Consider the medium the typeface was initially designed for. The extreme of this, is to always use letter press type faces, specifically when printing using a letter press. Consider the typeface, because there are different effects the process of laying down the type will actually have on the aspects of the letters.
Be wary of choosing typefaces depending on what the final product will be produced in.
Choose faces that suit the task as well as the subject. Choose faces that can hold up under pressure, and handle all of the effects that you need them to. Consider the different aspects of the text, and their strengths and weakness and choose the one that is strongest in the area you need it to be. A great deal of italics? Choose a font that has awesome italics.
Consider the historical aspects of the text. Don't use some sort of old english text to advertise for some internet cafe, unless it is medieval themed I guess. Use correct styling for the type of text. Renaissance type? Use Renaissance typography. Choose type faces with the appropriate cultural associations.
Consider serifed and unserifed fonts on their inner structure. Choose non latin alphabets as carefully as latin ones.
Generally speaking, many typographers, when using other languages, spend little time going through and considering the type face for the non-latin alphabet. Take everything into consideration what we've learned int he previous chapters about selecting a face from your own alphabet as with selecting a face from a foreign alphabet.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Chapter 5
Use the mid point. It stands to be the most simple typographic punctuation, and can often add a lot a phrase, or title. The midpoint easily breaks up the monotony a title. When using other numerical punctuation, keep with the font and type face. Don't borrow from other type faces, if they are presented in the same body copy.
There are some analphabetic characters that are often poorly designed, square brackets, the pound sight, and few others, be wary of those dastardly symbols. Use EN dashes, rather than EM. Computers usually offer only one type of dash, but there are usually at least three. Use em dash followed by a space to introduce speakers. Treat punctuation as notation most of the time, not expression. Basically these rules state, that, if you are going to use punctuation at all, make sure it fits the font. Don't go beyond what you need to do. Most punctuation should be set in roman, it is technical notation, not expression. Omit the apostrophe from numerical plurals. 4 x 43s etc. Use punctuation as a tool to accent and compliment the manners of speaking and overall flow.
There are some analphabetic characters that are often poorly designed, square brackets, the pound sight, and few others, be wary of those dastardly symbols. Use EN dashes, rather than EM. Computers usually offer only one type of dash, but there are usually at least three. Use em dash followed by a space to introduce speakers. Treat punctuation as notation most of the time, not expression. Basically these rules state, that, if you are going to use punctuation at all, make sure it fits the font. Don't go beyond what you need to do. Most punctuation should be set in roman, it is technical notation, not expression. Omit the apostrophe from numerical plurals. 4 x 43s etc. Use punctuation as a tool to accent and compliment the manners of speaking and overall flow.
Chapter 4
The title page of the whole piece should always reflect the overall feeling of the body copy that follows. Don't let any titles take away from the body text. Either have the titles be a form relative to the body text, or something extremely large which also adds to the text featured. If it is not large enough, but much larger than the body copy, the text needs to be of a lighter weight - you can do this either by having a lighter weight type face, or screen the type to make it appear lighter. Keep the titles and openings conducive to the overall feel of the design. Best way to set titles is to start from the margin.
There is no rule to how many levels of headings you need.
Notes about notes:
There is no rule to how many levels of headings you need.
Notes about notes:
- Notes should be set in a small size, endnotes supersede footnotes.
- Use superscripts in text, but full size numbers in notes.
- Present endnotes obviously, so readers don't have to hunt.
tables and lists must be easy to read. They should be set horizontally, work out the copy, don't condense the text to uncomfortable levels just to make it fit. Use limited punctuation and set columns of figures flush right.
Leave adequate space at the beginning and end of every publication, otherwise its like being push into a pool and the pull out violently.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Chapter 3 of ELEMENTS OF TYPOGRAPHY
The early typographers used to set a book in a single font, that is one type face in one size. Though they did accent their typography with hand drawn illustrations or lettering. But even with one size, the books still ended up having a beautiful texture and feel. Then within the next 400 years, there weren't much changes, though they did develop different sizes for set type.
