This new handbook takes the broadest possible view of typography, defining it as ‘design for reading’. It considers all kinds of reading matter and visual communication systems; digital, environmental, printed, and produced by hand.

By offering a rich collection of texts that are genuinely international in authorship and in scope, it seeks to rebalance the Western bias of so many books on the subject. It gives space to new voices and emerging standpoints about the global nature of design, the needs of particular communities of readers, and about the need for inclusivity and historical understanding in design practice and research.

Thirty-seven chapters by forty-three contributors show the interdisciplinary range of research in typography today, exemplifying the relationship between history, theory, and practice that is at the heart of the discipline. They feature over 500 illustrations, mostly in colour, and full bibliographic references.

Topics include:

Typography and sociolinguistics

Frameworks for considering scripts and multilingual documents

Historical and contemporary Arabic-script typographic practice

Designing fonts for marginalized communities in Asia, Africa, and North America

The earliest movable type in China in the tenth century

Understanding Japanese and Korean typography

Approaches to legibility

Western influence on the typography of indigenous writing systems

Political and technological factors that shape typography

Experimental and commercial publishing contexts

The type design industry today

Typography in the environment