He's just into typesetting.
Believe me, I understand completely. In today's world, typesetting is a bit of a lost art (and make no mistake, it IS an art), but it is no less compelling for that.
I'd recommend The Elements of Typographic Style as a good starting place to help you grok it.
For myself, I can think of far worse things to do than to build an old style book press and acquire a really good set of drop forge typefaces (say, Centaur and Arrighi) and start making books.