There ended up being a set standard scare, measured in points : 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 16 18 24 36 48 60 72, these are the standard, some folks stick to using them some don't, but the successful ones are those who carefully choose their own scale without going overboard. The same goes with using tilting figures, full caps and small caps in the other circumstances.
With reference to numerals (figures) as we can see in this blog (tilting figures:12345678910 , these are stretched 'bell letters' instead of being text figures or hanging figures (which are the numerals that actually fall below the base line in a very attractive manner).. Some type faces are set without text figures, and are still useful, but the hanging numerals should be part of any typographer's vocabulary.
For abbreviations and acronyms in the midst of normal text, use spaced small caps. Since this blog's typographic abilities are lacking, an example of small caps with space hangs above the last paragraph. But again, using them everywhere is not a good rule to follow, these belong in a typographer's tool belt. Good practice is to use small caps with a type face with a small x-height, while with faces with a larger x-height it is good to use full caps (not always , but it must be considered)
Small caps, are not just shrunken full caps, they are designed for the type face, just like every other aspect (hopefully) There is another rule with small and full caps as well. For acronyms that we pronounce every letter, such as TV or HBO or GI tract, small caps should be used, which for acronyms like MASS or ASCII or FORTRAN where we pronounce them as words, full caps should be used. Typography, again, is based on human speech and reading patterns, and we should always keep this in mind. A good point is made by referring to laser and radar in this way, is that instead of small caps we refer to our way of pronunciation by setting them in lowercase, making them a word in themselves instead of an acronym.
Use ligatures as it is required by the font, don't force them, let them occur naturally. The use is ligatures is similar to helping an old lady get something off the top shelf, she is reaching, shes almost there, but can't quite reach it, just help them bridge the cap by giving her that can of soup.They are there to help out, to make space, to help the flow. But again, used with some care and concern.
The use of italics and sloped romans. Italics are actually meant to be cursive in nature, adding flow to the body of text, everything moves from left to right in a sort of liquid type flow, transitive as handwriting. While romans are upright, as this typeface I am using currently. Most italics created recently have been sloped romans and not true italics at all.
When using bold, leave the punctuation alone, its the words that need to be targeted not the comma. With italics, italicize the punctuation as well. With small caps, it doesn't really matter, because there is less disturbance.
There ended up being a set standard scare, measured in points : 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 16 18 24 36 48 60 72, these are the standard, some folks stick to using them some don't, but the successful ones are those who carefully choose their own scale without going overboard. The same goes with using tilting figures, full caps and small caps in the other circumstances.
With reference to numerals (figures) as we can see in this blog (tilting figures:12345678910 , these are stretched 'bell letters' instead of being text figures or hanging figures (which are the numerals that actually fall below the base line in a very attractive manner).. Some type faces are set without text figures, and are still useful, but the hanging numerals should be part of any typographer's vocabulary.
For abbreviations and acronyms in the midst of normal text, use spaced small caps. Since this blog's typographic abilities are lacking, an example of small caps with space hangs above the last paragraph. But again, using them everywhere is not a good rule to follow, these belong in a typographer's tool belt. Good practice is to use small caps with a type face with a small x-height, while with faces with a larger x-height it is good to use full caps (not always , but it must be considered)
Small caps, are not just shrunken full caps, they are designed for the type face, just like every other aspect (hopefully) There is another rule with small and full caps as well. For acronyms that we pronounce every letter, such as TV or HBO or GI tract, small caps should be used, which for acronyms like MASS or ASCII or FORTRAN where we pronounce them as words, full caps should be used. Typography, again, is based on human speech and reading patterns, and we should always keep this in mind. A good point is made by referring to laser and radar in this way, is that instead of small caps we refer to our way of pronunciation by setting them in lowercase, making them a word in themselves instead of an acronym.
Use ligatures as it is required by the font, don't force them, let them occur naturally. The use is ligatures is similar to helping an old lady get something off the top shelf, she is reaching, shes almost there, but can't quite reach it, just help them bridge the cap by giving her that can of soup.They are there to help out, to make space, to help the flow. But again, used with some care and concern.
