Books. Check 'Em Out.

Today, UPPERCASE Magazine posted about the release of a new series of books from Taschen, the publisher of probably 75% of all the art and design books I own. Well, that percentage will be increasing soon because I need these books.

Type. A Visual History of Typeface and Graphic Styles, Vol. 1, 1628-1900 is on bookshelves now and is described as "The first in a two-volume set presenting an overview of typeface design, exploring the most beautiful and remarkable fonts in publishing history". Um, yes please! Volume 2 won't be released until February 2010...boo. I know it'll be worth the wait and it'll look pretty sweet on my coffee table. Maybe I can blow up the covers as posters, too!

Images from amazon.com.

If you buy through Taschen you also receive unlimited access to an online image library of over 1,000 downloadable high-resolution scans of type specimens. I'm pretty sure I would pay just to have 1,000 different versions of this. Actually, I know I would.

Sample of the downloadable type specimens.