Typography Method

 RULES

First principles

1.    Typography exists to honor content.

·      Typography is an art that can be deliberately misused.

·      It is a craft by which the meanings of a text (or its absence of meaning) can be clarified, honored, and shared know _____

·      Typography must often draw attention to itself before it will be read.

·      In order to be read, it must abandon the attention it has drawn.

·      If the typography is “too good”, people will be amazed by the typeface. So, the content will be forgotten.

·      Its other traditional goal is durability; not immunity to change.

·      Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.

·      Typography is like a film. When you see a good film, you will be amazed by the film and got speechless. But, if you commenting the actors, means the actors are good, not the film.

·      As a designer, layout is helping to show the emotion.

·      One of the principles of durable typography is always legibility.

·      Typography also gives its living energy to a page including serenity, liveliness, laughter, grace, and joy.

·      Laughter, grace, and joy, like legibility itself ____ on meaning, which the writes the words and the subject not the typographer must generally provide.

2.   Letters have a life and dignity of their own.

·      The original purpose of type was simply copying.

·      Typography is just that: idealized writing.

·      If there are many script, as a designer, we have to make it alive by the good typeface, layout, and hierarchy.

·      The task of creative non-interference with letters is rewarding and difficult calling. For example do not distort the type.

·      In ideal conditions, it is all that typographers are really asked to do, and it is enough.

3.   There is a style beyond style.

·      Typographic style is the power to move freely through the whole domain of typography, and to function at every step in a way that is graceful and vital instead of banal.

·      Typography must not beat the content.

·      It means typography that can walk familiar grounds without sliding into platitudes, which responds to new conditions with innovative solutions, and typography that doesn’t irritate the reader with its own originality.

·      Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition; as essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness.

·      Much typography has many uses including packaging and propaganda.

·      Like music, it can be used to manipulate behavior and emotions.

·      Typography at its best slow performing art, worthy of the same informed appreciation that we sometimes give to musical performances and capable of giving similar nourishment and pleasure in return.

·      The same alphabets and designs can be used for a biography for Mohandas Gandhi and for a manual on the use and development of biological weapons.

TACTICS

1.    Read the text before designing it.

·      The typographer’s one essential task is to interpret and communicate the text.

·      Its tone, its tempo, its logical structure, its physical size, all determines the possibilities of its typographic form.

·      The typographer is to the text as the theatrical director to the script, or the musician to the score.

2.   Discover the outer logic of typography in the inner logic of the text.

·      The first task of the typographer is to read and understand the text.

·      The second task is to analyze and map it.

·      Analyze: finding the inner-beauty, “what’s the story about?”

·      Only then can typographic interpretation begin.

·      The typographer must analyze and reveal the inner order of the text, as musician must reveal the inner order of the music he performs.

·      But the reader, like the listener, should in retrospect be able to close her eyes and see what lies inside the words she has been reading.

·      The typographic performance must reveal, not replace, the inner composition.

·      Typographers, like other artists and craftsman — musicians, composers, and authors as well — must as a rule do their work and disappear.

3.   Make the visible relationships between the text and other elements (photographs, captions, tables, diagram, notes) a reflection of their real relationships.

·      If the text is tied to other elements, where do they belong?

·      If there are notes, do they go at the side of the page, the foot of the page, the end of the chapter, the end of the book?

·      If there are photographs or other illustrations, should they be embedded in the text or should they form a special section of their own?

·      If the photographs have captions or credits or labels, should they sit close beside the photographs or should they be separately housed?

·      If there is more than one text, how will the separate but equal text be arrayed? (hierarchy)

·       

·      The typographic pace is a map of the mind.

·      It is frequently also a map of the social order from which it comes.

·      And for better or worse, minds and social orders change.

·      The audience influenced the design. This year’s trend is cannot be the same with next year’s trend right? It depends on the time. Follow the trend.

·      Type’s interpretation could be changing by the social.

4.   Choose a typeface or a group of faces that will honor and elucidate the character of the text.

·      Choose and use the type with sensitivity and intelligence.

·      Letterforms have tone, timbre, character, just as words and sentences do.

·      The root metaphor of typesetting is that the alphabet (or Chinese, the entire lexicon) is a system of interchangeable parts.

·      Interchangeable means what it supposed to look-like when a meets g is different when a meets i.

·      Letters are microscopic works of art as well as useful symbol.

·      They mean what they are as well as they say.

·      Typography is the art and craft of handling these doubly meaningful bits of information.

·      A good typographer handles them in intelligent, coherent, sensitive ways.

·      When the type is poorly chosen, what the words say linguistically and what the letters imply visually are disharmonious, dishonest, out of time.

·      The wrong example is when you made text for kids but you were using serif typeface, it’s a zonk.

5.   Shape the page and frame the text block so that it honors and reveals every element, every relationship between elements, and every logical nuance of the text.

