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Wednesday Cover Story: The importance of fonts

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

As any self-respecting cover designer will tell you, choosing a font is very important business. Just look at our moody vampiric swirls for the Morganvilles, or the art deco typeface used for the Laurie R. King series. Finding the perfect font is as important as finding or creating the perfect image for a cover.

So, if you’re struggling for a Christmas gift for the designer in your life, or simply want an interesting insight into fonts yourself…consider this:

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield.


Here’s the synopsis:
Just My Type is a book of stories. About how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world. About why Barack Obama opted for Gotham, while Amy Winehouse found her soul in 30s Art Deco. About the great originators of type, from Baskerville to Zapf, or people like Neville Brody who threw out the rulebook, or Margaret Calvert, who invented the motorway signs that are used from Watford Gap to Abu Dhabi. About the pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Letraset and were loaded onto computers … and typefaces became something we realized we all have an opinion about.
(There are signed first editions available from Hatchards!)

It may well change the way you look at every font on a book cover from now on…

Lara Crisp, Managing Editor

Want to flag up a cover you love or hate for our Wednesday Cover Story? Write to chiara@allisonandbusby.com with your thoughts

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