The book Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton is pretty okay. A bit of the content of the book is on the page I linked, it also handles grid systems and such.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but here goes:

Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works, Second Edition
by Erik Spiekermann and E.M Ginger

An Essay on Typography
by Eric Gill

This set of two volumes are very detailed and thorough, and come highly recommended.

The first volume is about the details of setting text. Not a collection of rules, but more a discussion of the possibilities.
http://www.amazon.de/Detailtypografie-Nachschlagewerk-alle-Fragen-Schrif...

The second one 'Lesetypographie' is about typography in multiple pages.
http://www.amazon.de/Die-neue-Lesetypografie-Hans-Willberg/dp/3874396525

I have heard about or maybe even seen an english translation of one of the volumes.

Check out the latest editions of Typographic Design: Form and Communication, Designing With Type, The Complete Typographer, Making and Breaking the Grid, and A Type Primer.

Timothy Samara has another book out (author of Making and Breaking the Grid) called Design Elements.

It is kind of like a greatest hits of graphic design principle, but it does cover a lot. Brief and concise.
Therefore much different than the Bringhurst book, but certainly more immediately accessible for
someone new to graphic design.

Thanks a lot for the tips, I think some of them could be very helpful!

cheers Queneau

For grid information:
Micro and Macro Typography by Willi Kunz
and The Typographic Grid by Hans Rudolph Bosshard (English and German)

Bringhurst (unless the newer editions have changed this) offers a good overview of 1930s British typography & the page. While it is still a good model -- and still somewhat advocated in some recent books (e.g. Mitchell & Wightman Book Typography, Libanus Press 2005), it isn't much used anymore, at least in the States. In the States, designers seemingly are trying to see who can be the first to set 10/16. Since the publisher wants more than 2,000 characters a page with a 6x9-inch book, the grid has to be thrown out. This pretty much holds true even with the 10/15 settings which a good number of designers have tried. I'm holding my breath for that first 10/16 x 26 design. How daring!

The Mitchell & Wightman offers a good 21st century view of what started with 1930s British typography. I must say though that Dutch designers seem to be doing better than their US counterparts.

FWIW

I can imagine that Bringhurst is not 'used' a lot for commercial work, as he is not so much talking about cost-efficiency but more about the 'poetics' of the page. It's use of poetical and musicl language to create beautiful pages might not be the most concrete and efficient way, but I like the idea of finding meaningful ways of ordering the page, and connecting these fields with it seems a good approach.

cheers Queneau

Partly.

But consider too that the proportions Bringhurst advocates work best with large format books opened flat on a table. Modern binding techniques (i.e., not Smythe sewn) don't really open flat, and the binding removes a considerable part of the inside margin. Books are three-dimensional objects; a frequent "design" error I see is to treat them as two-dimensional.

As to The Grid, well of course you need one, but one of the best lectures I heard was given by Richard Eckersley -- In typical Richard fashion, he told a story of a poor design he'd done by sticking to his grid for the front matter. He wound up redoing the front matter (for himself, as an exercise, after the book was published) and treated each front-matter display page on its own merit (no grid). Much better result. Of course, Richard began his career as a poster designer and understands that aspect of graphic arts, but spent over 30 years as a book designer.

As to the cost factor and the commercial aspect, you use less paper setting 10/13 & having wider margins. Moreover, the small area of publishing I'm involved with (scholarly publishing) offers designers less in salary, but far more in creative control. It isn't a matter of costs.

FWIW

Your absolutely right that working out each detail in its own way is always better than working with a system or grid, adding more detail to the proceedings and working based on the content rather than on the system. But I guess grids, measures and systems are also a personal fascination, like finding the 'perfect' grid is like finding the holy grail, I know its mythical and not reality but that exactly interests me.

Another good point is that a book is a 3-dimensional object. With program's like InDesign and QuarkExpress one all too often forgets this until the book comes back from the printers. Hands on feeling is key to a succesful book, however nice the page may be.

Thanks for the comments!

A classic book on the subject of grids is Grid Systems in Graphic Design, by renowned Swiss designer Josef Müller-Brockmann.

"The New Typography", by Jan Tschichold or "Paragraphs on Printing", by Bruce Rogers. Not only do you learn about typography and page layouts, you get a history lesson too!

-Joe