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Typesetting Manual and Specimen

Typesetting Manual and Specimen

3 Introduction 7 Measurement of Type 17 Family Composition 21 Language Support 23 , and Features 33 Expansion of the Typesetting Manual and Specimen

Gramatika Typesetting Manual and Specimen Written and Designed by Roman Gornitsky Gramatika was initially developed as a for the visual identity of V-A-C Foundation (Moscow/Venice) in close collaboration with Experimental Jetset and the V-A-C Foundation design team. The author would like to thank Marieke, Erwin, Danny, Lyosha and all the others involved in the development process.

This is an online version of the manual. You can order a printed version at shop.temporarystate.net/gramatika-manual Gramatika is available for purchase at .temporarystate.net

Published by The Temporary State 2020

ISBN 978-3-00-067256-9 Introduction

Font Size: 75 mm Gramatika Regular Introduction

Kees Broos Design: Total Design

Breda, 1983

4 Size: 30 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 24 mm Introduction

will sooner or later (and whether The phone book, which he consults, he realizes it or not) encounter one is typographically arranged by of the many visual products of the Total Design, just as the text Amsterdam design office Total and illustrations of his Spectrum Design (TD). Encyclopedia. On his way to the Amro Bank, While visiting museums and which has started the renewal exhibitions, he certainly ran into of its interiors according to TD the work of Total Design more than design. Wandering past the blue- once. While escaping the wet green-red banners fluttering along Dutch winter to warmer regions, the facade of the local Property TD routing systems at Schiphol Development Foundation and past Airport make sure that he reaches the bright display windows of his plane quickly and easily. Randstad employment agency. A red van of Rapid Post passes him, followed by trucks of Boskalis and Calpam. In the cultural centre, posters of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Museum Boymans Rotterdam are displayed. At the post office his eyes dwell upon the new red reception desk. He has just seen a whole series of letters, symbols, colours and spatial designs, which all originate from Total Design. Even if he was to stay at home the whole day, chances are that a mailman delivers a letter carrying a stamp designed by a TD associate.

Font Size: 6 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 6 mm 5 Introduction

Industry Standard Throughout the 1960s and 70s the Dutch To suggest that the way we use design studio Total Design produced a truly is an easy way out typographically immense amount of work. As described is ridiculous. We spend an enormous before, their design was omnipresent and their amount of time spacing, , lining client list seemingly endless. It will not be and positioning type. The fact that we use an understatement to say that the image of the only a small variety of typefaces demands entire country at that time was shaped by just a certain discipline, a skillful precision, one studio. Such scale comes with an obvious a focus on the finer details. It’s certainly downtrade: only the key items and concepts not that a-different-typeface-for-every- could be worked through by the studio’s occasion attitude. Now, that would be world-renown partners (Wim Crouwel, Benno an easy way out. Wissing, Friso Kramer, Ben Bos, etc.), the rest of Experimental Jetset, the work had to be delegated to an army of 2003 common employees. At its peak in the end of the sixties, the office of Total Design employed Lets call it the “Helvetica Paradox”: 45 “permanent associates” — not including the The mechanistic image of Modernism requires countless interns and freelancers. When the Helvetica to be set extremely tight — which is production reaches such scale, it’s not only possible through the most unmechanistic possible anymore to strive for artistic manual labor of a skillful typesetter. excellence in each produced piece, but rather the issue of quality control becomes the main focus. An employee is not supposed to create a masterpiece, an employee is supposed to not make a mistake. To ensure the quality of graphic production, numerous manuals and guidelines were conceived — the industrial production of graphics required the industrial standardization: At the start of our activities, Friso, Wim and had realized very quickly, that in dealing with large projects, a number of things had to be standardized so that the arrangement of information could be more easily programmed, and more time would become available for handling intrinsic problems. If there were to be variations within the final products, we preferably searched for variations within a modular system, so that mutual relationships, interconnections, clustering and industrial production wouldn’t demand follow-up care. This principle was applicable to architecture, industrial design and graphic design. That’s the history of the birth of the grid! A cuckoo in the nest? Benno Wissing, 1983

Helvetica was an essential element at the core of this system of “total” unity of style. Celebrated throughout the world by the International Style designers as a tool to orchestrate the entire design process, Helvetica does surprisingly little to streamline the actual typesetting process. On the contrary, since the Modernist requires it to be set as tightly as possible, it usually requires meticulous and tedious arrangement of every letter by hand:

