, writing, teaching, and learning new things about design.