The cover designs of Penguin Books paperbacks are an integral part of today’s graphic design culture the world over – but what about the typography of the literary texts that this famed British imprint has published since its founding in 1935? In this book, Andrew Barker, who worked at Penguin for more than a decade, describes the thorough revision of the typography for the Penguin Classics series he completed in 2003. This detailed case study will provide an invaluable lesson in applied typography to designers and publishers alike.

Between 1959 and 1971, German magazine twen provided an unavoidable reference point, in terms of editorial expression and visual approach, for many international designers. Half a century later, the groundbreaking, arresting, virtuoso work of its art director Willy Fleckhaus (1925–1983) still exerts a powerful influence on contemporary practice. This book presents twen’s exceptional visual legacy through more than 300 rigorously selected and carefully sequenced pictures. These are accompanied by original texts from Hans-Michael Koetzle, Serge Ricco and Stéphane Darricau.

Today, the name of French Renaissance punchcutter Claude Garamond (ca 1510–1561) is affixed to several dozens of digital fonts with wildly different designs. From the 16th century to the present era, this book attempts to describe and explain the sources of this “Garamond conundrum”, where the knowledge of the typeface itself seems to have been superseded by the fame of the name. It raises numerous cultural, aesthetic, economic and technical issues which will be of interest to all those for whom type and typography represent fundamental aspects of professional practice and expertise.

For more than four decades, Michael Bierut has been one of the most important graphic designers working in the United States, though his work and his writings are too little-known in France. This book gathers twelve short essays written between 1992 and 2013, most of them for the Design Observer blog which he co-founded in 2003. Together, they reveal a highly original professional ethos, where pragmatic modernism meets playful contextualism. Here, they are supplemented with a selection of Bierut’s most iconic design projects.