Actually reading (ree-ding, as in –with my eyes)

Today I finally got in the mail my copy of Edward Johnston’s masterpiece Writing & Illuminating & Lettering. Unfortunately I have the 1980 Pitman edition, which appears to have been reduced photographically. The illustrations and type suffer a lot from this reduction, but the content is so good I’m pretty willing to get over it. And since it wasn’t really that expensive I can always “upgrade” to a better, proper version later.

I’ve been wanting to read this book for a couple of years now, and I seem to recall it being in Gerry’s reading list for the MATD. I’ll have to check once he mails in the new version of the list, which should happen right after TypeCon.

Meanwhile I managed to make contact with another prospective MATD student hailing from Germany: Julia Kaestle is a student of arabic calligraphy and just today she published a wonderful article over at I love typography which I found very insightful, especially since she places arabic calligraphy in the context of a typographic excercise.