This book is the legacy of a great typographer for the cultural heritage of our day. In the post-war years, when in nearly every field of applied art there were still no signs whatsoever of a shift to a new, more contemporary form of expression, Emil Ruder was one of the first to abandon the conventional rules of traditional typography and create new laws that satisfied the requirements of a new typography. This book, which has seen six editions to date and is now available again in a new edition, is a fundamental textbook upon which generations of typographers and graphic designers have built and can continue to build on. This book can clearly be seen as an excellent manual. Beyond that, it is a comprehensive masterpiece seen in its overall structure, in the themes presented, in the comparison of similarities and contrasts, in the richness of the illustrations and the harmoniously inserted types. Behind the purely pedagogic examples of exact proportions, a rich, philosophical thinking shines through, which - moving far beyond the tasks of everyday existence - attempts to expound upon the lessons of life's wisdom.