This is a book review of the 8 Faces Magazine created and published by Elliot Jay Stocks in England. One correction we need to note from the audio is that this is a bi-annual publication, not a quarterly publication. And also, yes we know it kind of sucks to review a book that’s currently unavailable in printed form.

As with our other book review posts we’ll be giving away a PDF version of this post (actually since it’s a PDF we’ll give away 3 of them!) to a randomly picked commenter. Just leave a comment about your favorite typeface or your least favorite typeface and we’ll pick from your entries.

If you don’t win a copy you can also go grab a PDF version of the book from 8faces.com website, it’s still the same great content as in the printed one.

Read The Review

Giovanni: Hey guys this is Giovanni and Gene and we are going to do a book review of the second issue of eight Faces. It’s a publication, quarterly, right?

Gene: That’s right.

Giovanni: A quarterly publication about typography and the people who make it and a little bit of history too. So..

Gene: Yeah, it’s done by Elliot Jay Stocks and we unfortunately missed out on the first issue, couldn’t get it fast enough, so made sure and got the second one which is also sold out. Which is really kind of awesome considering it’s a magazine about typography.

Giovanni: Yeah.

Gene: That has sold out. I mean that’s pretty great. You know historically there have been magazines and newsletters and things like that on this like, “Upper and Lower Case, ” and “Emigre”.

Gene: Like that kind of thing and it sort of reminds me of those days and I miss those days and to have a book like this now is pretty awesome.

Giovanni: Well you know it’s nice to have sort of a compiled list and description of what is currently happening.

Gene: Yeah.

Giovanni: Because it’s a pretty specialized subject and even though we all deal with it, most of us are not typophiles.

Gene: Right.

Giovanni: In such a, to such a degree so it’s nice to have a resource that does that for you and kind of keeps you current, you know. So it’s…

Gene: Yeah.

Giovanni: You know it’s a publication so it’s not as fast as the Internet but you know most people are not as fast as the Internet either.

Gene: I’m not.

Giovanni: So, I know, I mean, it’s like, it’s really hard to keep up with everything and it’s good to have somebody who is knowledgeable enough to filter it, to some extent,

Gene: Right.

Giovanni: You know they’re filtering it, and then giving us the, not condensed but you know refined version of ..

Gene: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, I think some of what’s leant itself to the success of this book so far is Elliot Jay Stocks.

Giovanni: Well, yeah that’s true.

Gene: You know, we don’t know him from really anybody and we’ve come to, I know I have come to, kind of trust his suggestions and things on the web based on his track record so when he’s putting out a magazine, it’s really going to.

Giovanni: Right.

Gene: Help. That’s the first thing I noticed.

Giovanni: Well, when you see somebody’s work, you want to know how they think about it. You want to know the ideas behind the product and so this is, this is to some degree getting at that.

Gene: Yeah.

Giovanni: And I think we trust it because of that.

Gene: Yeah, I think so too.

Giovanni: Well let’s talk about the book in particular, this particular edition, I guess is what we’re here to, kind of talk about the whole thing in general too but this particular one, the size of it I find to be kind of unique in of itself, I like the experience of the book being kind of tiny.

Gene: Yeah.

Giovanni: You know it’s not like a super-sized magazine or anything like that which if you’re familiar with some of the history of these type magazines and books, they are usually kind of large.

Gene: Right.

Gene: It does, it has sort of a trade binding, which is nice, it’s not like just a regular magazine binding, it feels more substantial, more book-like.

Giovanni: It definitely does and it’s, I mean first off, it’s about beautiful typefaces and it’s laid out beautifully. I mean it’s almost inspiring just to kind of not even read it, to just kind of flip through it and look at these typefaces and how they’re used and stuff.

Gene: That’s actually what I did when I first got it.

Giovanni: Yeah, me too.

Gene: I just kind of flipped through to see everything that was in it, ’cause one thing that it does, it talks to, there’s interviews with people who are making major contributions to typography right now and it talks about what they like and what they’ve done and what they think is currently good and then at the end of each one of their discussions it shows a set of typefaces.

Giovanni: Yeah.

Gene: And really, well some of them are well known and some of them are just awesome looking.

Giovanni: Yeah.

Gene: So it gives you a really good overview of the taste of these people and an explanation of why their tastes are what they are.

Giovanni: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great little book.

Gene: Yeah. It’s got a lot of nice information. It is brief, which you can think of as good. In my opinion it’s good it’s brief because it’s not a tome about typography.

Giovanni: Right, there are plenty of those.

Gene: Yeah, there’s lots of that going around. And it does get down to fundamentals, basic structure and things like that but it also talks a lot about just trends and current technologies you know like of services for type on the web and the way people are going to access that in the future. And different models for how to handle and stuff like that.

Giovanni: Right.

Gene: Which is nice, it kind of touches on a lot of subjects briefly. And like I said, I think that really it’s a book to kind of keep you current, to let you know what’s going on, so it serves that function really well so I think that it’s a good resource and you know it’s one of those things it would be nice if it came out like once a month.

Giovanni: Yeah.

Gene: That would be a lot of work.

Giovanni: But that would be a lot of work.

Gene: It would be a lot of work.

Giovanni: Yeah, we want the guy to sleep a little bit.

Gene: Yeah.

Giovanni: I know, well I know that I’ll be getting in line to get the next one, so.

Gene: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it’s really, it’s a good book. I mean and it is, it’s a publication, you know that comes out quarterly but it feels like a book, and it has as much information about kind of the current things that are happening.

Giovanni: Yeah, so we’ll definitely make sure and link up how you can stay informed because we do realize we’re doing a book review on a book which you can’t go buy.

Gene: Yeah.

Giovanni: Which is kind of strange, but we’ll link up so that you can stay informed when the next one comes out and you can jump in line and grab it.

Gene: Yeah, and you know the more interest, the more I’m sure they’ll.

Giovanni: He’ll make more.

Gene: He’ll just make more of them, right.

Giovanni: That’s right.

Gene: So you know, let’s support that. I think it’s a good resource for our community and you know it’s needed. So go for it.

Giovanni: Absolutely.

Remember: As with our other book review posts we’ll be giving a way a PDF version of this post to on randomly picked commenter. Just leave a comment about your favorite typeface or your least favorite typeface and we’ll pick from your entries.