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The Typography Idea Book: Inspiration from 50 Masters

Playing with typographic puzzle pieces is one of the joys of graphic design and typographers have many entertaining, esoteric and eccentric options at their disposal. The Typography Idea Book presents 50 of the most inspiring approaches used by masters of the field from across the world.

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Red book cover titled "The typography idea book" with black text on a plain white background

Geared towards helping you evolve different typographic styles, the book contains none of the technical jargon or tired old rules found in traditional tutorials but is packed with practical techniques and iconic examples. From type transformation to abstraction, via overlapping, hand-lettering, vectorising, novelty typefaces and puns, discover all the brilliant ideas you could be bringing to your own designs.

Who brings you this fine book? It's none other than Steven Heller, the co-chair of the MFA Design/Designer as Author+Entrepreneur program at SVA, New York. For 33 years he was an art director at the New York Times. He is editor of AIGA VOICE and contributing editor to Print, Eye, Baseline and I.D. magazines. He is the author of more than 170 books on design and popular culture, including Design Literacy, Paul Rand, and Stylepedia. And he's the recipient of the 1999 AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement and the 2011 Smithsonian National Design Award.

His partner in crime is Gail Anderson – a designer, writer and educator, and director of design and digital media at the School of Visual Arts Press. Anderson is the recipient of the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Medal from the AIGA and the 2009 Richard Gangel art direction award from the Society of Illustrators, and has lectured about design at organisations and conferences around the world.

Published by Laurence King, you can buy The Typography Idea Book: Inspiration from 50 Masters today.

Open book showing a text page on the left and an abstract geometric design featuring a yellow triangle, dark circle and red shape on blue background on the right
Open book spread showing a page on Construction with body text alongside a black and white typographic film poster design featuring tall vertical letterforms
Open book showing colorful collaged letterforms spelling "WALLPAPER" alongside a page titled "Re-forming" with body text
Open book spread showing a black and white photograph of angular typographic forms on the left page and an article titled "Shadow: Turning on the light and the dark" with body text on the right page
Newsweek magazine cover featuring a portrait and bold red typography, displayed in an open book alongside accompanying text about Pastiche design principles
Open book showing white brush scrawl lettering spelling "Everything is Illuminated Jonathan Safran Foer" on black background, with facing page of text about brush scrawl typography rules
Open book spread showing a typography article titled "Expressive reduction" with red text overlaid diagonally across a black and white portrait photograph on the right page
Open pages of The Typography Idea Book showing "Ransom notes" text design example with Union Jack flag and distressed lettering on dark background
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