Typography The Art and Technique of Arranging Type.

Typography

The Art and Technique of Arranging Type

Some Typeface Examples

• Quick brown foxes jump - Times New Roman

• Quick brown foxes jump - Bookman Old Style• Quick brown foxes jump - Courier New

• Quick brown foxes jump - Trebuchet MS

• Quick brown foxes jump - Comic Sans MS - Webdings

The root words that make up Typography are…

• Typo - type

• Graphy - drawing

Typography and Print

• Typography is defined in relation to print• History of (Western) printing

– Johannes Gutenberg • Europe’s first printer (42-line Bible, 1455)• First designer of typeface• Gothic type: modeled after German script• Goal: To replicate the look of a manuscript Bible

– Aldus Manutius• Designed “Italic” type (“of Italy”) in the 1490s• Modeled on handwriting of Venetian clerks• Compact form allowed for printing of smaller books

Typography and Print: Creating Type

Basic letterform for capital letters

Stone Engravers’ Style:

As few curves as possible

Typography and Print: Creating Type

When designing with type…

Remember that the negative space is just as important as the positive space.

The arrangement of type involves the selection of…

• Font - a complete set of characters in a specific style

• Typeface - a set of one or more fonts designed with stylistic unity. A Typeface is comprised of letters, numerals, symbols & punctuation marks.

• Point Size - the smallest unit of measure. .72 pts to 1in

Typeface

Choosing a typeface that matches the content is important.

Legibility / Legibility

• Legibility - the ease in which type can be understood under normal reading conditions.

Type Classifications

• Serif - Has cross-lines at the ends of strokes.

Type Classifications

• Sans Serif - “without serifs”

Type Classifications• Decorative and Display - a vast category that

includes types that do not fit in other categories. By definition, these types would be illegible at text size.

Type Classifications

• Glyphic - Based on letters carved in stone.

Type Classifications

• Monospaced - Typewriter types in which each letter occupies exactly the same space.

Type Classifications

• Script and Handlettered - Closest approx. of hand lettering. Ranges from formal to casual.

Type Classifications

• Symbol and Ornaments - simple illustrations and representational and nonrepresentational symbols

Type Classifications

• Blackletter - also called Gothic and Old English.

The Anatomy of Type

The Anatomy of Type• Cap height - the height of capital letters, measured from

baseline to top of the letterforms.

• Ascender - the part of the lowercase letters that extend above the median in b, d, f, h, l and t.

• Median - the invisible line that defines the top of the lowercase letters that have no ascender.

• X-height - the distance from the baseline to the median in lowercase letters. Named after the lowercase x.

• Baseline - invisible line on which letterforms sit.

• Descender - the part of the lowercase letters that extend below the baseline in g, j, p, q and y.

The Anatomy of Type

24

Legibility and alignment

Legibility ‘refers to perception’ and readability ‘refers to comprehension

Typography and Print: The Power of Typography

• Importance of “new typography” today– Considered blank space to be as much as a formal

element of typography as black type

– Continued to encourage standardization

– Blurred the line between “high art” and “mass media”

– Blurred the distinction between image and language

– Predicted the future importance of typographic design to advertising

Digital Typography

• Some digitally created typefaces– Trebuchet MS

• 1996, Microsoft typeface designed to be readable at small sizes and at low resolutions

• Based on humanist sans serif typeface designs of the 1920s and 30s

– Comic Sans MS• 1994 (developed), released as part of Windows 95 Plus!

Pack• Based on the generic lettering style of comic strips

(Webdings)• 1997, designed in response to web designers’ need for

easy method of incorporating graphics in their pages