Thinking with Type

What Hacker News says

1. chefandyDec 2023
   I'm a professional designer. You're conflating learning design with learning a tool. Learning to use the tools is the easy part. Learning the fundamentals of design is often still taught in schools with pencils, paper, paint, collage, etc. and you'll almost never find a course on "Photoshop," for example. You might find courses on photo editing, and you might use Photoshop to do layout work for a class on making still composites, but knowing Photoshop doesn't make you a designer in the professional sense any more than knowing Word inside-and-out makes you a writer. Do yourself a favor and read some great technical design books like "Grid Systems," "Thinking With Type," and Alber's "Interaction of Color," as well as more general design books like "the design of everyday things" to get an idea of what design is before you start trying to mimic design with design tools. Developers especially tend to dramatically overestimate their understanding of design, and dramatically underestimate the amount of knowledge required. I think the "graphic design is my passion" meme is terribly reductive, but it is a thing. Formal training isn't magic: I knew a self-taught designer that became the art director for a national magazine. But you bet he read all of those books and dozens more— for every one like him, there's 10k people who gained technical competence with tools and have no idea that they have no technical competence with design, generally. You can quickly get yourself to the point where you're making logos for clients on fiverr who have no idea how to evaluate design, but most of those designers wouldn't even qualify for an internship at a design studio, let alone get contracted for work or an in-house position somewhere.

   Hope this helps.

   Show morethread
2. docmarsMar 2022
   "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug, and "Thinking With Type" by Ellen Lupton
   thread
3. schrijverNov 2021
   Sure! This was indeed my first book. I knew the publisher from a small project we did years ago. Before contacting them, I made a book proposal, following Ellen Lupton’s tips https://web.archive.org/web/20190310150923/http://elupton.co...

   She’s a designer / writer / teacher / curator who wrote and designed some amazing books including Thinking With Type. I did one of the things she suggests, make a sample chapter that would be indicative both of the writing and design: https://ericschrijver.nl/assets/legal_advice_for_artists_sam...

   Of course that’s a lot of work, I did have some funding for this stage as part of a talent development grant of the Cultural Industries Fund NL. I could have sent the proposal to many publishers but I soon tried with Onomatopee. They’re quite a small outfit but they have a good reputation for visual art and graphic design books. With publishing getting easier, I feel both shops, critics and the public rely even more on the reputation of publishers, record labels etc. as a proxy for quality.

   That’s a bit ironic, but it also makes sense, because you need all the help you can get if you want to somehow sift through the wealth of material that’s being published each day.

   Working with a small publisher, I figured it would be easier to get the book out without too much compromises. My hunch was that a large publisher might be scared of having a CC license, using repurposed images etcetera. I haven’t tried so I don’t know! I tend to think one of the advantages of a mainstream publisher would be that they can devote more resources to press (there wasn’t so much for this book). But my publisher has proven really effective in getting it into specialist bookshops so I’m quite happy.

   PS: they also didn’t require copyright transfer, which is great! Money-wise, each project they do starts with a big spreadsheet to see what is possible. Of course you want to have an affordable price, a nice printing, solid copy editing, decent remuneration for the author, but it can be difficult to have everything at once so you start tweaking variables until you have something where your break even point seems attainable. I managed the collaboration with the copy editor, designer and printer myself. I’m a designer too so it felt good to have this control. This might be unusual in larger publishing houses but in the world of art book publishing I think it’s not uncommon.

   Show morethread
4. enhdlessMay 2021
   Not a talk, but Ellen Lupton's book, Thinking with Type, is really good: http://thinkingwithtype.com/
   thread
5. krlxSep 2020
   My entrypoint was "Thinking with Type" from Ellen Lupton which gives a very nice and broad introduction to typography. Highly recommend it

   I also discovered https://practicaltypography.com/ in a HN commment a few years back, it's brilliant and may give you a quicker start.

   thread
6. krlxJun 2020
   Besides the practicaltypography website, reading Thinking with Type from Ellen Lupton was in my case a short, easy, and educative introduction to typography.
   thread