Poet and typographer Robert Bringhurst begins:

Like oratory, music, dance, calligraphy - like anything that lends its grace to language - typography is an art that can be deliberately misused. It is a craft by which the meanings of a text (or its absence of meaning) can be clarified and honored, or knowingly disguised.

The Elements of Typographic Style is his book, first published in 1992 and updated regularly since. It is a foundational resource for learning how to work confidently and eloquently with letters. 



The book is meticulously organized with crisply numbered sections and subsections. Section 1.1, First Principles continues:

In a world rife with unsolicited messages, typography must often draw attention to itself before it will be read. Yet in order to be read, it must relinquish the attention it has drawn. Typography with anything to say therefore aspires to a kind of statuesque transparency. Its other traditional goal is durability: not immunity to change, but a clear superiority to fashion. Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.

Naturally, given its subject matter, the book is also (and crisply) typographically organized. It provides extensive information on typographic nuts and bolts, but what I particularly appreciate is the context he provides for why all of this matters.

One of the principles of durable typography is always legibility; another is something more than legibility: some earned or unearned interest that gives its living energy to the page. It takes various forms and goes by various names, including serenity, liveliness, laughter, grace and joy. These principles apply, in different ways, to the typography of business cards, instruction sheets and postage stamps, as well as to editions of religious scriptures, literary classics and other books that aspire to join their ranks. Within limits, the same principles apply even to stock market reports, airline schedules, milk cartons, classified ads. But laughter, grace and joy, like legibility itself, all feed on meaning, which the writer, the words and the subject, not the typographer, must generally provide.

Continues in class . . .