Anatomy of a Letter
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anatomy of a letter cap height uppercase lowercase majuscule minuscule roman italic x-height terminal cross bar baseline serif bowl counter or bowl Aaaperture acounter adobe garamond 175 pt ascender stem thydescender terminal no ligature ligature fi fi letter 4 A basic system for classifying typefaces was introduced in the nineteenth century. typeface Its terms are still useful today, although they fail to capture the full diversity of type designs. The categories humanist, transitional, and modern refer roughly classification to the Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment periods in art and literature. Humanist letterforms are closely connected to calligraphy and the movement of the hand. Transitional and modern typefaces are more abstract and less organic. Although these three main groups refer to historical periods, designers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have continued to create new typefaces based on their characteristics, including sans serif fonts. Many digital typefaces used today are based on historic typefaces, redesigned in response to contemporary media and technology. sabon baskerville bodoni Aaa Aa Aa Aa humanist or old style transitional modern The roman typefaces of the fifteenth These typefaces are more abstract, with The typefaces designed by Giambattista and sixteenth centuries emulated classical sharper serifs and a more vertical axis. Bodoni in the late eighteenth and early calligraphy. Sabon was designed by John Baskerville was an English printer nineteenth centuries are severely abstract. Jan Tschichold in 1966, based on the working in the eighteenth century. When Note the thin serifs, vertical axis, and sharp sixteenth-century typefaces of Claude his typefaces were introduced, their sharp contrast from thick to thin strokes. Garamond. forms and high contrast were considered shocking. clarendon Aa egyptian or slab serif Numerous bold and decorative typefaces were introduced in the nineteenth century for use in advertsing. Egyptian fonts have thy heavy, slab-like serifs. gill sans helvetica futura Aa Aa Aa gill sans transitional sans serif geometric sans serif Sans serif typefaces became common in Helvetica, designed by Max Miedinger in Some sans serif types are built around the twentieth century. Gill Sans, designed 1957, is one of the world’s most widely geometric forms, including Futura, by Eric Gill in 1928, has humanist used typefaces. Its deliberately bland, designed by Paul Renner in 1927. The o’s characteristics. Note the small, lilting uniform, upright character makes it similar in Futura are perfect circles, and the peaks counter in the letter a, and the subtle to transitional serif letters. of the A and M are sharp triangles. variations in line weight. fi fi letter 5 .