Are there any good general typesetting books / references?
Book Recommendations
- The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. (Christian Lindig: This is a classic and if you only read one book I'd say it should be this one.) (lockstep: Emphasis on book design, plus a chapter about well-designed fonts.)
- The Complete Manual of Typography by James Felici, 2nd ed 2011.
- Thinking with Type (read online) by Ellen Lupton, 2nd ed 2010.
- Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann. (Christian Lindig: A small and useful book, less about technicalities and more about good taste and providing an overview.) (lockstep: I wouldn't recommend this one -- it does provide an overview, but is completely lacking with regard to technical details.)
- Règles typographiques et normes : Mise en pratique avec LaTeX by David Carella; french book. Note: may be out of print as of Sept 2011.
- Detail in Typography by Jost Hochuli, 2008. (German language edition 2005.) Very concise, yet chockful of great points.
All links go to Amazon where you can find in-depth reviews.
Online resources
As a LaTeX user, I'm also interested in typesetting practices. Here are some links, I listed on my blog earlier:
- Guidelines for typography among other Typography Resources collected by Charles Hedrick
- iLT - iLoveTypography - inspiring articles concerning typography
- JEP - Journal of Electronic Publishing - research and discussion about contemporary publishing practices
- slanted - German mag, typography and design
- typographica - journal of typography featuring news, observations and commentaries on fonts and typographic design
- Planet typography
Edit: in German, perhaps useful though, directly connected to LaTeX:
- Typographic rules and their implementation in LaTeX
The memdesign package used to be part of the memoir class but has been spun off. It has a lot of notes about book design.