Most typefaces that I’ve seen developed spend a long time in the sketchbook or on the drawing board. Hours and hours are spent defining the curves which define the individual characters and then the whole typeface.

Eventually these drawings are then transposed into a program like Adobe Illustrator, and then from there taken into a font program such as Fontographer.

Matt – I’d absolutely recommend this book. It is designed where each spread explains an important principle of design from the Golden Section to Fitt’s Law. Excellent reading.

I haven’t heard of “Exploring the Elements of Design”, will have to find out if the library has a copy.

Someone recommended Universal Principles of Design to me, and it’s on sale at Amazon. Haven’t read it yet, though.

Mark: I’m shocked at how long it takes!  What program does one actually use to develop typefaces?  Is the data stored with a vector format, bitmap format, or some other format?

Thank you very much!  I leave after on last question: Have either of you ever used (or heard of) Exploring the Elements of Design, by Mark A. Thomas, Poppy Evans?  It seems to me to be fairly good.  I am wondering, however, if you guys could recommend another book.

Again, thank you!

One of my lecturers at university was designing his own serif typeface which he’d been designing on and off for seven years and he’d only just completed the lower case and said he was looking forward to getting into the ligatures and kerning pairs. Ten years on, I doubt he’s finished it!

If you’re very interested in using classic type, you could always spring the $80 (I think) for an educational copy of InDesign, which comes with a collection, or you could also search eBay for the Adobe Font Folio.

Another good resource to have around is Thinking with Type ($14 from Amazon).

Thank you very much for this fifth article in particular, I found it very intriguing.  I’ve always wondered why there is no historical standard set for typography–and of course there is!

And now I’m wondering about these other, more professional fonts: upon searching for the Mrs Eaves font, I only found it for sale, and for a minimum of twenty dollars!  Is this the only way of getting them?  I certainly love the font!

Again, thank you very much.  I’m looking forward to finding new content on your site, Mark.

But you’re right, for that reason alone they should be credited. I just wanted to clear up the fact that Bringhurst himself is simply displaying well known typographic theory and certainly doesn’t own the copyright to the theory in these diagrams.