The back cover of this book suggests it's packed with everyday tips for those keen to improve the look of their type. Very true I thought but it turns out that some of these tips are open-cast typography with others buried deep in a typographic mine. The author got inspiration from the Printing design and layout by Vincent Steer, published in 1945. A book, obviously based on lead set type with no ragged right setting, Type matters is entirely ragged right text.
The three chapters: Background; Setting headlines and display type; Text setting, cover lots of type basics for a beginner but also some incredibly detailed items which would take a lot of work experience to master.
A few examples:
When using parentheses, in most types their tops are level with the height of capitals, the correct suggestion, with display type, is to raise them slightly so they are centered visually on a line depth.
When using display sizes of i and j (the book uses 450 point for this example) consider lowering the dots to look more visually appealing.
With a quote, say, four lines of large display type, center the words with the quote marks hanging either side (my own inclination, if using maybe 120 point, is to reduce the size of the quote marks to 100 point).
There things missing in these pages that any typographer should be aware of.
You are working with copy, from a client, the marketing or editorial folk and its been written by someone else. You need to understand what the words mean and work with the writer.
There is no reference to how to handle tabular matter, an airline timetable or plenty of ingredients that go on a food container. All this involves tiny type and it has to be readable.
It's possible to use weights of type and delete most punctuation in non-narrative copy. Imagine a stationary range of a letterhead, business cards, compliment slips, invoices, purchase orders. Bold, medium, light and italic type faces can easily indicate meaning where plenty of punctuation would have been used in past decades.
Type matters is a quick read and worthwhile to keep for reference (a nice design job, too). Worth getting if you can find a cheap copy on the net.
