Great Artists by Robert Cumming (review)

Leonardo Reviews 333 sor bug-eating extravaganzas. The author , who has a weakness for bad puns (among his recipes are “Party Pupae,” “Three Bee Salad,” “Pest-O” and “Fried Green Tomato Horn Worm”), has written such earlier popular books as The Compleat Cockroach and Field Guide to the Slug (which the New York Times described as “gripping”). (Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 1998–1999). A TYPOGRAPHIC WORKBOOK: A PRIMER TO HISTORY, TECHNIQUES AND ARTISTRY by Kate Clair. John Wiley, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1999. ISBN: 0-471-29237-0. Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50613-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: . This is a 370-page college-level textbook about the use of printed letterforms , or what is more widely and commonly known as “typography.” It is surprisingly ambitious, in the sense that it makes an attempt to discuss an enormous range of issues, large and small, related to the history, theory and practice of typographic design. The result, which interweaves an astonishing amount of text with hundreds (maybe thousands) of black-and-white illustrations (of mixed quality), is—easily— enough to fill two or three volumes. The first 270 pages consist of 20 chapters with such general headings as “Readability and Legibility,” “Typographic Hierarchy” and “The Grid Structure.” Within each chapter, there are a dozen or more subsections on such topics as “Designing with Two Families of Type,” “Letterspacing and Its Effect on Readability” and “Color Symbolism through Time.” Intended to function also as a type specimen book, it ends with 75 pages of type samples, while, throughout the volume, the texts on the pages are purposely set in varying type styles, with annotations about typeface, size and leading. How admirable to have put all this information under one cover. Yet, sadly, it suffers the critical flaw that, too often, the typography and layout of the book contradict the book’s own principles. For example, nearly all the text is set in 8.5 point type with 12 point leading, regardless of typeface. While this may be convenient for type comparisons, the effect is devastating for the reader, since some type styles can survive dense paragraphs at that setting, while others cannot. In the book’s opening pages, the boldface, small cap headings for “dedication” and “acknowledgements” are so small and tightly letterspaced that they are all but unreadable. These strange errors, of which there are many throughout the book, are not quibbles. The relationship between what one says (content) and how one speaks (form) is essential in design, which is largely about form and function, and, in the end, the book undermines its own credibility . It is, after all, an arrangement of type about type arrangement, a book about book design. (Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 1998–1999). GREAT ARTISTS by Robert Cumming. Dorling Kindersley, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1998. ISBN: 0-7894-2391-X. Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50613-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: . Teachers commonly say that they learn more about a subject from teaching it than from being a student. In part, this is because so much of what we practice is unspoken and intuitive, while teaching requires a certain explicitness and may be most effective when the essence of a subject is portrayed in a simple, impassioned and powerful way. As a result, one can often learn a lot from brief, introductory overviews of a subject, as is the intention of this attractive, large-format picture book. Several years ago, the author (who is head of the education division at Christie’s) wrote Annotated Art (1994), a companion volume in which diagrams, close-ups and marginal notes were used to analyze 45 key paintings ; since then, a similar book was produced by the same publisher about the history of architecture (Neil Stevenson, Architecture [1997]). In this third volume of the series, 50 more paintings (different from those in the earlier book) are arranged chronologically, displayed and discussed in peripheral bites, using introductory paragraphs, annotated...