·      Selecting the shape of the page and placing the type upon it is like framing and hanging a painting.

·      A cubist panting in an eighteenth-century gilded frame, or a seventeenth-century still-life in a slim chrome box, will look no sillier than a nineteenth-century text from England set in types that come from seventeenth-century France, asymmetrically positioned on a German Modernist page.

·      If the text is long or the space is short, or if the elements are many, multiple columns maybe required.

·      Suggestion: one line = 7-8 words, don’t get to much, 10 pt for text size.

·      If illustrations and text march side by side, dose one take precedence over the other?

·      And does the order degree of prominence change.

·      Does the text suggest perpetual symmetry, perpetual asymmetry, or something in between?

·      Does the text suggest the continuous unruffled flow of justified prose, or the continued flirtation with order and chaos evoked by flush-left ragged-right composition? (The alignment of the text: align text left, center text, align text right, or justify)

·      Shaping the page goes hand in hand with choosing the type, and both re permanent typographical preoccupations.

6.   Give full typographic attention even to incidental details.

·      Some of what a typographer must set is simply passage work.

·      Even an edition of Plato or Shakespeare will contain a certain amount of routine text: page numbers, scene numbers, textual notes, the copyright claim, the publisher’s name and address, and the hyperbole on the jacket, the passage work or background writing that is implicit in the text itself.

·      The typographer can make a poignant and lovely typography from bibliographical paraphernalia and textual chaff.

·      The ability to do so rests on respect for the text as a whole, and on respect for the letters themselves.

SUMMARY

Typography should perform these services for the reader:

·      Invite the reader into the text;

·      Reveal the tenor and meaning of the text;

·      Clarify the structure and the order of the text;

·      Link the text with other existing elements;

·      Induce a state of energetic repose, which are the ideal conditions for reading.

Typography should honor the text for its own sake — always assuming that the text is worth the typographer’s trouble — and it should honor and contribute to its own tradition: that of typography itself.

SELECTING THE RIGHT TYPE FOR THE JOB

·      Type has the power to make or break a job.

·      Every typeface has different personality, and the ability to convey different feeling and moods, some more than others.

·      Display typefaces, also known as headline typefaces, tend to be stronger in personality, sometimes trading legibility at smaller sizes for a more powerful feeling.

·      They can evoke strength, elegance, agitation, silliness, friendliness, scariness, and other moods.

·      Text designs, often used for blocks of copy, are subtler in mood and emphasize legibility and readability.

·      Their personalities tend to be whispered, rather than shouted.

·      Although typeface selection is a very persona, subjective decision, there are some guidelines and an official rules that will help you narrow down your search and ultimately help you make the right choice.

·      For example: bold text looks clear when the text size is big. But when it is small, it doesn’t look clear.

DESIGN GOALS

·      The first and foremost step in selecting a typeface is knowing your goals.

·      As a designer, your primary responsibility is to serve the client using your design and problem-solving skills.

·      It is not to make their job into your own personal award-winning design statement.

·      Every job requires a different approach.

·      An annual report might call for a typeface with a high degree of legibility that also captures the spirit of the company, but a book might need a face that catches the eye and tells a story.

·      To focus your design goals and subsequently the most appropriate typefaces to use, start by identifying the age, attention span and demographics of your audience.

·      Different typefaces attract different audience, both subliminally and overtly.

·      Children are drawn to easy-to-read, childlike fonts; seniors to larger setting that have more clarity and legibility; teens to more edgy, expressive design.

·      After you consider your audience, ask yourself how much reading you are asking them to do, and what information you are expecting them to walk away with.

·      Once you identify your design objective, you will narrow down your typeface choices considerably.

LEGIBILITY AND READABILITY

Legibility: characteristic of the typeface (x-height, weight, contrast, etc.)

·      Legibility refers to the actual typeface.

·      The legibility of a typeface is related to the characteristics inherent in its design including the size of its counters, x-height, character shapes, stroke contrast, serif or lack thereof, and weight, all of which relate to the ability to distinguish one letter from another.

·      Not all typefaces are designed to be legible.

Readability: how can the texts being read (leading, kerning, etc.)

·      Readability refers to typography, or how the typeface is set.

·      Readability is related to how you arrange the type.

·      Factors affecting type’s readability include size, leading, line length, alignment, letter spacing, and word spacing.

Legibility and readability

·      A legible typeface can be made unreadable by how it is set.

·      A typeface with poor legibility can be made more readable with these same considerations.

·      In choosing a typeface, consider its legibility and how important that is to your design objective.

·      Once chosen, it is up to you to enhance its readability.

TEXT VS DISPLAY

·      Text type is designed to be legible and readable at small sizes.

·      This usually implies fairly clean, consistent, uncomplicated design features, more open spacing than a display face, and thin strokes that hold up at smaller sizes.

