Logo Font & Lettering Bible: A Comprehensive Guide to the Design, Construction and Usage of Alphabets and Symbols

Yummy! With humor, clear illustrations, and useful suggestions, Cabarga provides a wonderful resource for anyone who wants to be a letterer, illustrator, font or logo designer. But this hardbound book is not just for "wanabes." I found it includes comprehensive coverage of most everything learned throughout 30 years in the same disciplines along with new valuable timesaving tips. If I had the patience and tenacity to attempt such a compilation, it could be no more complete and not nearly as well presented as LOGO FONT & LETTERING BIBLE. My essay can now be reduced to three words: "What he says."Leslie Cabarga, a talented illustrator and designer in his own right, does not limit examples to his own. World-renowned artists such as Gerard Huerta, Michael Doret, Tim Nikosey, Tony DiSpigna, and Seymour Chwast -- four dozen in all -- contribute to the wealth of inspiration. In the 1980's I had the privilege of working with uncles for one of these typography leaders -- producing over 200 hand-lettered packaging logos. It was there that I first saw an original triple outline inking of flourished letters by Gerard Huerta and was privileged to study a fraction of the techniques used.Cabarga urges readers to become critics of their own work. This also reminds me of employment at the Huertas. A bulge could occur when joining curves using technical pens. After working on it for a while and thinking to myself "It's good enough," this infinitesimal area would be the first thing the creative director would point out. After admitting that I saw it too, he remarked, "If you saw it, why show it to me?" I quickly learned to be obsessively concerned about adjoining curves. Ink bulges may not be a problem today with digital lettering but there are other telltale signs of an amateur. Cabarga shows what to look for.Your eyes are in for a tasty treat. Beautiful examples of calligraphy, and their influence on Roman font characters, are well demonstrated and discussed. But the book is by no means limited to calligraphy. Cabarga patiently differentiates cartooning, illustration, logo design, icon artwork, trademarks, and font design. LOGO FONT & LETTERING BIBLE compares digital tools such as the now defunct Macromedia FreeHand (my past favorite), Adobe Illustrator (which has supplanted the former), the seemingly forgotten Mac OS 9 version of Macromedia Fontographer (which in 2005 was integrated into the FontLab line of digital typography tools and updated to Mac OS X -- hooray!), and the preeminent FontLab.LOGO FONT & LETTERING BIBLE covers the history of typography and encourages users to build a library of signage photos and magazine scraps for inspiration. Each subject I thought might be overlooked was eventually covered. Even esoteric techniques such as what I refer to as character ink reservoirs (called clog reduction on page 115) are here. Skeleton Strokes on page 152 demonstrates wonderful timesaving suggestions for digital lettering. Optical character spacing and stroke widths are discussed in detail beginning on page 112. Do you want to learn how to clean up the best scans for converting drawings to vector art? Jump over to page 158. Everything you want to know about Bezier (pronounced "Bez-zee-ay," thank you) curves but were afraid to ask is, well, practically everywhere but particularly in the section Bezier Curves for Cowards that begins on page 140.Mississippi readers will approve. Just as I was thinking, the author needs to demonstrate how to arch text on a path (FreeHand did a better job than Illustrator), I turned to page 191 and, bam! There it is. The comparison on page 226 of residual shape differences in Illustrator and Fontographer after Bezier points are removed from a path is insightful. Not to leave you hanging, the book concludes with suggestions for getting work, building a portfolio, and negotiating fees. Additional resources and a helpful index rounds out 240 pages, which, like all trips to a candy store, seem to end too soon.

This book is a treat, any way you look at it.Beautifully designed and fabulously written, typography and lettering is explained thoroughly and creatively: tons of examples, high production values, explanations of concepts in terms of "antique" tools as well as industry standard computer tools, and even a section on business tips for freelancers.Leslie Cabarga is a very gifted designer and communicator (and is quite witty besides), and he takes you from understanding the most rudimentary font concepts all the way up to how to create and design fonts on a professional level.If you've ever thought, "The lettering on the project doesn't look quite right, but I can't figure out why..." then this book will give you the tools to whip your designs into shape.I have no desire to design fonts, but understanding what goes into the making of a font has done wonders for my ability to use type more effectively and creatively.If you're a designer, you know what it's like to shell out big bucks for design books which only have a few useful concepts or ideas in them. This book, however, is a bargain at twice the price. It truly is comprehensive, and has quickly become one of the design books on my very small "absolutely essential" shelf.Before ordering this book, I worried that it was going to have to much of an emphasis on lettering "from scratch," or on font creation. Now, though, I'd say that if you use type at all in your designs, you will find this book to be an invaluable part of your design library.

This is a really comprehensive overview of lettering and design. Every page is crammed with useful or interesting content. Reading it feels like sitting down with an experienced designer who draws examples for you, tells anecdotes about the subject, and leaves you realizing you've learned more than you ever expected without even noticing. The author analyzes designs of the past and present, explains the principles that define whether or not they work, and teaches you how to do it yourself.I can't recommend this book highly enough, especially for students and the self-taught. Is the author's style idiosyncratic? Sure, and that's one of the things that makes this book so great. I have a shelf full of dry, flat, tasteless design books; this is a banquet for the eyes and the mind. It's a book you can read for pleasure (at least, if you're the kind of person to whom learning about design is pleasurable) instead of just trudging through it for instruction. It's not so much about HOW to do things (although there are excellent tutorial sections) as on WHY to do them, or not do them -- the latter of which is desperately needed today. And for the individual who complained that the tutorals are specific to certain software: if you can't look at an explanation of how to draw a curve in Illustrator, for example, and just use the corresponding tools in whatever graphics software you have, this field just isn't for you.I only rated this book at 5 stars because Amazon wouldn't let me tape a sixth one on to the end. If you have any interest, even casually, in lettering, in logo design, or in typography, this book is a must.

I've decided to buy this book thanks the advice of a great designer from Philadelphia, PA, USA.The layout of the book it's amazing and the quality of the information the author give to the lector is incredible.I've never tryed before to design type but right after having finished the book I felt that I was "ready" to try.It gives all the tips and history necessary to the junior type designer to grow up and start designing.

A great book and fab source of typography

This is one book that is useless on a Kindle. Don't publishers think about these things? For the same money buy the book!

An excellent resource for designers. Clear;y written and full of well done illustrations, it belongs in the library of designers, typographers, & everyone who loves typography!

Lo consiglio. Per chi si occupa di grafica risulta un opera davvero ricca e realizzata da un esperto del settore. E' decisamente più di un buon manuale sull'argomento.