A really charming and informative look at the history, development and meaning of fonts and typefaces – how and why they were designed, the larger than life characters behind them, why we respond in different ways to different fonts. It’s full of stories and diversions, fascinating facts and bizarre incidents. We learn about the importance of a well-tuned ampersand, the controversy around IKEA’s change from Futura to Verdana, the history of the London Underground’s design of Johnston Sans, the impact of computers and Microsoft on type design and much more.

This is a collection of truly macabre illustrated stories, about outsider characters trying to survive and find meaning in a cruel and unforgiving world. The stories are very short, usually in a kind of naïve rhyming verse, and accompanied by sinister and unsettling drawings. They are classically Tim Burton: childlike, but not for children; tragic, but not without hope; dark, sinister and very, very funny. If you like that kind of thing. I do.