Erik Spiekermann

If you only want to have one book by Tschichold, this is it. If it hadn't already been translated into English, I would say it would be worth learning German for.

Bosshard is one of the grand old men of Swiss design and deserves to be better known abroad. This volume (“Mathematical Foundations of Typesetting”), along with Bosshard’s Technische Grundlagen zur Satzherstellung (“Technical Foundations of Typesetting”), would be my desert island typography books. They contain everything there is to be known about the mathematical and technical principles behind typesetting (as the German titles—these are not available in English—say). You can learn to add in hexadecimal, compare all the systems of proportion ever invented and the mathematical rules behind them, find out how to mark up type (a dead but important art), and look up the formats of books, magazines, and newspapers from around the world. I still have no idea how the author and his sons managed to gather and display all this information and live to write more books since.

Why alphabets look like they do, what has happened to them since printing was invented, why they won’t ever change, and how it might have been.

Timothy Donaldson calls himself a “letterworker.” I know him as one of the best calligraphers and letterers around who infuses his work not with quasi-religious vigor but with English humor and a great deal of spontaneity. I cannot do better than Ken Garland, himself a well-respected designer and writer, who writes in the foreword: “This is a work many of us have been waiting for: one that brings together information on topics as diverse as the organs of speech, hieroglyphics, the development of the minuscule, maritime signal flags, the qwerty keyboard, semaphore and many others …”

The charts—one for each of the 26 letters—are complex and comprehensive and beautiful at the same time. There are many more illustrations, all made for this book. Whenever students of visual communication ask for my recommendation, I mention Shapes for Sounds as the first thing they should read. It is as entertaining and well-designed as any coffee-table book and offers a wealth of information beyond the good looks.

Great essays from all the relevant typographers between 1895 and 1990. Deserves a second volume to bring it into the present.

Gill is one of my heroes. He uses plain language and common sense, both in this book and in all his work. And the book is set in my FF Meta.