Simon Garfield

One of the most beautiful handcrafted typefaces in the world, Albertus is also one of the most enduring. The face of thousands of book jackets, and the chosen look for David Bowie, Coldplay, Star Wars and London street signs, Albertus is as as warmly enticing on film posters as it is on memorial plaques. The story of the font is one displacement (its designer Berthold Wolpe was a German Jewish refugee who went on to design the masthead for The Times), but also one of permanence, for it has proved a fresh, vibrant and indestructible face for almost a century. In this unique celebration, the designer's children reveal the history of its creation and the erratic brilliance of their father, while the book grapples with one of the fundamental artistic questions: what makes great art not only survive but flourish in each new age and medium?

The classic elegant English typeface, still widely used as a book text more than 250 years since its creation. Baskerville is a transitional design, poised between the first metal types and modern styles, notable for its combination of fat and thin strokes. When it was first used there was genuine concern that it would damage readers' eyes. John Baskerville was a maverick lacquer maker and printer in Birmingham, a flamboyant dresser, an important figure in the Enlightenment. Though it earned him little money, he was obsessive about both his typeface and its appearance on the page, a perfectionism culminating in his magnificent Bible. The story encompasses one of the first powerful women of the printing world, his wife Sarah Baskerville, and the many typefaces the Baskervilles inspired. And it examines why John Baskerville's body was dug up and buried many times before it was finally allowed to rest in peace.

Comic Sans is one of the most used and most reviled typefaces of the digital age. How was it made? How could it spawn a movement to ban it and yet still be so widely promoted by educators? What does its accidental creator make of its contentious and singular history? This quirky and unique book considers how the computer transformed type into something that anyone could use and have an opinion on. It examines how a typeface, correctly used, may sell us almost anything, and how new types with names such as Crash Soul, Lovely Scream Queens and Ampersandist (to name but three recent examples of the hundreds issued each year) each attempt to keep the alphabet exciting and new. And it concludes with an alluring question: could Comic Sans now be the coolest typeface ever made?

The encyclopaedia once shaped our understanding of the world. Now these huge books sell for almost nothing on eBay while we derive information from our phones. What have we lost in this transition? All the Knowledge in the World tracks the story from Ancient Greece to Wikipedia, from modest single-volumes to the 11,000-volume Chinese manuscript that was too big to print. It exposes how encyclopaedias reflect our changing attitudes towards sexuality, race and technology, uncovers a fascinating part of our shared past and wonders whether the promise of complete knowledge - that most human of ambitions - will forever be beyond our grasp.

Čas. Entita, která naše životy řídí a určuje od nepaměti. Jak se v průběhu doby proměnilo jeho vnímání a měření? Jak došlo k tomu, že „se během posledních dvou set padesáti let stal čas v našem životě tak převládající a naléhavou silou?“ Na tuto otázku se snaží Simon Garfield ve své knize odpovědět. Zajímá vás, jak vznik železnice revolučním způsobem proměnil měření času? Věděli jste, že Carl Linné v roce 1751 navrhl hodiny, jejichž obří ciferník byl tvořen z květin, které v průběhu celého dne, podle intenzity světla, rozkvétaly a tím ukazovaly, kolik je zrovna hodin? Věděli jste, že na výrobu luxusních hodinek značky Grande Complications je potřeba 659 součástek, což o 206 součástek víc, než je kostí v lidském těle? Že v Anglii nechal princ Charles vybudovat městečko, kde se zastavil čas? Lidé, kteří se tam nastěhovali, toužili po tradičním a méně uspěchaném životním stylu, a tak jim princ daroval Poundbury, kde mohli realizovat svůj sen o organicky pěstované zelenině a městu bez aut. V jednotlivých kapitolách se autor zabývá nejrůznějšími aspekty času, přičemž je jeho záběr opravdu široký. Který hudební skladatel prosadil to, aby se v partituře označovalo hudební tempo? Jakou historii měl hudební nosič, na který Beatles nahráli své první album? Která fotka napomohla ukončit válku ve Vietnamu? Garfield je výborný esejista a vypravěč, který čtivým způsobem propojuje jednotlivé příběhy, ze kterých postupně skládá mozaiku, která nás nejen poučí, ale v mnohých případech rovněž pobaví. „Chci mluvit o tom,“ cituje Garfield komika Davea Allena, „jak jsme závislí na čase, jak nás hodinky řídí, jak hodiny vše určují. Jsme tak vychováváni. Abychom hodiny respektovali, abychom je obdivovali. Přesnost. Žijeme svůj život ve stínu hodin.“

