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Learn about typography and its impact on communication. Discover the difference between typefaces and fonts, and how to choose appropriate styles and sizes. Explore various typographic elements and classifications, and understand the importance of alignment, leading, kerning, and tracking. Avoid common typographic issues like orphans, widows, and rivers. Enhance your design skills and create impactful messages with typography.
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Typography Typography is the art and technique of creating and composing type in order to convey a message. Words are communication. What do they say? The meaning should come before the look of the type is considered. Choose typographic styles and sizes that are appropriate to the meaning and will serve the text's relative importance in the hierarchy. There are many typefaces that can be chosen in design, but that does not mean that all are good.
The difference between a typeface and a font Originally, the typeface is a particular design of type, while a font is a type in a particular size and weight. In short, a typeface usually gathers many fonts. Nowadays, with the digital design of documents, you often see those two words used rather interchangeably. It doesn't make much sense to say that “Helvetica 12” and “Helvetica 14” are different fonts (they used to be different drawers with different blocks of lead, now they're all a single OTF file!).
Typeface Fonts Helvetica 12 Helvetica 14 Baskerville 28 Helvetica Baskerville
Ascender - The lowercase character stroke which extends above the x-height. Baseline - The imaginary horizontal line to which the body, or main component, of characters are aligned. Bowl - The curved stroke which surrounds a counter. Bracket - A curved line connecting the serif to the stroke. Bracketed serifs with cupped basesbracketed serifs with flat bases unbracketed serifs Counter - The empty space inside the body stroke. Descender - The lowercase character stroke which extends below the baseline. Loop - The bottom part of the lowercase roman ‘g’. Sans serif - From the French, meaning “without serif”. A typeface which has no serifs.Sans serif typefaces are typically uniform in stroke width. Serif - Tapered corners on the ends of the main stroke. Serifs originated with the chiseled guides made by ancient stonecutters as they lettered monuments. Some serif designs may also be traced back to characteristics of hand calligraphy. Note that serif type is typically thick and thin in stroke weight. X-height The height of the body, minus ascenders and descenders, which is equal to the height of the lowercase ‘x’.
Traditional text is measured in points, the standard unit of measure in software programs for creating printed documents. There are 72 points to an inch and 12 points to a pica (picas are typically used to measure text widths, images, etc.)
Leading (line spacing) is space between lines of text. LEADING LEADING LEADING LEADING LEADING LEADING LEADING LEADING LEADING Kerningapplies to the space between individual letters. Certain combinations of letters typically leave too much space between the characters, such as capital "A" and "W." These examples have already been kerned, bringing the letters closer together: Tracking or letter spacing applies to whole lines of text. Add or subtract tracking to give text a looser or tighter feel. LAW L A W
Serif Fonts Serif fonts are marked by little 'feet' that extend from the stem of the letter. All fonts were Roman (serif) until the 20th century. Serifs say tradition, elegance, formal. Serifs enable reading of large blocks of printed text, hence most books, magazines, etc. use it for body text. Types of serif fonts:
Old Style With some of the earliest fonts, the serifs flow out in simple, graceful curves.
Transitional Smaller curves connect the serifs.
Modern The stems are thick and the serifs thin, contrasting with each other.
Slab Serif (Egyptian) Thick. Think Circus, Westerns Rockwell
Sans Serif No ‘feet.’ Clean, simple lines, less traditional looking. Hugely popular in the mid-century Swiss design movement. Studies show that reading on screen is easier with sans-serif typefaces.
Script Design a Wedding Invitation!
Decorative Can you read me clearly? …not usually
Orphan: An orphan is a single word at the bottom of a paragraph that gets left behind Widow: A widow is a word or line of text that is forced to go on alone and start its own column or page.