6 Measurement of Type

Font Size: 75 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 60 mm HOÁpx Hx Hx Hx centimeters, ciceros Technical 8 0.42 mm. anything between 0.315 and you thepoint canassign to be something completely different — or ifyour ideaof a is “Traditional” stands for “American”) points (roughly 0.3515 mm; (roughly 0.3527 mm), “Traditional” you want to usePostScript points You canchoose, whether 1 measurement units inyour to points Working inInDesign,you canset the be introduced! a constant lingeringpain.The standard hasto For any truemodernist, suchenvironment is therefore changeswithevery new task). is decidedsolelyby what “feels right” (and unmeasurable ethereal substance, whosesize you can’t build arational grid outof some any universal typographic system impossible: grid.It also rendersthe same thecreation of you can’t puttwo different typefaces on completely incompatible witheach other: won’t feature asinglematching value (fig. 2). Often even thefonts by publisher the same metrics whenever anew typeface iscreated. designer’sthe type to duty reinvent allthe in any other typeface. Infact, itseemsto be random anddonot relate to any measurements the measurements seemto becompletely declared 30mmsize inany way (fig. 1). All a single measurement, that relates to the Roman set in30mmsize, you won’t find Because if you lookat, for example, TimesNew the fact that thefont size is,essentially, a lie. measurement system isdesignedto conceal is some sortof aconspiracy: an obscure in understandable metric units? it I guess, system andwhy can’t theirsize beexpressed Why dofonts require theirown measurement measured inpoints regardless of your settings. won’t size apply—type willalways be is, however, onearea to whichthese settings introduce your own measurement units. There Font Size picas All of thismakes moderndigital 2 , ,inchesdecimal,millimeters, 3 , agates 6.5 mm. will have theheight of exactly opposite , ifset in10mmsize, letter “R”from theexample onthe of physical measurements. Sothe a coordinate planebecome 10mm in10mm,1000unitstype of that ifyou, for example, set the Usually itequals1000, whichmeans called UPM(Units perEm)isused. real world values, a parameter these abstract coordinates into the numbers (see p. 9). To convert handle isrepresented by apairof plane: each nodeandeach curve of Bézier curves onacoordinate typeface isdescribed asa series Every of adigital history of InDesign. ever made useof itin theentire an . I’mnot sure ifanyone has A bizzare measure of 1/14th of 4 equals 12.788 points. Therefore, inInDesign1 Didot points, not PostScript points. One cicero alsoequals12 points. 3 One picaequals12points. 2 4 , pixels 5 , oreven Measurement 1 , challenge your calculusskillsalot). accordingly (unless you want to their innermeasurements fonts have 1000UPMandconvert a good reason to that assume all of roughly 6.6211 mm.There is hastheheight therefore theletter “R”in10mm and thecapsheight of 1356, Times New Roman has2048 UPM to say the least. point. Arather liberal assumption, One pixel equalsonePostScript 5 of Type

26.32 32.74 mm mm

19.86 26.27 mm mm

13.42 19.83 mm mm

Fig. 1 Times New Roman 30 mm

18.95 19.99 19.07 mm mm mm 13.93 14.01 13.92 mm mm mm

Fig. 2 Microsoft 30 mm Microsoft Cambria 30 mm Microsoft Candara 30 mm Measurement of Type

Font Size: 275 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: ----- 9 Technical Note 10 actually set. can findout,how is thetype the test witharuler, sample one specimens. Onlymeasuring mention thelineheight intheir that alot of foundries don’t even This fact isconsidered soobvious, 1 to lookgoodwithoutleading a rebellious act of radical lazyness. that must have beeneitherapure accident or decimal. ButifIever didset in12onpt, type I’m not theonlyonehere to get to thesecond using values suchas9.95 on12pt, andI’msure own typographic practice I canremember anything between 120%and180%. From my Online you canfindstyle guidesrecommending 120%, anditsets the12pt ona 14.4 type pt line. The default value of “Auto” inInDesignis (type.today), 12on16pt (Brownfox) andsoon. find 12on14points (Colophon), 12on15.5 pt 12 point ona12point type lineheight. You will themselves, you won’t text findsample set in specimen provided by thefoundries cannot befurtherfrom truth.Ifyou lookat the matching thefont size. Unfortunately, that looks goodwhenthetext isset onalineheight values designedto ensure that thetypeface random metrics are, infact, carefully calculated One might that assume alltheseseemingly measurement system whatsoever. there isnologicinthemoderntypographic like 9.75 on12pt, itcanbesafely concluded: set insizes916 x-height and1356caps-height, typefaces withsomething like 2048 UPM, . So, sincewe regularly encounter to into mold allthismess comprehensible bother — itis,after all,thetypographer’s job Or maybe hejust doesn’t care. Because why there are simplynolinesabove andbelow. issetthe type lineof inoneendless text, and line height. Maybe designer’s intype mind moretype often on140% rather thanjust 100% typography it’s hard to explain why we set the understandable, butintheworld of digital leading intheworld of metal typesetting was Line Height Modern digital typefaces are not designed (fig. 3). the even inlowercase height —thediacritics willoverlap topossible set itona 100%line and , sooften it’s not even has alot of ascenders, decenders usually set rather tight, whileSlovak no ascenders ordecenders, soitis For example, Russian hasalmost drastically different lineheights. different languages require It alsohasto bementioned that 1 . Theexistence of Measurement of Type

Russian Alphabet Slovak Alphabet Times New Roman, Times New Roman, 100% line height 100% line height

Fig. 3 Measurement of Type

210 mm

180 mm While it is obvious that different typefaces cannot have all of their metrics the same — some have ascenders longer than the others and the uppercase-to-lower­case ratio can also vary greatly — 150 mm

120 mm it is entirely possible to introduce at least one measurement that will be the same across all the fonts. As the most of our texts are written in lowercase, 90 mm

60 mm it would make sense to pick the x-height as such a universal value, fixing it at 500 units — exactly half of the font size.

