Free Hand

Steven Heller, the world’s foremost graphic-design commentator, and Lita Talarico, design educator, open up designers’ personal sketchbooks to provide an intimate look at the creative processes behind typefaces, word-images and logos. Arranged alphabetically by name, the world’s most exciting designers and typographers, including Philippe Apeloig, Ed Benguiat, Hoefler Type Foundry, Henrik Kubel, Toshi Omagari and Francesco Zorzi, present a staggering range of unique and exciting ways to communicate through letters and words. Sketchbook pages reveal the designers’ creative processes across diverse briefs, concepts, languages and alphabets, from Roman to Cyrillic to Arabic.

Aimed at all those who engage creatively with type, whether by hand or on screen, this rich compendium of typographic ideas stresses the importance of typographic thinking at a time when reading habits are evolving, while celebrating the varied and innovative ways that designers practise this time-honoured craft.