Cteme všichni. Když ne zrovna poezii, ruský román nebo filozofický traktát, urcite smerovky na silnicích, nápisy na obalech sušenek nebo esemesky. Písmena v jakékoli podobe provázejí cloveka již po staletí, ale neprišla k nám sama od sebe: nekdo je vymyslel, nakreslil a v drívejších dobách navíc ješte na ne odlil formu a vyrazil, aby jimi mohl tiskar pokrýt papír. Dnes si už neumíme predstavit svobodnejší prostredí než rozbalovací menu s písmem v textovém editoru. Z každého fontu tryská historie, za každou klickou nebo dríkem vykukuje Johannes Gutenberg. Jsou tu názvy, které známe: Helvetica, Times New Roman, Palatino nebo Gill Sans. Jsou tu fonty z fólií a otrhaných rukopisu: Bembo, Baskerville a Caslon. Jsou tu možnosti pro ruzný vkus: Bodoni, Didot a Book Antiqua. Ale taky riziko posmechu: Brush Script, Herculanum, Braggadocio a Comic Sans. Ješte pred petadvaceti lety jsme o nich neslyšeli a ve veku psacího stroje jsme je nemohli ani predvídat, dnes se bez nich neobejdeme. Kniha Ten muj font vás provede dobrodružným svetem písmen, raznic, písmolijen, grafiku, dávné, ale vubec ne zaprášené historie stejne jako nejžhavejší soucasností vzniku fontu. Zastaví se u nejvýznamnejších tvurcu typu písem, na než narazíte takrka na každém kroku a ani by vás nenapadlo, že zrovna za tímhle oblouckem nebo touhle patkou stojí mnohdy príbeh hodný filmového plátna. Jak se stalo, že Helvetica a Comic Sans ovládly svet? A Calibri operacní systém Windows? Proc je písmeno T v logu BEATLES vetší než ostatní? Každé písmo odráží urcitý názor, jedinecné chápání sveta. Ale také estetické hodnoty. Nekterý font se hodí pouze pro velké mestské nápisy, jiný pro tisícistránkový román. Jak je to možné, vám Simon Garfield ve své nové knize vysvetlí formou ctivou tak, že nebudete chtít prestat. A hlavne budete všechna ta písmena potrebovat videt.

SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 OBSERVER SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 Not so long ago we timed our lives by the movement of the sun. These days our time arrives atomically and insistently, and our lives are propelled by the notion that we will never have enough of the one thing we crave the most. How have we come to be dominated by something so arbitrary? The compelling stories in this book explore our obsessions with time. An Englishman arrives back from Calcutta but refuses to adjust his watch. Beethoven has his symphonic wishes ignored. A moment of war is frozen forever. The timetable arrives by steam train. A woman designs a ten-hour clock and reinvents the calendar. Roger Bannister becomes stuck in the same four minutes forever. A British watchmaker competes with mighty Switzerland. And a prince attempts to stop time in its tracks. Timekeepers is a vivid exploration of the ways we have perceived, contained and saved time over the last 250 years, narrated in the highly inventive and entertaining style that bestselling author Simon Garfield is fast making his own.As managing time becomes the greatest challenge we face in our lives, this multi-layered history helps us tackle it in a sparkling new light.

Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana. The Beatles learn to be brilliant in an hour and a half. An Englishman arrives back from Calcutta but refuses to adjust his watch. Beethoven has his symphonic wishes ignored. A US Senator begins a speech that will last for 25 hours. The horrors of war are frozen at the click of a camera. A woman designs a ten-hour clock and reinvents the calendar. Roger Bannister lives out the same four minutes over a lifetime. And a prince attempts to stop time in its tracks. Timekeepers is a book about our obsession with time and our desire to measure it, control it, sell it, film it, perform it, immortalise it and make it meaningful. It has two simple intentions: to tell some illuminating stories, and to ask whether we have all gone completely nuts.

Just My Type is not just a font book, but a book of stories. About how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world. About why Barack Obama opted for Gotham, while Amy Winehouse found her soul in 30s Art Deco. About the great originators of type, from Baskerville to Zapf, or people like Neville Brody who threw out the rulebook, or Margaret Calvert, who invented the motorway signs that are used from Watford Gap to Abu Dhabi. About the pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Letraset and were loaded onto computers ... and typefaces became something we realised we all have an opinion about. As the Sunday Times review put it, the book is 'a kind of Eats, Shoots and Leaves for letters, revealing the extent to which fonts are not only shaped by but also define the world in which we live.' Please note that this book is published with two different jackets - one in black and one in silver. Orders will be allocated on a random basis