What struck me about this book, was that it was placed at the front of my local book shop in the new books section, not hidden away in the graphic design section in the far corner of the shop; I had to buy it and see why such an honour was given to this book over others on a similar subject.
Books such as the excellent "Type and Typography" have long been used by design students interested in learning about the subject and these books are full of technical detail and rich history. They are however very much like a text book, and do an excellent job in the way they are designed to.
"Just My Type" is not a text book. It has, what the music industry, call cross over appeal, i.e it is written in a way that makes it accessible to a wider audience than just the typographers of this world. Each chapter looks at an area of type, maybe a type face such as comic sans in the first chapter or a symbol such as the ampersand in chapter 6 and details a narrative about these subject areas.
As well as the stories behind a font, the book also details technical aspects of the font talking about what makes caslon structurally different to garamond for instance. But this technical side is not demanding for the non-designer, and this knowledge is imparted through out the book, little by little, so that it never stops being engaging.
This is the really success of the book, in an age when people have got greater opinions about fonts than ever before, when anyone can look at a drop down menu to decide how their birthday invitation will look, having a book that opens up discussion on these typefaces and gets people thinking about type is a great achievement.
