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Typography in a Nutshell by Ashlyn McCormick November 6, 2013 Typography refers to the study of different styles of letters. The importance of typography is that it is everywhere, so understanding its history, anatomy and variety will give us a better ability to create type that best suits the audience. The audiences’ role and the difference between readability and legibility also helps to give direction to the study of typography. To raise awareness about typography, it is important for people to study its history and its helpfulness in people communication. A Brief History of Typography The earliest known example of typography is the Phaistos Disc. It was made of hieroglyphs punched into disc shaped clay sometime between 1800­1600 B.C. Early Christians also used carved seals and letter tiles to create documents and label containers for holy relics after 1100 AD, and the practice spread through medieval Europe.1 The first modern printing press was created by Johannes Gutenberg who was also a goldsmith. He also invented the first typeface called Black Letter, a heavy block letter alphabet that copied the look of hand­scribed letters.1 The printing press was mechanical, and it got bigger and faster over the years until the ‘digital revolution’ arrived. Imagine how easy it would have been if they had computers and ipods like us! A company called Adobe was the first to use typography on computers through their development of Postscript on the Apple Macintosh computer platform. This was the beginning of widespread desktop publishing, which was paper­based. Then the Internet came along and it was important to be able to read stuff easily there. Good typography is very important to the presentation of information on the Internet through a Web browser, and also through mobile devices like tablets and smart phones. Nowadays computer animation lets us actually add movement to typography. This adds visual punch to how our information is presented. Some good examples can be found in movie credits, advertising, and music videos. Bet you didn’t know that Typography actually had its own history! Introduction to Typefaces Typefaces are also called font families. “Each font has its own specific weight, style, condensation, width, slant, italicization, ornamentation, and designer or foundry2.” A typeface can have different fonts within it because of bolding, slants, and more. For example, Arial normally weighted and Arial bold are normally confused for 2 different typefaces but are actually one. A font family is a group of related fonts which vary only in weight, orientation, width, etc., but not design. For example, Times is a font family, while Times Roman, Times Italic and Times Bold are individual fonts making up the Times family. Do not say that Typefaces and Fonts are the same thing in front of a professional typographer or he will swear a lot and start throwing things around. Most people put typefaces into two main classifications: Serif and Sans­serif. Those are fonts with decoration (Serif) and fonts without decoration (Sans­serif.) While these are the two best known, there are piles more! Anatomy of a Typeface Image used with permission of Martin Silvertant. There are a tonne of parts you have to know about typefaces! Here are the ones I have found to be most important…3 Ascender height: The part of the typeface that pokes above the main line. Descender height (a.k.a. ‘beardline’): The part of the typeface that drops below the baseine. Main line: The top line of the lowercase letters. Base line: The bottom line of the lowercase letters. Cap line: The top line the capital letters extend up to, but do not go over. Cap height: The distance between the base line and the cap line. X­height: This is the height of the body of the font’s lowercase letters. You can make a font look ‘bigger’ by increasing the x­height (e.g. Georgia). Many ‘display’ fonts have their x­height increased. Body width: The width of the letter, number, or symbol. Does not includes spaces on each side (that is ‘character width’ when spaces included). Making this wider improves legibility. Serif: Small line attached to the end of a stroke in a letter. Fonts intended for computer displays and the Web all have bigger x­heights and body widths. If you are trying to make a LOT of text readable you might want to use a serif font like Times New Roman. Classifying Typefaces There is no formal system for classifying typefaces, but these are the common ones based on the various resources I managed to find. ● Blackletter ­ Calligraphy style script based on on the lettering produced by a calligraphy artist using a broad nibbed pen using curved, vertical, and angled strokes. Popular from Middle Ages to Renaissance and up to the 20th century. There are regional variations. ● Calligraphic ­ Typefaces based on letters made with a broad­nibbed pen. ● Humanist ­ Based