Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works (Graphic Design & Visual Communication Courses) 3rd ed. Edition

I watched a video series that referenced this book so I bought it. It is a great book that explains and shows you how type works with design. It is a great reference book.

Great resource! Erik is an excellent designer and does a great job articulating the nuances of excellent layout. He is not only practical, he gives the big picture and helps you to understand the "why."

Effortless read, with a playful yet easy on the eyes layout, tons of images and a pinch of humor.This book is everything you should know about typography before you can call yourself a Graphic Designer (on LinkedIn or elsewhere).Wonderfully explained principals, including historic references in a nutshell and type classification.The book displays specific examples of type and makes understanding its characteristics through its anatomy a breeze.You will instantly grasp the handy vocabulary (body, baseline, ascenders, descenders, x-height, cap-height, counter, kern, serif) and become familiar with it in a matter of seconds.You will learn and understand how and why these and other characteristics give different typefaces the personalities used by Graphic Designers to convey a mood, an emotion an attribute.You will quickly realize why some typefaces are more legible than others and become aware of when that matters the most.And there is a lot more.But don't let me bore you any longer with how much I love this book and how much I think that any Graphic Designer should have this in their library.Find out for yourself.

A fantastic book about type. I've learned so much already. A great read.

I'm a graphic designer and typographer with 20+ years of experience, a typeface designer, and I teach college level design and typography classes. I highly recommend this book for anyone new to typography, or for new designers who want to learn more about using type well. I use this book as required reading in my Typography 2 courses.This book has been revised every 10 years, to keep up with technology. It is worth your while to pick up the newest edition.

First reading this book I found it to be designed in a way that made it easy and fun to read, but started to realize lots of the history of type was being glossed over or just portrayed outright incorrectly. I don't believe that talking about type should be boring or loaded with dense details and history accompanied by date after date, but let me give an example...In the first chapter it states " some of the most pervasive typographical messages have never really been designed... Some engineer, administrator or accountant in some government department had to decide what the signs of our roadways should look like...you can bet there wasn't one typographer or graphic designer in the group, so the outcome shows no induction of any thought toward legibility, let alone communication or beauty..."This came off as more arrogant than it needed to be, especially since it simply is not true. I read in Just My Type and followed it up with a very small amount of googling on the internet that designers Jock Kinneir and primarily Margaret Calvert (who studied at Chelsea School of Art) created the easier to read (verses all capital) lower case type that we see on highway signs and in airports. Calvert also designed the triangular pictograms in road signs we see today based on memories of her childhood. The team worked in conjunction with the road research laboratory and spoke to them about how white on black letters should be thinner than black on white, recalling classic types like Garamond and Universe to be inspired by simple classics but also create something basic and legible enough to be read by people driving down the highway.There are more examples but in short, Stop Stealing From Sheep seemed to sacrifice facts in order to remain simple enough for a beginner, but in doing so robs readers of much of the foundation and impact of type in the world. It's easy to agree with it being that the design of the book itself is clean and modern, giving us the impression that the content is trustworthy. I suppose that is the game of design itself!I have never written a review for a book on amazon but this stuff really gets me going. Anyway I would recommend Just My TypeBy Simon Garfield (easy to read, factual, funny) and A Typographic workbook by Katy Clair. (Lots of history and technical aspects of type)

Great read. If you're studying Typography, this book is for you!

learned a lot from the book, the content is really helpful to the person who want to improve thoughts and skill in graphic design