30 mm

0 mm

Font Size: 60 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 60 mm 11 12 diacritics (pp. 15-16). overlap, butwatch outfor theuppercase settings theascenders anddescenders won’t FontSize =1.25 ×LineHeight). Withthese calculate thefont size basedonthelineheight, font size isrecommended (or, ifyou needto For such casesthelineheight of 80% of the be not tight enough for somepurposes. be set asthedefault (see pp. 13-14). no overlaps andthe100% lineheight canfinally packed tightly to ensure that there willbe height. Andfinally, the uppercase diacritics are uppercase height matches the for theModernist eye. to Needless say, the (fig. 4), Gramatika keeps themalllevel —a joy shorter than“h”, and“ř”alignswithneither While inmost other typefaces “t”isusually for different lineheights indifferent languages. more pronounced andnegate thedemand to make theascenderanddecenderlevels made asshortpossible, whichalsoallowed ascenders anddescenders of Gramatika were ensues). Inorder to mitigate thisissue, the with kerning, tracking andword spacing (and whenever thishappens,thetribaldance to overlap thedescenders of thelineabove to constantly watch outfor theascenders not have to bearranged carefully, sinceoneneeds if any. Thesetight typographic compositions typography, are often set withnegative leading, especiallyindisplay Modernist sans-serifs, of Gramatika Font Dimensions This 100%lineheight, whilesafe, might Measurement of Type

Linotype Helvetica Gramatika

Fig. 4 0 500 650 775 -150 0 (1000) 500 650 Units Font Size: 125 mm Measurement of Type Gramatika Regular Line Height: 125 mm 13 0 50 65 77.5 -15 0 (100) 50 65 % of Font Size 14 0 500 650 775 -150 0 (1000) 500 650 Units Font Size: 125 mm Measurement of Type Gramatika Regular Line Height: 125 mm

0 50 65 77.5 -15 0 (100) 50 65 % of Font Size 0 500 -150 (650) 0 (800) 500 650 Units Font Size: 125 mm Measurement of Type Gramatika Regular Line Height: 100 mm 15 0 50 -15 (65) 0 (80) 50 65 % of Font Size 16 0 500 -150 (650) -25 (775) 0 (800) 500 650 Units Font Size: 125 mm Measurement of Type Gramatika Regular Line Height: 100 mm

0 50 -15 (65) -2.5 (77.5) 0 (80) 50 65 % of Font Size Family Composition

Font Size: 75 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 60 mm Family Composition

Two Italics The type family currently consists of six styles: regular, two variations of regular “italic” styles, bold and two bold “italics”. The first of the two “italic” styles is the usual for Modernist sans-serifs Slanted — it doesn’t have any special “true italic” lettershapes, but rather features the slanted variations of the upright characters. The second type of “italic” presents an alternative approach to constructing the incline — the upright characters are cut horizontally into pieces and shifted along the x-axis (therefore the name, “Shifted”), which creates an optical illusion of a slant. All “italic” styles share the metrics with their upright counterparts, so the text set, for example, in Bold will occupy exactly the same amount of as Bold Shifted or Bold Slanted. Finally, it should be mentioned, that all the symbol characters (pp. 36-47) are not affected by neither slant, nor shift, nor boldness.

18 0 500 650 0 230 500 650 0 295 355 500 650 Units 14° Font Size: 75 mm Family Composition Gramatika Regular, and Slanted Shifted Line Height: 75 mm 19 0 50 65 0 23 50 65 0 29.5 35.5 50 65 % of Font Size 20 o 500 650 0 230 500 650 0 275 375 500 650 Units 14° Font Size: 75 mm Family Composition and Bold Slanted Gramatika Bold, Bold Shifted Line Height: 75 mm

0 50 65 0 23 50 65 0 27.5 37.5 50 65 % of Font Size Language Support

Font Size: 75 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 60 mm Uzbek Ukranian U Turkmen r a Tat Tajik T Serbian S Russian R Mongolian Moldovan Mari Macedonian M Kyrgyz Komi-Permyak Kazakh Kalmyk K Dungan D Chuvash Ch Buryat Bulgarian Bosnian Belarussian Bashkir B Azerbaijani A in Supported Languages 22 Script Language Support Turkish T Swedish Spanish Slovenian Slovak S Romanian R Portuguese Polish P Norwegian N Lithuanian Latvian Italian Irish Indonesian Icelandic I Hungarian H German G French Finnish Filipino F Estonian English E Dutch Danish D Czech Croatian Catalan C Basque B Albanian A in Script Supported Languages

U+04D0 U+04D1 U+0102 U+0103 Cyrillic Capital Letter A With Cyrillic Small Letter A With Breve Latin Capital Letter A With Breve Latin Small Letter A With Breve Hyphens, Dashes and Features

