Over at the Font Feed, there’s a fascinating article on typefaces. The blog has surveyed the winners of the annual Book, Jacket and Journal Show (run by the Association of American University Presses) over the past three years. They’ve come up with a list of the top ten fonts used in that time and published examples of them.
Typefaces are the kind of thing most readers take for granted. Occasionally, at the end of certain novels (especially literary hardbacks), a note is included on the back page explaining which typeface has been used and its history.
Until recently, the question of which font to use in a book would have been something for a book designer to obsess over. The rise of self-publishing means that, increasingly, it’s a decision writers need to be able to make for themselves.