An attractive, interesting layout can certainly attract and please the reader; but when the details are not good, reading requires more effort and any pleasure is short-lived. Detail in Typography is a concise and close-up view of the subject — letters, words, the line, and the space around the elements — and it discusses what is essential for the legibility of the text. Yet this is more than a guide to correct typography. How is it, Hochuli asks, that text can be set perfectly and yet look insufferably dull? Answers may be found here, not least in the way the book itself has been set and produced.

Jost Hochuli is a Swiss typographer, internationally renowned for his book design work. As a teacher, he has had long experience in Zurich and his home town of St. Gallen. As a writer and editor, his books include Book Design in Switzerland (1993), Designing Books (1996), and Jost Hochuli: Printed Matter, Mainly Books (2002). He has edited and designed the annually published ‘Typotron’ series of booklets (1983-1998) and the Editions ‘Ostschweiz’ (from 2000).

The book was published first, in several languages, in 1987 and 1988. Hochuli then developed the German text, publishing it again in 2005, in Switzerland.

Designed by Jost Hochuli

Translated from German by Charles Whitehouse, 2008

Published by Éditions B42, 2015

64 pages, with black and white illustrations, 5 x 8.25 inches

ISBN: 9782917855669