Font Size: 75 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 60 mm Transhuman Typography 24 rulebook to be thrown away. a new set of rules anddemandsyour previous implemented. Soevery new typeface offers of thesefeatures shouldbewritten and though, there isnoreal about how unity most ordinals andproper . Unfortunately They give you access to smallcaps,“true” layout withswashes andcontextual alternates. is settype inallcaps.They canspice upyour . They add extra spacing whenthe convert “fi”letter combination into anice employed intheolddays. They kern. They duties for whichhumancompositors were are OpenType “features”, outthe whichcarry Even insidethefont filesthemselves there enhancement” deployed onalllevels already. reign chaos. layouts, despite themonkey’s best efforts to with a keyboard willspitoutTschichold-worthy and themachine watching over themonkey typography. We just needmore scripts, but the automation willsave usfrom bad all by themselves. Theusercan’t betrusted, manuals andproper quotation marks appear additional spacing according to thefinest style and clickable. Lists receive proper indents and Anything that looks like a weblink ismade blue by spaces, are converted into emdashes. are capitalized. Hyphens,whensurrounded The beginningsofwhile hetypes. sentences an army of scripts watches over himcarefully is anidiot andcan’t betrusted. Therefore rarity nowadays. documenta well-typed isanobject of great things outthemselves —nowonder that alone inthetypographic to wilderness figure the users of Microsoft are usuallyleft times would often undergo extensive training, And whiletheprofessional typists of analog ofpossibilities are trulyamaze. spatial organization of thepage), the (with only linebreaks andtabulations for the of , s pera tz andunderline Compared to thetypewriter’s humblerepertoir legends... and for thecreative ones:WordArt. images withcaptions, piecharts with Drop caps? Tables, footnotes, , height... Full justification of flushleft? Indents? typeface, choosethefont size, adjust theline a myriad of designdecisions:choosethe unprepared user. Suddently, hehasto make toolbox onthehead of a(usually) completely Microsoft Word dumpstheentire typographic different story. Even a“basic” program suchas a typo. Computers, though,are awhole on atypewriter —onlyagrammar mistake or It’s to impossible make adesignmistake There are alot of scripts for “typography But blametheuser!We allknow: theuser Hyphens, Dashes and Features sans-? simplification onlysuitable for amodernist a nuisance. Afterall, isn’t sucha mechanistic one canfindita charmingfeature, rather than a bit upskewed inthe lowercase, buthopefully caps, whichdoesmake thehyphen appear is positioned around thevertical middleof the set anymore. Allthepunctuation that there isnoneedfor a separate uppercase Gramatika’s extremely low caps height is Vertical Alignment to draw to under aninsurmountable amount of characters perfection, you quicklyfindyourself buried ≈, ≠,≡,etc.? Striving for theneatly organized versions of theentire math symbols set: ÷,×,=, two versions of “+”,doesthat meantwo What about“~”?“+”?Andifwe decideto make have two options orisitalways “uppercase”? receive an uppercase alternate. Butshould“·” are the usualfirst candidates to answer. ,dashes, and ones shouldnot isnot aneasy question to should have uppercase variations andwhich feature isactivated. Whichpunctuation marks punctuation whenever OpenType “case” substitutes thedefault “lowercase” set of “uppercase” punctuation isdrawn, which To solve thisproblem, often anentire separate around thekneelevel of uppercase (fig. 5). “lowercase” hyphen usuallyappears dangling be too highfor thelowercase, andthe be positioned?The “uppercase” hyphen would alignment. How highorlow shouldthehyphen totrying address, of istheissue vertical One of that theissues OpenType features are start to envy theChinese. exponentially andsoonenoughyou as well? The kerning table grows should bekerned withlowercase Maybe the uppercase punctuation about the brackets inmixed case? T-shirts What andV-shapes. set? Obviously not, since we have with thelower should thecapitals have nokerning And thencomesthekerning: 1 both thescripts insidethefonts are useless despite themost elaborate OT features. For amateurs willalways findaway to up mess punctuation whenever andhow they want it, will write theirown GREPrulesto liftthe skill of thetypographer. Skilledtypographers inevitable. Here’s aradical proposal: trust the The list of substitutes grows, theerrors are question aswell... mark+emdash+uppercase” be scripted. And,probably, “uppercase+ shouldalso emdash+whitespace+uppercase” the combination “uppercase+whitespace+ one. Butthenyou quicklyrealize that use anuppercase hyphen instead of a regular by anuppercase character -–yes then character -– yes andisfollowed and it ispreceded by an uppercase AutoCorrect: ifthere isa hyphen -–yes  substitutes to appearautomatically, asortof general public, itistempting to force the minority. To overcome thisreluctance from the vertical alignment features. a small My guess: percentage of peopleare actually usingthe Thankfully, another advantage of It would beinteresting to findoutwhat 1 . case-punctuation ­case-punctuation marks anymore. know anything aboutthequotation automatically, there isnoneedto right quotation marks for you skills — ifthemachine picks the to theextinction of typographic the abundanceof scripts may lead Furthermore, itiswell that possible 2 2 .

