I haven’t read it, but I was just reading about Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography, which apparently deals with such things in detail as part of his views on type. But if you’re not into functionalist, asymmetrical design, it’s likely not for you.

I blogged some on Tschichold’s Die neue Typographie, primarily here and here. I think there also may be a place or two somewhere on Typophile that I mentioned some stuff on The New Typography. Essentially, I had difficulty—if not with what Tschichold wrote, then—the way it is sometimes implemented. Also worth noting is that he renounced some things from that book later on. I’m told that a better book of his to read is The Form of the Book. But, as it’s a series of essays and not all of them are written by Tschichold, I can’t say for myself yet. I’m hoping to make it a birthday or Christmas gift to myself, since it appears to be a bit price, over $62 on Amazon.

But them’s some of my thoughts.

The New Typography is not especially helpful when it comes to stationary. The stationary section is dominated by promotion of the DIN letterhead standards. Business cards get only a tiny section because they were just breaking away from simple calling cards at the time, and what’s there is pretty rudimentary modernist stuff. There have been a few good books about business card and stationary design in the last few years, I would recommend just flipping through them to see which of those designs still hold up after a few years.