The Elements of Typographic Style – Part 1

18/05/08 – A selection of excerpts and principles from Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style [Part 1 of 2]:

Foreword

“But when I set myself to compile a simple list of working principles, one of the benchmarks I first thought of was William Strunk and E.B. White’s small masterpiece, The Elements of Style.” (9)

“But the underlying principles of typography are, at any rate, stable enough to weather any number of human fashions and fads.” (10)

“The essential elements of style have more to do with the goals typographers set for themselves than with the mutable eccentricities of their tools.” (ibid.)

I THE GRAND DESIGN

1.1 First Principles

1.1.1 Typography exists to honor content.

“Typography with anything to say therefore aspires to a kind of statuesque transparency. Its other traditional goal is durability: not immunity to change, but a clear superiority to fashion.” (17) (more…)