Fig. 5 Pro with the default hyphens (left) and with activated “case” feature (right) 0 325 650 0 325 650 0 325 650 Units Font Size: 75 mm Hyphens, Dashes and Features Gramatika Regular Line Height: 75 mm 25 0 32.5 65 0 32.5 65 0 32.5 65 % of Font Size from adash: tasteful hyphen shouldalsolookdifferently rewrite your manual.Furthermore, typing atruly Every new typeface you buydemandsyou to More onHyphens 26 and “ScrollLock” buttons, thelack of almost entirely “Break” useless So, consideringalsothepresence the divisionbutton renders a . instead of a signand the numpad isboundto anasterisk manner, themultiplication key on character — thehyphen. Inasimilar are mapped to thesame and the minus,butboth of them have keys for both thehyphen Actually, keyboards thefull-sized 1 (or rather, nodesire) to fitallthesedashes Unfortunately, ourkeyboards have noroom than to putahyphen where thedashbelongs. “proper” typesetting: there’s nogreater sin things a typography student learnsaboutthe and hyphens. It is,afterall, oneof thevery first entirely dedicated to theproper useof dashes I’m sure that somewhere there is athickbook 1992 Robert Bringhurst, question — why somany dashes? double daggers? And—anoutrageous books? Why allthesemanicules,fleurons and fonts are designedto typeset 18th century typesetting manuals? Why ourmoderndigital should follow therulesof centuries-old Overall itisnot entirely clear, why themachine slightly. emdash AndArialhasa zero-space sticks outside thecharacter box ever so Roman, ontheopposite, hastheemdashthat don’t needadditional spacing. TimesNew space around anemdash,sopresumably you more andmore intricate: Fedra hassome to offer theirown solutions,makingtheissue mistake!” Meanwhile, designers type are trying way, thanagrammar theendashisnoless used instead.” —“No!Anemdashistheonly New Roman istoo long,anendashshouldbe a thinspace instead!”. “An emdashinTimes space!” — “No, ahairspace would not suffice, used around an emdash,not aregular the dashesfor hours: “A hairspace shouldbe a numpad, salvation isn’t easy to obtain. so ifyou happento beonWindows without sometimes been thechoiceof the refugees from afont of Helvetica. Thishas blunt, thick, andperfectly level, like Most hyphens currently offered are short, justified asthemainreason. of space canhardly be inlength. an (M/3) ,whichisonethird ofa three-to-em numeral), emdash,and athree-quarter dash (equal to thewidth of astandard the endash.Andsomeincludeafigure may not lengthandweight bethesame as include a sign,whichmay or is oneem(two ens) wide. Many fonts also M/2) in width—andtheemdashwhich dash —whichisoneen(halfof anem, hyphen andtwo sizes of longdash:theen includes at least three. Theseare the . Refined typographers canargue about The Elements of Typographic Style, a normalfont of roman oritalic type typing severaltyping emdashesinarow. you can make a horizontal barby has, arguably, another function: A zero- ornegative-space emdash 2 Hyphens, Dashes and Features 1 , 2 . 1984 The T Donald Knuth, implemented since 1980s: a single ligature? In fact, in T this substitution theway fandimerge into for “—”,why don’t we just script considering that “- -”isalready awidespread But wait, why isthat? Inourage of automation, 1992 Robert Bringhurst hyphens don’t make anemdash: stretching itto 200%.Andmost certainly two make an emdashoutof ahyphen by, say, hyphen isalways spaced. Therefore, you can’t have zero oreven negative spacing, the dashes —itisbolder. Andwhilethedashescan Even inArialthehyphen isdifferent from the 1992 Robert Bringhurst, mode($-$). for ahyphen aminussign,type in three type hyphens (- - -);for anem-dash, two type hyphens (- -);for anen-dash, for hyphen, ahyphen type (-); aesthetic of Victorian typography. it belongs to thepadded andcorseted oversized space between sentences, for usewiththebest text faces. Like the style books, buttheemdashistoo long standard, still prescribed inmany editorial The emdashisnineteenth-century depending oncontext orpersonal style. em,orendash, an em dash,three-quarter a typographer. Atypographer willuse wasthe type set by atypist, not a typeset document are asure signthat used for alongdash.Doublehyphens in In typescript, adoublehyphen (- -) isoften a bland, anonymous form. copies of theface have substituted inclined at 7°from thehorizontal; later had asubtly tapered hyphen original Linotype of issue W.A. Dwiggins’s machine composition in1929. Andthe when theface was adapted for but Monotype replaced itwithalevel Rogers, had a hyphen inclinedat 48°, Foundry Centaur, designedby Bruce was commercially in1954. issued an example, was omitted when theface 1953 for histypeface Aldus,as hyphen designedby HermannZapf in designer, sometimes not. Thedouble The Elements of Typographic Style, The Elements of Typographic Style, E Xbook, E X thisfeature is ------in arow merge, therefore itcanbeusedas with nospacing. That will make two hyphens inclined, that is). Or, how aboutthat: ahyphen the “- -”pair(ifyour hyphen isnot tastefully any other scripts to dothat: you canjust kern Actually, you don’t even needOT features or an emememdash... an emdash a hyphen

