The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Typography

A much-needed scholarly assessment of the field of typography, covering historical, technical and critical perspectives from a range of international contributors

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