Nowadays it's hard to remember that there was ever a time that Emigre was considered shockingly radical. With the massive surge of alternative type foundries and indie type designers, it's pretty hard to think of Emigre as "indie" any more. Not to mention the huge success of their typeface Mason--slapped over so many album covers and print ads in the last thirteen years that it's become a pest font damn near approaching that of Cooper Black or Hobo. But Emigre WAS radical, as this book reminds us. And they did more than just start a revolution in computer designed type. Their real value was to reintroduce a kind of type-centric design renaissance that hadn't really been seen since Jan Tschichold's "The New Typography".
Emigre made typographic design solutions exciting again. They also taught me a great lesson--type is something to think about and rant about--it's not just window dressing to go around the art. Who needs to design around a photograph when with the right font and some imagination you can ditch the photo altogether and have something considerably more challenging?
Anyway, if you can't tell, I think pretty highly of this book and agree that every designer should keep a copy around. More importantly, I think design students should look at it to get an idea of what IS possible with type--not just Emigre type, but with a true typographic approach to design, which I think the Emigre style embodies.
The book is several years old now and evidently out of print. Still it's worth the trouble to buy a used copy as they pop up from time to time.
