From Readable to Outré
This edition of Font Bureau's specimen book is arranged in a new way: based on legibility. The "most readable, if not the most exciting" typefaces lead off, while "the more visually interesting, if less legible, fonts can be found toward the rear of the book." It's a unique approach, as far as I can recall. No attention is paid to what category a type design might fall into, or whether the typeface has serifs or not; the only criterion is legibility. That's why the first three type families are the "Readability" faces designed for newspapers; they're followed by a number of text families like Proforma and Miller, but not far into the book we run across Belizio, a dramatic Clarendon (slab serifs, but with curving brackets) that I usually think of as a display face but that is, in fact, very readable at text sizes.

Typefaces in the front of the book are shown at both display and text sizes, with significant chunks of two-column text so we can judge how the face looks in use. Typefaces in the latter half of the book are given only display showings -- single lines of type in varying sizes and weights and styles -- which seems appropriate to the way they might be used. The last typefaces shown in the book (apart from a couple of ornament fonts) are Barcode, Bradley Initials, and Alpha Bloc and Geometrique -- faces that no one in their right mind would consider using except at large size for single words or phrases.

FB Rhode

While the text settings throughout the book consist of nonsense phrases that contain all the letters of the alphabet ("grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil queen and jack"), the headline settings show off not only the type itself but the wit of the people who compose these samples. In the fine tradition of 19th-century specimen books, Font Bureau intrigues and amuses us with its choice of headlines. Often enough, a page of varying type ends up telling an implied story ("OUTDOOR CINEMA / Problem with starting the movie during daylight: I always miss the beginning / Minor Characters / DISAPPEAR AFTER ONLY 23 MINUTES") or running a riff on a theme ("OLD KITCHEN / The offices of Grate, Peel, Squeeze, & Bake / NEW CULINARY LAW FIRM / Handling cases in wrongful stir fry, negligent marinade, baker's comp"). In addition to this playfulness, the actual text, brief though it is, that explains each typeface and its origins is pithy, witty, and to the point. (The description of Griffith Gothic, based on C.H. Griffith's typeface for telephone directories, Bell Gothic, tells how Tobias Frere-Jones retained "the pre-emptive thinning of joints as a salient feature.")

FB Giza

Numerography
One last detail makes this type-specimen book notably useful: a page in the back explaining clearly -- and showing -- the different styles of numerals that are possible (oldstyle, lining, tabular, and so on), and three pages listing and showing all the kinds of numerals available for each of the typefaces in the book. This is a very handy reference. If you were choosing a typeface for, say, an annual report or something else that required a lot of numbers, you might do well to flip to this addendum to see at a glance what the options are.

A good type-specimen book is a pleasure to browse through, as well as a functional tool. This one makes me want to have all the typefaces in it at my fingertips, and to put them to use right away. That's exactly what it's supposed to do.

Read more by John D. Berry.