Fig. 6 Times New Roman, Fedra and Arial 22.5 mm Hyphens, Dashes and Features

Hyphen 400 units

Endash Hyphen Hyphen Endash 600 units 400 units 400 units 600 units

Endash Hyphen Emdash 600 units 400 units 800 units

Emdash Hyphen Hyphen 800 units 400 units 400 units

Font Size: 56.25 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 45 mm 27 28 (p. 29), whileothers are not (fig. 7). punctuation marks andsymbols are systematic system israther inconsistent —someof the So intheend,Gramatika’s modularpunctuation serve any particularpurpose? Probably, not. in modularampersand? Willmodularguillemets made to fitthissystem? Isthere any advantage all combinable witheach other: __‿‿‿¯¯⁀⁀⁀. the ¯overscore, ⁀ tieand‿undertie, also widthas the endash.Sameshouldbe same Punctuation An (Almost) Modular f o and combined witheach other into allsorts ⁂ . That way they canbearranged all sorts of them:top, bottom, ⁑doubleand there shouldalsobesmallersized , though, to buildanasterism outof it.Somaybe 600 units wide aswell. Suchasterisk istoo big, of amultiplication sign,maybe itshouldbe And sinceanasterisk isoften usedinstead also be 600 units wide(+, ÷,×,=,≠,≈,etc.). the rest of themath symbols shouldprobably , ,, etc. widthastheperiod.Andsoshould the same the space. , naturally, shouldhave to have widthas aperiodwiththesame It might alsobeat somepoint convenient is three spaces andemdash—four spaces. so that a hyphen istwo spaces wide, endash to have thespace character 200units wide, It might eventually prove useful, for example, punctuation set inasimilarlymodularway. to devise thewidthsof therest of the (400→600→800 units wide) make ittempting The systematic widthsof thethree dashes : s n o i t a l l e t s n o c But shouldthecurrency symbols bealso An should,naturally, bethe Since anendashalsoserves asaminus,        .            Hyphens, Dashes and Features (p. 30). just as goodany speciallydrawn characters the correct settings, type theresults willbe is noneedinthem—ifyou carefully apply specially designedordinals orfractions. There superscript orsubscript, neitherthere are any There are nospecialcharacters drawn for and Fractions Superscripts, Subscripts, Ordinals, and Underlines, Strikethroughs context, diacritics or aesthethics (p. 31). settings dependingonthe want to choosedifferent underlineor or ignore italtogether. Furthermore, you might and browsers eitherread this data incorrectly mostposition andthickness, layout programs information aboutthepreferred underline While thefont filesalready contain allthe

Fig. 7 Non-modular punctuation marks and symbols Hyphens, Dashes and Features 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 400 400 400 400 400 800 800 800 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 600 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 1000 1000 1000

Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 30 mm 29 Hyphens, Dashes and Features

Superscript scale 50% shift up by 0.4 × FontSize

Midscript scale 50% baseline shift up by 0.175 × FontSize

Fraction Top Sign scale 50% scale 50% baseline shift up by baseline shift up by 0.325 × FontSize 0.175 × FontSize

Fraction Bottom scale 50% no baseline shift

Subscript A (no uppercase diacritics) scale 50% baseline shift down by 0.075 × FontSize

Subscript B (in case of uppercase diacritics) scale 50% baseline shift down by 0.15 × FontSize

30 Font Size: 40 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 40 mm Hyphens, Dashes and Features

Overline A (avoiding uppercase diacritics) Thickness 0.06 × FontSize Line Center at 0.85 × FontSize

Underline Thickness 0.06 × FontSize Line Center at -0.12 × FontSize

Overline B (no uppercase diacritics) Thickness 0.06 × FontSize Line Center at 0.75 × FontSize

Strikethrough A (overlaps the dashes) Thickness Strikethrough B 0.06 × FontSize (sits below the dashes) Line Center at Thickness 0.325 × FontSize 0.06 × FontSize Line Center at 0.23 × FontSize

Low Underline (avoiding the descenders) Thickness 0.06 × FontSize Line Center at -0.25 × FontSize

Font Size: 40 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 40 mm 31 Hyphens, Dashes and Features

Figures OpenType Features Considering the modular approach towards There are only two OpenType features in The caps are already small enough. the punctuation, one might expect to find Gramatika: tabular figures in Gramatika. While it is true that the tabular figures would be the preferred kern kerns; option, their implementation comes into conflict zero converts the regular zero (0) with the overall aesthetics of the typeface. into a dotted one (). Tabular figures would unavoidably have irregular and gappy spacing, which contradicts the tight perfect fit of the rest of the typeface. In the end the choice is made in favor of aesthetics, so Gramatika may be not the most convenient font to typeset financial reports.

