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Type in Use - effective typography for electronic publishing ALEX W. WHITE New York: W.W. Norton, 208 pages, $26.95 ISBN 0-393-73034-4
"...From headlines to captions, print to web type and folios to footlines Type in Use explains the principles of designing pages with type and shows carefully selected examples from a wide variety of current publications. Type in Use is an accessible guide to effective editorial typography that will widen the horizons of typographic possibilities for the experienced designer and elucidate the principles of good design for the beginner."
Introduction
Picking up this book for the first time and glancing at the title Type in Use-effective typography for electronic publishing, you might
be forgiven in thinking this is a book dealing with the universal problem of finding answers to the designing of a wide range of publications, a view emphasized when reading the three page inroduction.
Although this book is primarily offered as a guide for effective typography for electronic publishing, the all-embracing term publishing used to describe the contents is rather misleading, more precisely what the book is concerned with is the practical tasks required to design magazines and house journals.
From the very first page of the introduction, the reader is reminded that computers and desktop publishing software can by their very nature and flexibility more or less guarantee the production of ugly documents, particularly if untrained persons, or beginners, are in charge of the design process. It is an observable fact that over the ten year period since the first edition was published standards of typography and design have both deteriorated and improved - probably in equal measure - in both North America and in Europe. Unfortunately there is no follow up suggestion or remedies on how feasible it might be for the beginner to realize or even attain - professional design standards, once computer typesetting and production equipment is universally available to anybody who buys a system and has some keyboarding skills.
The author has written a book with detailed typographical information, that is essential for producing well-designed and readable magazines or newsletters. The contents of the second edition are more or less identical with the first. The original ten chapters are retained, dealing as they do with such topics as:...