A few weeks back I saw a tweet featuring a pic of the octothorpe or hash symbol, from Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols and Other Typographic Marks by Keith Houston. It looked exquisite and I couldn't resist grabbing a copy of the book. It's a fun book, chocked full of history and geeky knowledge - a perfect gift for the graphic designer in your life. But it's the book design that really shines. The designer (Judith Stagnitto Abbate) has done a beautiful job. It's full of elegant details and the two colours (the classic typographer black & red) are balanced perfectly throughout. Overall it has a very classical feel but with the occasional fun little twist like close cropping a mark or bleeding it off the edge of the page. You can tell she had a lot of fun with this, wonderful job.