32 Expansion of the Alphabet

Font Size: 75 mm Gramatika Regular Line Height: 60 mm Expansion of the Alphabet

The Interface

A banal statement: in the digital age the range In fact, reference to the may depending on the context. There doesn’t seem of symbols that we use in our daily life extends not be a good way to describe a character set to be much confusion around it or a need to far beyond mere alphabet and punctuation. at all. First of all, modern OpenType fonts distinguish “the searching lens” from “the We can just as well “read”: a picture of a sheet already have a lot of characters, that are zooming lens”. So why can we not use more of paper with a folded top right corner, not mapped to the Unicode — the majority of abstract, universal, multi-purpose symbols, a speech bubble with three blinking dots inside, ligatures, swashes, contextual alternates, then? Such context-dependent use is not only all sorts of human silhouettes, hearts, stars, small caps, slashed zero, digit variations, etc. more efficient (covering more purposes with thumbs up and down, smiling and frowning are not encoded. Second, and most important, less characters, hopefully shrinking the faces, floppy disks, shopping carts, trash bins... from the designer’s perspective the choice of character set to somewhat comprehensible Search, share, fullscreen, exit fullscreen, symbols in Unicode is rather questionable. size), but, I dare to say, is more poetic as well. play, pause, shuffle, repeat, new window, There is a heart (U+2665), a heart outline The composition of Gramatika’s character close window, battery full, battery empty — (U+2661), a heart with an arrow (U+1F498), set, due to the lack of any acknowledged all these concepts can be communicated a heart with a ribbon (U+1F49D), a heart standard, relies solely on the intuition of its without a single written word. Despite usually on an envelope (U+1F48C), a sparkling heart designer. It does not manifest any new being used in typographic composition, these (U+1F496), a growing heart (U+1F497), standard, but invites the discussion about such symbols are never included in the character a beating heart (U+1F493), two hearts standard: which new symbols do we really sets of retail typefaces, so hundreds of icons (U+1F495), revolving hearts (U+1F49E), need and which ones can we abandon? have to be drawn and redrawn for every new heart decoration (U+1F49F), heart exclamation The symbols, icons and pictograms of website and for every new application. (U+2763), broken heart (U+1F494), green Gramatika acknowledge the established Unsurprisingly so, as just a couple of heart (U+1F49A), yellow heart (U+1F49B), conventions and avoid unnecessary decades ago our fonts were limited to a mere blue heart (U+1F499), orange heart (U+1F9E1)... reinventions (so yes, still a recognizable 256 characters (so, if you wanted to set the but there is still no symbol for “share” icon?! floppy disk for “save”, no radical simplifications), text in, for example, Czech and Spanish, you A lot of projects nowadays are trying but try to depict any pictorial symbol would have to buy two different fonts). There to bridge this gap between typography and in the most simple and abstract way possible was simply no space for anything else except pictography. For example, The Noun Project (so, a magnifying lens is just a circle with the basic alphabet and punctuation. The offers a selection of over 3 million monochrome, a diagonal line, no fancy handle, no flare), while transition from 8-bit codepages to Unicode reasonably well-drawn, and seemingly also introducing some ambiguous symbols, (with the adoption of OpenType format) was Helvetica-compatible icons: “From icons which don’t directly mean anything and a great improvement, which finally allowed the for Artificial Intelligence, to UI elements therefore can be assigned to a wider spectrum fonts to expand beyond the needs of basic and Beyoncé, we’ve got you covered.” But of concepts (for example: , ✳, , ). . But this liberation came not without the abundance is exactly the problem here: All pictographic symbols have the width an issue itself, its biggest problem being its the spirit of Modernism demands finding of 1000 units (so, the width equals the font size) biggest advantage: as declared in the Unicode universal solutions, not producing a myriad of and are designed for the 100% line height Stability Policy, “once bespoke fixes for any possible case. The thing typesetting. a character is encoded, it will not be moved or that makes all these icon lists unattractively removed.” Therefore U+2707 will always stand dull and seemingly endless (and, consequently, for “”, a symbol for the long abandoned tape inconceivable for any project) drive. And we will always have the luxury of is the total lack of abstraction. Icon design choice between a regular snowman (U+2603), nowadays is most painfully pictorial, declaring a snowman without snow (U+26C4), and that the only way to properly describe the act a black snowman (U+26C7). Thousands of new of adding an item to the virtual “shopping cart” characters get added every year1 to this is a picture of a hand, holding a box, putting that endless field of aubergines, soccer balls and said box into a literal shopping cart with wheels. smiling faces — no type designer would be able Anything less explanatory will confuse the user. to keep up with such a rapid expansion, even Any true modernist would retort: less is more! if he dedicates his entire life to making just one In a well-designed context a simple downward typeface. Unicode is too big for any typeface arrow would suffice. Also, the progress always to cover2, while the old 8-bit codepages are goes from a picture of a bull’s head towards too small and no modern typeface is able to the abstraction of a letter “A”: since the fit into Win-1252 anymore. Currently, there is majority of users nowadays might not even no good way to describe a character set of know what a floppy disk is,  becomes nothing a particular font. There is no easy way to say, but a “save icon”, a symbol in itself. The for example: “This is a good typeface for resemblance to the real life object does not navigation: it has icons for toilets and elevators, matter anymore and it is only a question of time among with an extensive set of directional now, before this symbol will transition into it’s arrows.” We still have to either refer to the 8-bit abstract, non-pictorial shape (is it still too soon codepages or dump the entire character set. to switch to just something like already?). In the first case anything outside the usual Finally, there is beauty in ambiguity. Even alphabet and punctuation spectrum gets such an inambiguous symbol as a magnifying omitted, in latter — pales into insignificance. lens can mean either “search” or “zoom in”, 1 Unicode 13.0, released on March 10, 2020, adds 5 930 new characters, for a total of 143 859 characters. 2 Even such an immense type project as Arial (4 503 characters) covers only approximately 3% of the Unicode table.

34 Expansion of the Alphabet

Font Size: 90 mm Gramatika Line Height: 90 mm 35 Expansion of the Alphabet

Tiles

Some of the symbol characters are “tiling”, U+253С U+2518 U+2500 U+2510 which means that they are designed to combine and connect with each other in order to type frames, catalog trees, large figure brackets or any other pseudo­graphics. At the moment there are tiles for regular, arrow­headed, rounded and dotted lines, various blocks and three shades of raster.

