Lecture : TypograpHy

In the previous lecture:

• How are colours specified / created artificially?
• What effects do colour combinations have?
• What are appropriate uses for colours?

In this lecture:

	...the art of printing, particularly those branches of it concerned with the design, setting, and arrangement of type. Printing: the production of impressed copies from the inked surface either of an engraved block or metal plate, of a lithograph, or of movable type. Technology has changed, but typography remains a vital aspect of communication using text.
Printing Press. Engraving by Jost Amman, 1568.

Definitions, definitions...

Face / typeface / font: a set of characters including letters, punctuation marks, numbers and assorted textual symbols such as @#$%. Named because the blocks of movable type had a "face"... the front of the block with the type on it is the "type face".

Family: a group of typefaces sharing common features.

The two most common families of type:

The serifs are the little marks at the ends of the sweep of the lefthand S.
'Sans' is French for without, so it's no surprise that a Sans Serif font is a font without serifs!

Some Serif typefaces...

Serif fonts are frequently

• elegant,

• easy to read,

• suitable for body text (look at the text in most novels).

Serif fonts often have a formal quality about them. Compare these two sentences. Do they say the same thing?

• Oldstyle typefaces have serif's angled or curved in the manner of a pen and ink scribe's strokes. These fonts can look very elegant whilst maintaining readability.
  
  
  

• Modern typefaces have serifs that have been flattened into industrial / machine-like regularity.
  
  
  
  

• Slab Serif fonts have chunky serifs. When slab serifs are combined with heavy, bold strokes the font can be very 'in your face'. Compare the weight of Slab with Century and Bodoni! Which draws your eye the most?
  
  
  

Sans Serif fonts are:

• rounded and smooth,
  
  
• frequently used for headers,
  
  
• legible in short bursts of text,
  
  
• less readable than serif fonts in solid blocks of text.

Decorative typefaces like these

...but should be used sparingly as they are hard to read in large quantities.

Script fonts emulate handwriting. The characters follow into one another.

works poorly in body text but, like decorative fonts, script may work well in short sections, headers or on dance party & birthday invitations.

Monospaced faces such as Courier allow the same amount of horizontal space for each letter.

For example, count the x's below (Courier on the left, Helvetica on the right)

Monospaced characters line up in columns which is vital in many circumstances.

Type Form: the shape and direction of a typeface.

Type Weight

Roman text - standard / medium weight font.

Bold text - provides emphasis, adds weight to a page by thickening the character strokes.

Light text - subtle and gentle characters produced with slender strokes.

Condensed text - (compressed) less character width than Roman text of this style.

Expanded text - (extended) more character width than Roman text of this style.

(It is actually the letterforms which are altered in these types, not the spacing between letters.)

Italic text - slants fluidly to the right in the manner of handwriting.

Oblique text - slants rigidly to the right not in the manner of handwriting.

(The character's inclination might be the same, but the Sans Serif font looks regimental whilst the Serif font flows like handwriting.)

Font size is measured in points.

There are 72 points to an inch (that's 2.54 cm).

Size of text should indicate its importance relative to other page elements.

Headings should be large.

Footnotes should be small.

And body text should be just so. (Usually around 12pt)

Be consistent with all your font decisions, including size.

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But horizontal text appears more stable and is easier to read.

Small highlights of coloured text can be used to great effect.

But avoid making your pages difficult to read by inappropriate use of colour.

Kerning: space adjustment between particular letters of a font which otherwise appear too distant or too close to one another.

E.g. Note the strange gaps between uppercase 'T' and lowercase 'o', uppercase 'Y' and lower case 'o', uppercase 'I' and lowercase 'n'. Also note the irregular gaps between the lowercase 'w' and the 'o' and 'a' on either side.

Spacing: horizontal space between all letters of a font.

Anti-aliasing smooths the jaggies around large characters.

But it can make small characters blurry and illegible...

This will depend on the family from which they spring, their orientation, position, relative size and weight and a host of other characteristics, all of which need to be understood to enable the message contributed by the fonts to meet the goals of the production within which they appear.