Just My Type is not just a font book, but 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 Let...

'Witty and geekily eclectic' The TimesAn erudite and amusing exploration' Financial Times'Full of jawdropping facts' Mail on Sunday'Remarkable . . . engrossing' Sunday Times'A pleasure' Spectator'An infectiously enthusiastic history' Times Literary SupplementThe encyclopaedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Now these huge books sell for almost nothing on eBay while ...

“A fascinating, informative and highly entertaining expedition through the highways and byways of dogdom.” —John Bradshaw, New York Times bestselling author of Dog SenseA charming meditation on the relationship between humans and dogs, drawing upon history, science, art, and personal experience to illuminate a magical bond that has endured millennia—from the New York Times bestselling author of

'Witty and geekily eclectic' The TimesAn erudite and amusing exploration' Financial Times'Full of jawdropping facts' Mail on Sunday'Remarkable . . . engrossing' Sunday Times'A pleasure' Spectator'An infectiously enthusiastic history' Times Literary SupplementThe encyclopaedia once shaped our un...

Maps fascinate us. They chart our understanding of the world and they log our progress, but above all they tell our stories. From the early sketches of philosophers and explorers through to Google Maps and beyond, Simon Garfield examines how maps both relate and realign our history.With a historical sweep ranging from Ptolemy to Twitter, Garfield explores the legendary, impassable (and non-existent) mountains of Kong, the role of cartography in combatting cholera, the 17th-century ...

'Glorious' EMMA THOMPSON'Delightful' PHILIP PULLMAN'Brilliant' JACQUELINE WILSONFrom a reed cut on the banks of the Nile to the Sharpie, the pen has been with us for millennia. And all of humanity – from our faintest notions to our wildest inventions, our gossip and legends, our grandest proclamations and most intimate confessions – has flowed from a quill, ink chamber or ballpoint tip. The pen is the enduring link be...

A compact and charming history of the font we love to hate by the New York Times best-selling author of Just My Type.Since its improvised creation at Microsoft in the mid-1990s, Comic Sans has become one of the most used and talked-about typefaces of the digital age. The subject of April Fools pranks and endless internet discourse, it has spawned a movement to ban it, inspired revivals and spinoffs, and continues to be widely promoted by educators...

The classic elegant English typeface, still widely used as a book text more than 250 years since its creation. Baskerville is a transitional design, poised between the first metal types and modern styles, notable for its combination of fat and thin strokes. When it was first used there was genuine concern that it would damage readers' eyes.John Baskerville was a maverick lacquer maker and printer in Birmingham, a flamboyant dresser, an important figure in the Enlightenment. Though ...

In Miniature is a delightful, entertaining and illuminating investigation into our peculiar fascination with making things small, and what small things tell us about the world at large.Here you will find the secret histories of tiny Eiffel Towers, the truth about the flea circus, a doll’s house made for a queen, eerie tableaux of crime scenes, miniature food, model villages and railways, and more. Simon Garfield brings together history, psychology, art and obsession, to ex...

A compact and charming history of the classic Enlightenment font by the New York Times best-selling author of Just My Type.When Baskerville was first created in 1757, there was concern that it would damage readers’ eyes with its combination of thin and thick strokes and tapering serifs. Yet 250 years later, it remains one of the most commonly used typefaces in books of all kinds. As best-selling author Simon Garfield tells it, the tale of this ele...

One of the first words we learn. Perhaps the best friend we'll have. An animal so much part of our lives that we speak to it like a child and spend small fortunes on its wellbeing and wardrobe.Dogs and humans: in the last 200 years no inter-species relationship has developed so fast nor come so far. Dogs accompany us in every walk of life, usually three times a day. How and why did this relationship begin? How has it changed over the centuries? And who's getting the upper hand?...

Comic Sans is one of the most used and most reviled typefaces of the digital age. How was it made? How could it spawn a movement to ban it and yet still be so widely promoted by educators? What does its accidental creator make of its contentious and singular history?This quirky and unique book considers how the computer transformed type into something that anyone could use and have an opinion on. It examines how a typeface, correctly used, may sell us almost anything, and how new t...