U+2514 U+2502 U+250C U+251C

U+2524 U+252C U+2534 U+E100

U+E101 U+E102 U+E103 U+E104

U+E105 U+E106 U+E107 U+E108

U+E109 U+E10A U+E10B U+E410 U+E411

36 Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm Expansion of the Alphabet

U+E412 U+E413 U+E414 U+E415 U+E416 U+E417

U+E418 U+E420 U+E421 U+E422 U+E423 U+E424

U+E425 U+E426 U+E427 U+E428 U+E429 U+E42A

U+2591 U+2592 U+2593 U+2588 U+2590 U+258C

U+2584 U+2580 U+2599 U+259B U+259C U+259F

U+259E U+259A U+259D U+2597 U+2596 U+2598

Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm 37 Expansion of the Alphabet

U+25A1 U+25A0 U+25CB U+25CF U+25C7 U+25C6 U+2610

U+25C1 U+25C0 U+25B3 U+25B2 U+25BD U+25BC

U+25B7 U+25BA U+2727 U+2726 U+2606 U+2605

U+2721 U+2736 U+E001 U+2613 U+2733 U+203B

U+E002 U+E010 U+E011 U+E012 U+E013

U+E014 U+E015 U+E016 U+E017 U+E018 U+E01F

38 Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm Expansion of the Alphabet

U+25D3 U+25D2 U+25D0 U+25D1 U+25D4 U+25D5

U+E030 U+E031 U+E032 U+E020 U+E021

U+E033 U+E034 U+E035 U+E036 U+E009

U+E037 U+E038 U+E039 U+E03A U+E00A

U+E03B U+E03C U+2680 U+2681 U+2682

U+2683 U+2684 U+2685 U+E510 U+E511 U+E512

Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm 39 Expansion of the Alphabet

U+E110 U+2190 U+E111 U+21B0 U+2191 U+21B1

U+E112 U+2192 U+21B4 U+21B3 U+2193 U+21B2 U+21B5

U+2196 U+2197 U+2198 U+2199 U+2194 U+2195

U+21C6 U+21C5 U+E121 U+E122 U+E123 U+E124

U+E125 U+E126 U+E127 U+E128 U+21B6 U+21B7

U+21BA U+21BB U+21A9 U+21AA U+21AB U+21AC

40 Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm Expansion of the Alphabet

U+E150 U+151 U+E152 U+267F U+E154 U+E146

U+E140 U+E141 U+E142 U+E143 U+E144 U+E145

U+E160 U+E161 U+E165 U+E163 U+E164 U+2708

U+E170 U+E171 U+E172 U+2139 U+26A0

U+E180 U+E181 U+E184 U+2615 U+E183

U+E120 U+E1FF U+E190 U+E191 U+26D4

Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm 41 Expansion of the Alphabet

U+E200 U+261D U+E220 U+E210 U+E211 U+E212

U+2703 U+E21A U+E215 U+E216 U+E217 U+E21B

U+E213 U+E214 U+E221 U+E222 U+E219

U+E223 U+2709 U+E224 U+E225 U+E226 U+E227

U+E22A U+E228 U+E229 U+E22B U+E22C

U+260F U+E230 U+E22E U+E22F U+E22D

42 Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm Expansion of the Alphabet

U+263A U+E300 U+2639 U+2661 U+2665

U+E301 U+E302 U+270B U+2620 U+2690 U+2691

U+231A U+E332 U+E31F U+E36A

U+263C U+26C5 U+263E U+E390 U+E392

U+2601 U+E391 U +2744 U+26C6 U+E394 U+E393

U+2602 U+21C8 U+2316 U+21AF U +267A U+2622 U+2607 U+267B U+26A1

Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm 43 Expansion of the Alphabet

U+25B7 U+25BA U+E260 U+E261 U+E262 U+E263

U+25A1 U+25A0 U+25CB U+25CF U+E264 U+E265 U+2610

U+E267 U+E268 U+E266 U+292E

U+E269 U+E26A U+E26E

U+E26B U+E26C U+E26D U+2328

U+23FB U+E27F U+E27E U+E27D

44 Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm Expansion of the Alphabet

U+270D U+2713 U+2611 U+270F U+2711 U+2712

U+E240 U+E241 U+E242 U+E247 U+2612

U+E243 U+E244 U+E245 U+E246

U+25C2 U+25B4 U+25B8 U+25BE

U+E250 U+E251

Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm 45 Expansion of the Alphabet

U+2654 U+E501 U+2656 U+E503 U+2658 U+E505

U+E500 U+2655 U+E502 U+2657 U+E504 U+2659

U+2001 U+2592 U+2001 U+2592 U+2001 U+2592

U+2592 U+2001 U+2592 U+2001 U+2592 U+2001

U+265A U+E507 U+265C U+E509 U+265E U+E50B

U+E506 U+265B U+E508 U+265D U+E50A U+265F

46 Font Size: 30 mm Gramatika Line Height: 30 mm Expansion of the Alphabet

Overlays

U+F000 Overlays are zero-width characters, which are designed to be combined with the previous pictogram in line. For example, the circle overlay in a line of regular text will be displayed like this: “”. Preceded by, for example, “”, it will render “”. Currently, there are four overlays:    . They are combinable — you can use several of them at the same time:  — and tiling — putting a square overlay after each character of “☼⛅⛆” will result in U+F001 “☼⛅⛆”. The overlays can be used to create, for example, Mute or ✋ Do Not Touch icons.

U+F002

U+F003

47 Notes

48

ISBN 978-3-00-067256-9

The Temporary State 2020