Calligraphy (Lettering, Calligraphy, Typography)

Arthur Baker is one of the best-known modern calligraphers, especially admired for his world-famous innovation — the Baker Signet typeface.
This book focuses on Baker's extraordinary calligraphy, demonstrating how he raised the art to the heights it enjoyed during the Renaissance and the highest periods of Islamic and Chinese civilization. It contains a generous sampling of his calligraphic work — in single letters, connected alphabets, words, sentences, and even ventures into Oriental and abstract calligraphy.
Readers will find over 100 original alphabets in the book — each a striking departure from the others. They range from broad and bold forms to fine-line designs: from ornamental letters, rich and replete with flourishes, to simpler designs for ordinary occasions; from letters that exhibit an almost abandoned freedom to those that are more settled, neat, and precise. The whole range of Arthur Baker's work has been highly acclaimed by, among others, the foremost letter designers Oscar Ogg and Tommy Thompson. Thompson has said of him: "Language becomes music through the flowing pen of [his] calm and facile hand. His love of beauty is so unselfishly expressed in his work that one reads joy in each letter, in each word, in the rhythm of his designs."