307: Fine Specimens with Elliot Jay Stocks of Adobe Fonts

Diana Varma
1 day ago
2 min read

I love a beautiful book about typography (who doesn’t?!) and this one, that we’re about to get into, is a BEAUT! Our guest today is Elliot Jay Stocks and I am obsessed with his other book (Universal Principles of Typography) and use it as the textbook in my intro to typography class (it’s really, really good) and I couldn’t wait to chat with him about his new book, available around the world now!

Elliot is a designer and author, known in typographic circles for his work as the co-creator of Google Fonts Knowledge, founder of 8 Faces magazine, and creative director of Typekit (now known as Adobe Fonts). He’s the author of several books, including Universal Principles of Typography (Quarto, 2024) and Fine Specimens (Quarto, 2026), has spoken at over 90 design conferences around the world, and has served as a judge for the D&AD Awards. He and his family live in Somerset, UK.

In this conversation, you’ll hear why Elliot wanted to make his new book (Fine Specimens) and what it contains. You’ll hear just how small the type design world actually is (Hi Jamie! Hi Mark!), as well as Elliot’s take on traditional type classification systems. He explains why he chose to integrate non-Latin typography throughout the book (versus it living in a separate section) and where type designers who want to expand into multiple new, unfamiliar scripts can start to think about collaborating with other foundries. Finally, Elliot shares his advice for designers creating specimens today—what to keep and what to consider reinventing.

Let’s listen in…