The use of italics and sloped romans. Italics are actually meant to be cursive in nature, adding flow to the body of text, everything moves from left to right in a sort of liquid type flow, transitive as handwriting. While romans are upright, as this typeface I am using currently. Most italics created recently have been sloped romans and not true italics at all.
When using bold, leave the punctuation alone, its the words that need to be targeted not the comma. With italics, italicize the punctuation as well. With small caps, it doesn't really matter, because there is less disturbance.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
ETS Chapter II
The art of typography is simliar to that of weaving or a clothier. Enough so that originally a written page would be referred to as a textus which literally means cloth. Setting type is like making fabric, it needs to be even and smooth, no one wants any seams or runs in their cloth. To that end in typesetting the density of the text is referred to as its color and an evenness of color is what typographers strive to achieve. A dense section of type would be considered a darker color, as if its spaced out and not dense it would be lighter.
Horizontal spacing is measured in ems , one em is equal to the type size; 6 point type would be 6 em. An em is meant to be proportional. Typesetting machines tend to divide an em into units that art standard. A half an em is an en. Thinking of type areas as gray boxes is helpful. If one is using a bold type, to avoid the area becoming too dark the words or letters will need to be spaced out more, balancing the whitespace with the blacker text to achieve the medium gray again. The spacing between letters in words usually needs to be elastic, especially with justified text. Word spacing can be affected by what language you are writing in as well, latin uses actual characters for spacing instead of just an empty space.
Some Good Rules For Body Text:
When setting with narrow measures, ragged right text is usually a good solution to over hyphenation or sloppy spacing. Don't hit the spacebar twice after a period, once is enough. Though for initials, as little space between the periods as possible is good. We know we're reading initials we don't need to pronounce them as a word, so the period between them actually has as a good enough space, it makes for quicker reading. Though some all caps acronyms such as CIA should be in small caps and have a little increased space. Don't letterspace the l o w e r c a s e without a good reason, it causes some issues as illustrated a few words back. Letterspacing comes into play when the letters matter more than the word itself.
Kerning - altering the space between selected pairs of letters. Some capitals need their space or they can be misread. Though one has to be careful with kering because uneven letter space is very noticeable. Don't alter the widths or shapes of letter forms without a good reason. There are type designers are work very hard to make the letter work perfectly at its shape. Squashing and stretching the letter forms is considered a big no no unless for a good reason. Be careful with adding a lot of space between letters, it make break the word.
Leading - the space between lines (vertically). Type set as 11/11 is basically no space between the ascender of the bottom line and the descender of the top line, if not spaced correctly the letters may connect. Negative leading is good for short bursts of text, as in for advertising. Don't change the leading in the piece without good reason; like changing from body text to a quote block or a footnote. Once a leading is chosen for a body text in a whole book, it should stay that way and change only for other elements.
Indenting is important with paragraphs, whether it be a hanging indent(outdented paragraph) or not, but try to indent all paragraphs after the first with at least one en (which as we've learned is 1/2 an em so 6 point type indented with at least a 3 point indent). Ornaments can be used as an indent, but they're not really that cool. Be sure to add enough leading to help the block quote flow back into the actual body text.
Horizontal spacing is measured in ems , one em is equal to the type size; 6 point type would be 6 em. An em is meant to be proportional. Typesetting machines tend to divide an em into units that art standard. A half an em is an en. Thinking of type areas as gray boxes is helpful. If one is using a bold type, to avoid the area becoming too dark the words or letters will need to be spaced out more, balancing the whitespace with the blacker text to achieve the medium gray again. The spacing between letters in words usually needs to be elastic, especially with justified text. Word spacing can be affected by what language you are writing in as well, latin uses actual characters for spacing instead of just an empty space.
Some Good Rules For Body Text:
- Justified text should usually be a minimum of m/5 and a reasonable maximum of m/2 (1/2 of an em).
- 45-75 characters per line in a single column layout is usually satisfactory.
- For multiple column layout 40-50 characters is good.
- But as always if the type is actually set well, anything up to a 90 character line is reasonable.
