Reddit reviews Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works, Third Edition (3rd Edition) (Graphic Design & Visual Communication Courses)

When Just My Type was released, type historian Paul Shaw wrote a crushing review, going page-for-page and calling out every inaccuracy and error (this was actually a two-part flaying).

Granted, Paul is far, far more knowledgable on type history than any other person of whom I'm aware (he was the fact-checker on the Meggs textbook that you have likely used in your design classes), but I'd go elsewhere for my type theory. Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style and Erik Spiekermann's Stop Stealing Sheep are good starting points.

• The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
  
  
• Stop Stealing Sheep & find our how type works 3rd Edition by Erik Spiekermann, this one is a super easy read but a great book.
  
  
• Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton, I have the 2nd Edition
  
  
• Making and Breaking the Grid by Timothy Samara
  
  
• Typographic Design: Form and Communication by Rob Carter, Ben Day, Philip Meggs. I have the 4th edition but I think most are okay. This is a good general typography textbook.
  
  
• Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston
  
  I can't give suggestions on hand-lettering books yet as the few I have read weren't good...so I'm trying to find better ones. But check out Louise Fili and Jessica Hische for inspiration and of course Paula Scher and Sagmeister.
  
  There are many other books so I welcome others to chime in and add their suggestions.

>Typography - Anatomy, Legibility, Spacing and Alignment

Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst

Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works, by Erik Spiekermann

Stop Stealing Sheep is fun, easy to read, indexed and well loved by experienced typographers. It's at least a good starting place.

Edit and you can sample a chapter of it with this free PDF from Adobe.

Ok: just looked at your portfolio before reading through the post (i'm a creative director)

First question I asked was "where did this guy study design?". Then read you didn't> and that's clear: because you NEED to get the basics of your craft sorted.

Good typography is baseline for a designer (typographic joke) your type is all over the place.your LA church postcard for example: its script type: see those little lines at the ends of each letter? they need to join up: see here.https://tonyseddon.com/the-geometry-of-type

This sort of sloppy type is a dead giveaway to any CD you haven't been trained.

The Kerning on your logos needs to be fixed, you need to learn how to lay out and align type. if you're serious about a career in design you need to work on your basics FAST. But all this can be learned!

buy this book NOW, or steal it from I library: today, it'll save your life...https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Graphic-Design-Communication-Courses/dp/0321934288/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1550224947&sr=8-4&keywords=stop+stealing+sheep

you can buy a pdf herehttps://www.mindhub.co.uk/Stop_Stealing_Sheep_Find_Out_How_Type_Works_3_e_p/978-0-13-344113-0.htm

But if you don't sort out your typographic basics, you're doomed. If you do, you'll be fine. Hope that helps.

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thanks for posting. I think you have a great attitude, and honestly, attitude counts for more than you think.

I'll not critique the website, but, knowing you're new to the fundamentals, try to share some more general thoughts.

1. do more. I think you're starting this already with some of your sketches for mini cooper. but always, always, do more. 50 iterations, 100 iterations. Keep pushing beyond the obvious, and use sketching as the tool to do that. I read an old design book, from the 70s, that said "only one solution is the symptom of an inflexible and untrained mind." /r/52weeksofdesign
   
   
2. Time to get up on the basics. That means the basics of drawing (if you so please). It's not a requirement as a designer (I'm a piss poor artist), but it definitely helps sometimes. http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419898682&sr=8-1&keywords=right+hand+drawing
   
   What sketching is important for is flexing ideas and testing compositions before going to the computer.
   
   
3. Learn the basics of typography:
   http://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Graphic-Design-Communication-Courses/dp/0321934288/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419898490&sr=1-1&keywords=stop+stealing+sheep
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Version-Anniversary/dp/0881792128/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419898879&sr=1-1&keywords=robert+bringhurst
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-2nd-revised-expanded/dp/1568989695/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419898800&sr=1-2&keywords=typography
   
   
4. Grids
   http://www.amazon.com/Grid-Systems-Principles-Organizing-Design/dp/1568984650/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419898762&sr=1-1&keywords=kimberly+elan
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestaltung/dp/3721201450/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419898837&sr=8-1&keywords=grid+systems
   
   
5. Photography (if you like)
   http://www.amazon.com/Black-White-Photography-Manual-Revised/dp/0316373052/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1419898921&sr=8-2&keywords=black+and+white+photography
   
   and
   
   
6. remember that this is detail work. So things like spelling errors in this post, and on your website, should be resolved.
   
   Above and beyond the basics, I see your passion is impacting the world through design. So the question becomes HOW can graphic design impact the world, and does it at all? and what can you make or do directly? I think above all, a designer is an entrepreneur these days. Especially with that main driving passion.
   

If you are referring to Erik Spiekermann as a "filthy degenerate German hipster", you clearly never read this, you don't know enough about type design, and probably are a huge jackass with stupid, uninformed opinions about many other things as well.

If you're interested in logos and marks, I thought "Marks of Excellence" was a fantastic book. It's one that you need to read, though, not just flip through. For typography, I think "Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works" is a good read for an easy introduction to typography. For a little more serious dig, hit up "The Elements of Typographic Style".