on, or recreating typefaces from Venetian printers in the 15th century. Were rounded instead of the harsh Gothic typefaces of the Middle Ages. ● Inscriptional ­ Typefaces modeled after or based on letters carved in stone (e.g. Albertus) ● Machine Readable ­ Intended to be used with optical recognition for scanning text into data (e.g. numbers on cheques). ● Non­alphanumeric ­ Typefaces containing pictures or symbols rather than letters or numbers (e.g. Wingdings) ● Ornamented/Novelty/Decorative ­ Typefaces with an ornate or whimsical appearance, or which simulate non­typographical forms. ● Sans­serif ­ Typefaces without serifs ● Script ­ Typefaces based on letters made with a flexible pen or brush. ● Serif ­ Typefaces with serifs. While there are many more classifications, these are the most commonly mentioned ones. It is also important to note that some typefaces can have more than one classification. For example, many novelty typefaces can also be classified as serif or sans­serif depending on how they are decorated. The main reason for having classifications is that putting things into groups just makes them easier to keep track of! Commonly Used Typefaces Here are the typefaces that are installed on most computer systems and in most word processing and desktop publishing programs. Even online tools like Google Docs have many of these typefaces. NAME CLASSIFICATION NOTES SERIF Arial Humanist Contemporary, friendly curves, good readability. N Antiqua Script Based on Roman pen­drawn letter. Good for tiles. N Bookman Old Style Transitional Updated older style. Good readability. Classic look. Y Century Gothic Humanist Good for emphasis. Popular in advertising. N Century Schoolbook Old Style Originally based on carved letters. Classic Y sans­serif font. Courier Monospace Created by IBM for their typewriters. Allowed for Y use worldwide. Garamond Old Style Based on the punch­cut designs of Claude Y Garamond. Good for long texts. Georgia Transitional Adaptation of Times New Roman for improved Y screen readability. Increased x­height, larger serif decorations. Used extensively in Web design for excellent screen readability. Haettenschweiler Realist/Humanist Condensed, bold typeface with small counters N making it hard to read from distance. Similar to, but narrower than Impact. Impact Humanist Intended for headlines and advertisments in N newspapers. Large x­height with short ascenders and descenders. News Gothic MT Old­style Traditional serif typeface with good proportion and Y pleasant curves. Good for large tracts of text requiring readability. Rockwell Slab­serif/Egyptian Rounded, heavier serif typeface where serifs are Y equal in weight to veritcal strokes of letters. Good display font, but not a readable typeface for large amounts of text. Tahoma Humanist Microsoft variation of Arial enhanced for reading on N displays. Times New Roman Old­style First created for the Times of London newspaper. Y Staying power due to incredable readability. Trebuchet MS Humanist Microsoft created sans­serif font intended for easy N screen readability. Verdana Humanist Another san­serif designed for easy readability on N computer screens. Wide characters with a large x­height.. Very good for small text on electronic displays. Westminster Machine Readable. The first machine readable font. Used for numbers N on cheques. Also used to associate text with computers or digital information. Wide Latin Old style / Monospace A broad, heavy serif font used mainly for Y advertising. Good for individual words or phrases. Not readable for long text entries. Legible, but not readable. Wingdings Non­alphanumeric Created by Microsoft. Consists entirely of symbols n/a and pictures. May not be available on non Microsoft programs. Legible vs. Readable When a typeface is legible, it means you can tell the letters and numbers apart easily. An address that is hard to read could send a person to the wrong place. You need to use a legible font when you want to get the correct information across to your audience. The UnifakturWaguntia typeface is super hard to read! Courier New is very legible! When something is readable, it means that you can read a lot of paragraphs of text without you crossing your eyes and saying a bunch of bad words (like my dad who needs to get reading glasses). Typefaces that are easy to read when they are big may still give you headaches if you have a long story to tell.4 You should choose a classic typeface like Times New Roman or News Gothic like you find in textbooks. If your audience is made up of old people, you should make your typeface larger.5 If you have a short message or a headline, use a typeface that shouts Impact! If you’re making a Halloween poster they have creepy decorative fonts that look like dripping blood!5 Make sure the font you pick will be a good choice for the people reading what you are creating.

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