The best of twenty-six letters

Sean Adams has created a useful book to explain some of the practical reasons for using a particular typeface. Forty-eight faces, from serif to digital, are examined in six chapters and in two ways.

First, he writes a very brief history of the face followed by two, three or four pages showing the face in use over a variety of mediums though most are printed examples. Secondly, at the end of each chapter, the faces are shown as complete caps and lower case alphabets (in twenty-one point I think) with the letters ARQGag enlarged so that the unique characteristics of each font can be indicated.
These alphabet are four to a spread and are probably the most interesting pages in the book. Non-type folk would no doubt look at the sixteen sans serif faces and conclude they more or less look the same only to have keen typographers point out that a cap Q could, for example, have a horizontal tail (Avenir) a curved tail (EF Real Head) a hook tail (Franklin Gothic) a centred tail (News Gothic) or a forty-five degree tail (Futura).

The forty-eight featured fonts are the author's choice and most designers would probably choose a few alternatives, I wouldn't have included Gill Sans preferring Folio and Century Old Style to Century Expanded. Oddly Helvetica Regular and Neue Haas Grotesk Regular are both included in the Sans Serif chapter and both faces really are virtually identical.

The book is beautifully produced and a useful overview of basic types in everyday use. Design school students in particular would find it a good introduction to the subject.