When it comes to art and design history Taschen have a tendency to release the most fun books. On one of my recent travels I stumbled upon Type. A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, 1628 – 1900. A very impressive book both in size and quality. You’ll find a lot of history about the evolution of the printing process and advertising business, as well as loads of examples of type specimen, ornaments and ads. A must for the type obsessed! Have a look through the book here (examples starts around p100). An exiting extra to this book is that you get access to over a thousand high-resolution specimen scans available for download.

Around February 1 volume two is released, which will be about type in the 20th century.