Typography

TYPOGRAPHY IS TO WRITING AS SOUNDTRACKS ARE TO MOVIES.

Design & Typography

Hierarchy
The most important part of the verbal content is given the most prominence. Depending on the vehicle, the verbal content receiving the most prominence could be a headline, title, compelling sentence, word, phrase, etc. Color & Size

Balance
Balance determines the visual distribution of type and how it will appear in relation to the other visual elements
Symmetrically Asymmetrically

Variety

variety
Trick to mixing typefaces is to make the difference look obvious and purposeful Using opposites typefaces that have different but complementary typeface characteristics

Typography
Letter and word forms Type functions as
Line Texture Shape

Type as Line

Type as Texture

Type as Shape

Typeface Families & Attributes

Blackletter
Roman

Script
Serif - Sans Serif - Square Serif MISCELLANEOUS

Blackletter
Black letter, also known as Gothic script or Gothic minuscule, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to 1500. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of faces is known as Fraktur. Black letter is sometimes called Old English,

Roman
"roman" type has two principal meanings, both stemming from the stylistic origin of text typefaces from inscriptional capitals used in ancient Rome: one of the major families of traditional typefaces as a synonym for serif or antiqua fonts.

Script
Script typefaces are based upon the varied and often fluid stroke created by handwriting. They are organized into highly regular formal types similar to cursive writing and looser, more casual scripts.

Serif
In typography, serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. A typeface that has serifs is called a serif typeface (or seriffed typeface). A typeface without serifs is called sans-serif, from the French sans, meaning without.

Square Serif
In typography, a slab serif (also called mechanistic, square serif or Egyptian) typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular (Rockwell), or rounded (Courier). Slab serif typefaces generally have no bracket (feature connecting the strokes to the serifs). Some consider slab serifs to be a subset of modern serif typefaces.

Sans Serif
In print, sans-serif fonts are more typically used for headlines than for body text. The conventional wisdom holds that serifs help guide the eye along the lines in large blocks of text. Sansserifs, however, have acquired considerable acceptance for body text in Europe.

Helvetica!

Typeface Attributes
Size Color Font Text Block size Justification White space

Size
Type is measured in points (1 point = .0138 inch) printed text blocks are between 9 and 12 points Display text appear from 14 points
Banner type headlines can be up to 72 points Combining upper and lower case flows better upper case is useful for short text

Color
Implies type color and background color black type over white background works best (other combinations are tiring to the eyes)

stark contrast is most desired

Font
Refers to all the letters and symbols within a specific typeface Attributes such as plain text, bold, italic are considered part of available fonts

Text Block Size

Text Block Size

2 columns are more readable than 1

Justification
Text is left, center, or right justified

Left is most common but used without variation is formal and rigid Right also called ragged is associated with an informal or modern style

White Space
Areas not filled with text or graphics Space between letters is called kerning variations in kerning can be a design factor giving a modern look The space between 2 columns is termed the alley The space between pages is called the gutter

Cultural Perspective
Pre-Gutenberg (before 1456)
Words and images were equal partners in communication

Gutenberg (1456-1760)
The influence of the printed word images as afterthoughts

Artistic (1891-1983)
Characterized by Art Nouveau decorative style and later artistic movements in the 20thcentury

Digital (1984-present
Characterized by technological tools and creation of typefaces based on computer software

Newspaper typography
Nameplate: Most newspapers are identified by their nameplates. When people look at a newspaper, the first thing they see is the nameplate. First used in England and then in America, the most popular nameplate is in Old English style.
Many newspapers today still have this style. Examples of newspapers that use this style include:

Newspaper typography
Text: The majority of all body text in newspapers is serif type, with most papers using one of four or five basic faces. Research has shown that it takes slightly longer to read sans serif type, and serif type is more visually pleasing to the eye as it has a horizontal flow.

Newspaper typography
Headlines: Headline type is the most dominant typographic element on the page. Headlines should be chosen to reflect the overall personality of the paper. Both serif and sans serif type are used for headlines. However, serif faces are seen to be more expressive and less impersonal (Aldrich-Ruenzel 79).
For the best legibility, headlines should have a tight leading to correspond to correct word-and letterspacing (Aldrich-Ruenzel 80). There should be a little white space on either side of a headline in order to give the page some breathing room.

Newspaper typography
Standard: Standard typography is used to announce regular features or daily columns. It aids readers by showing them where certain stories are as they glance through the paper. A good choice for standard typography would be a sans serif face to contrast with serif text. Sometimes standard typography is set apart with a different style (bold, italic, caps) or in reverse type (white letters on a dark background).

Historical Perspective
4 stages Drawing Writing Hot Type Production Cold Type Production

Drawings
Drawings represent 2 kinds of visual messages: Pictographs pictures that stand for objects Ideographs images that represent abstract ideas

Pictographs & Ideographs

Problems with iconic representation

African Petroglyphs

Writing
Sumerians Egyptians Chinese Phoenicians Greeks

Sumerians
Cuneiform = wedge shaped stylus pushed into wet clay tablets Required strict schooling from childhood on with 100s of characters to learn

Egyptians
Much like the Sumerians but used papyrus reeds instead of clay tablets Hieroglyphs (hierglyphics)
Script difficult to translate as it could read from right to left left to right top to bottom or bottom to top

2 types of hieroglyphics
Hieratic & Demotic
Hieratic is the most familiar used for official business and religious documents Demotic less illustrative and its characters were highly abstract and symbolic

Chinese
Original Chinese was never reduced to symbols it remained a written language comprising of more than 44,000 individual symbols for centuries.
Scribes who knew the language were highly respected possessed much political power because they controlled the information that became history

Chinese Pictographs
Pictographs known as logograms, are symbols that represent an entire word
None of the symbols represent the sounds of the language 210 B.C. the language was simplified to about 1,000 basic characters still used today Their pictorial calligraphic style is considered an art form

The Phoenicians
Phoenicians - greatest advance in history of communication the alphabet
While the Egyptians used 5,000 symbols the Phoenicians used only 22. The compact easily learned alphabet ended the political power of the scribes Most importantly more individuals could produce writings that a large audience could read

Phoenicians: one of the greatest advances in history the alphabet

The Greeks
They increase the Phoenician alphabet to 24 letters Their sense of symmetry promoted the idea that letters should be placed in an imaginary horizontal baseline achieving a sense of order Introduced the elements of uppercase and lowercase capitals were written in stone and lowercase were written in papyrus They were the first to recognize that alphabetic letters possessed both informational and aesthetic qualities

The Romans
Romans absorbed much of the Greek culture including the alphabet and added the letters W and much later the letter J and thus our modern day alphabet of 26 letters takes its final form