Reading “The Elements of Typographic Style” version 3.2 by Robert Bringhurst – Foreword

I remember requesting for this book to be added to the UI library after seeing it somewhere over the internet — it being a good starting point for the broad world of typography. It’s been sitting for a while now on our desk and it’s time to flip its pages.

As user interface designers, it is important for us to equip ourselves even with a slight familiarity of typography’s history. Wikipedia briefly defines typography as, “the art and technique of arranging type, type design, and modifying type glyphs.” Maybe we won’t get into modifying type glyphs but for sure, we’ll tinker with some types in Photoshop for those mock-ups later on.

If you use this book as a guide, by all means leave the road when you wish. This is precisely the use of a road: to reach individually chosen points of departure. By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist. Source: Foreword, p. 10

Robert Bringhurst suggests no rules and restrictions in his book. “Use the book as reference and do your own thing,” he might say.


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