- on a conventional page the length of the line (point-wise) is about 30 times the size of the type
- add extra leading for block quotes.
- The most common paragraph indent is one em.
- with hyphenating words leave two letters behind and at least 3 forward (fi-nally). Also consider the flow of the words (syllables)
- don't hyphenate a lot (3 lines or more in a row)
- don't begin a page with the last line of a paragraph, its just dumb.
- pages with more than 2 columns look best with columns of varying depths.
- REALLY don't end a page with a hyphen.. even dumber.
When setting with narrow measures, ragged right text is usually a good solution to over hyphenation or sloppy spacing. Don't hit the spacebar twice after a period, once is enough. Though for initials, as little space between the periods as possible is good. We know we're reading initials we don't need to pronounce them as a word, so the period between them actually has as a good enough space, it makes for quicker reading. Though some all caps acronyms such as CIA should be in small caps and have a little increased space. Don't letterspace the l o w e r c a s e without a good reason, it causes some issues as illustrated a few words back. Letterspacing comes into play when the letters matter more than the word itself.
Kerning - altering the space between selected pairs of letters. Some capitals need their space or they can be misread. Though one has to be careful with kering because uneven letter space is very noticeable. Don't alter the widths or shapes of letter forms without a good reason. There are type designers are work very hard to make the letter work perfectly at its shape. Squashing and stretching the letter forms is considered a big no no unless for a good reason. Be careful with adding a lot of space between letters, it make break the word.
Leading - the space between lines (vertically). Type set as 11/11 is basically no space between the ascender of the bottom line and the descender of the top line, if not spaced correctly the letters may connect. Negative leading is good for short bursts of text, as in for advertising. Don't change the leading in the piece without good reason; like changing from body text to a quote block or a footnote. Once a leading is chosen for a body text in a whole book, it should stay that way and change only for other elements.
Indenting is important with paragraphs, whether it be a hanging indent(outdented paragraph) or not, but try to indent all paragraphs after the first with at least one en (which as we've learned is 1/2 an em so 6 point type indented with at least a 3 point indent). Ornaments can be used as an indent, but they're not really that cool. Be sure to add enough leading to help the block quote flow back into the actual body text.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Elements of Typographic Style - Journal Chapter 1
Typography is a constant fight between drawing attention to be noticed and losing it to be read. The deal with typography is that it needs to stand the test of time. Not just a grungy type-face of the day, but one that is strong and timeless. In order to do this, the typography needs to be at least legible. This applies to all instances of set type; business cards, annual reports, magazines, billboards etc.
The typographer's job hasn't changed much over the few years. First they began just as copiers, to imitate script in order to make it easier to mass produce. Now with printing and scanning copying handwriting is just as easy. But typographers are still needed; they are musicians of type, using a variety of sounds and voices. A badly set book is like a horribly composed piece of music.
Type is a way to interpret writing and copy. In order to understand what type-treatment is needed one needs to actually read the text and understand it. With doing that you may actually do the copy justice. Also on top of what is written, be sure to draw visible relationships with other aspects of the document or piece, such as photos or quotes or tables or what ever else. I suppose its similar to working with html, each thing has a tag and should be set more or less the same way through the entire document, unless specifically changed for a good reason.
The devil's in the details.
recto(right hand)
verso(left hand)
The typographer's job hasn't changed much over the few years. First they began just as copiers, to imitate script in order to make it easier to mass produce. Now with printing and scanning copying handwriting is just as easy. But typographers are still needed; they are musicians of type, using a variety of sounds and voices. A badly set book is like a horribly composed piece of music.
Type is a way to interpret writing and copy. In order to understand what type-treatment is needed one needs to actually read the text and understand it. With doing that you may actually do the copy justice. Also on top of what is written, be sure to draw visible relationships with other aspects of the document or piece, such as photos or quotes or tables or what ever else. I suppose its similar to working with html, each thing has a tag and should be set more or less the same way through the entire document, unless specifically changed for a good reason.
The devil's in the details.
recto(right hand)
verso(left hand)
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