The lat­est edi­tion of Type Rules! is on the shelves and it was worth the wait. This is the 4th edi­tion of Ilene Strizver’s book on typog­ra­phy and she notes in an e‑mail that she spent around six months revis­ing it for the cur­rent edi­tion.

The book itself is com­pre­hen­sive, cov­er­ing a brief his­to­ry of typog­ra­phy as well as all the top­ics one might need to cre­ate a pro­fes­sion­al prod­uct. And it’s also prac­ti­cal, with detailed “how to” instruc­tions and exer­cis­es for the read­er. This edi­tion also includes Web videos.

My favorite part is the exten­sive use of visu­al­ly inter­est­ing graph­ics and illus­tra­tions. Accord­ing to Strizver, she assem­bled these by can­vass­ing her broad con­tact list via email and social media as well as using input from her stu­dents. She also states that this edi­tion pro­vides updates on “type in motion” as well as typog­ra­phy in var­i­ous dig­i­tal media because pro­fes­sion­als today must be “famil­iar, knowl­edge­able, and com­fort­able with how type and design behave on the full spec­trum of sur­faces and devices.”

Strizver wouldn’t pre­dict whether we will see a 5th edi­tion. But that’s not because typog­ra­phy has reached a plateau. Dig­i­tal media con­tin­ues to advance, and she notes that the fact that peo­ple read text on screen more, the improv­ing qual­i­ty of dig­i­tal devices, and advances in Web-based type require us to con­tin­ue learn­ing and to be pro­fi­cient “across a broad spec­trum of tech­nolo­gies.”

Sounds like good advice to me!