·      Display type can forgo the extreme legibility and readability needed for long blocks of text at small sizes for stronger personality elaborate and more expressive shapes, and a more stylish look.

·      Many typefaces do not adhere to these descriptions, however, and can be used for both text and display.

·      When choosing a font, try to see a word grouping set at a size close to what you will be using.

·      It is very difficult to visualize what a 14-point text will look like from a 60-point “a–z” showing.

·      So, 14-point and 60-point has a different characteristic. So, you have to decide size that you want to use, and then try the actual size.

·      Paper really influenced the appearance of the text. For example newspaper paper is using small size text. If it’s not legible, the text will be spreading on the paper. Because, newspaper’s paper has a strong absorption.

SCRIPT, CALLIGRAPHIC, AND HANDWRITING FONTS

·      Some of the job can’t use the existing fonts.

·      Handlettering: drawing letter; calligraphy: write beautifully.

·      Script and calligraphic fonts are in a class of their own and can overlap both text and display categories.

·      They can be very elegant, formal, classy, or very humanistic, quirky and quite individualistic.

·      Scripts and calligraphics are often used for invitations, announcements, headline, and initial letters.

·      Handwriting fonts are great for informal correspondence as well as ads and brochures requiring more personal, informal look.

TYPE FAMILIES

·      These are usually text or text/display families with corresponding sans, serif, and sometimes informal or script versions

·      They usually have the same basic structure but with different finishing details, enabling them to work well together.

·      This is very safe yet effective way to mix typefaces while keeping your job looking clean and not over-designed.

DOs & DONTs

·      DO start with a few basic typefaces and type families, and learn how to use them well.

·      DO leave white space.

·      DO consider production issues when selecting text type. For instance, when going very small, watch out for disappearing thin strokes, especially when printed.

·      DO consider how your type will look at the size you are planning to use it. What looks great at 18 point might be look too heavy and lose its elegance at 96 point.

·      DO beware of tint things. Importantly, if you were using a black background with white text.

·      DON’T go too big when setting text; smaller with more leading is often more readable than a larger setting with light leading.

·      DON’T set to fit. Decide on a point size that looks and reads the best, and adjust leading and line width (or the length of your copy if possible) accordingly.

·      DON’T tint type with delicate thins. It might break when printed.

·      DON’T go too big when setting text; smaller with more leading is often more readable than a larger setting with tight leading.

·      DON’T distort your type with the features available in your page-layout program. Type that has been electronically expanded, slanted, emboldened, and condensed look very amateurish and is annoying to the eye.

·      DON’T let the way a typeface looks n laser proof be the deciding factor in you selection, as it can look much heavier than the actual printed piece.

MIXING IT UP

·      When choosing a typeface outside the primary family you are using, there are three things to remember: contrast, contrast, and contrast.

·      A common mistake is to use two or more faces that are too close in style, making the change not noticeable enough tot serve the purpose at hand, yet creating a subtle disturbance that detracts from the cohesiveness of your design.

·      For example, Helvetica and Futura are too close.

·      Combine typefaces when you want to emphasize or separate a thought, phrase, or text visually.

·      The eye needs to see distinct differences for this to be achieved effectively.

·      These basic principles should keep you on the right track:

o   Serif vs Sans: there are usually strong design differences between them (unless they are part of a type family), which can achieve the contrast you are looking for.

o   Light vs Heavy: this technique is often used for subheads; using a heavy sans, perhaps all caps, within a body of serif text does the trick very well. NOTE: make sure you go heavy enough because using the next weight up (e.g. book to medium) often result in a week visual transition.

o   Large vs Small: such as from headline to subhead or text. The distinction will be emphasized that much more.

o   W i d e vs Narrow (or Regular vs Condensed): an expanded headline font above an average-width body text, or a logo split in two using this technique can create a very powerful contrast.

o   CAP vs lowercase: use caps for one of the settings, particularly if it is short. Stay away from setting lengthy text in all caps, as it dramatically reduces readability.

HIERARCHY

About Hierarchy

·      A typographic hierarchy expresses an organizational system for content, emphasizing some data, and diminishing others.

·      A hierarchy helps readers scan a text, knowing where to enter and exit and how to pick and choose among its offerings.

·      Each level of hierarchy should be signaled by one or morecues, applied consistently across a body of text.

·      A cue can be spatial (indent, line spacing, placement on page) or graphic (size, style, color of typeface).

·      Infinite variations are possible.

Redundancy

·      Writers are generally trained to avoid redundancy, as in the expressions “future plans” or “past history.”

·      In typography, some redundancy is acceptable, even recommended.

·      For example, paragraphs are traditionally marked with a line break and an indent, a redundancy that has proven quite practical, as each signal provides backup for the other.

·      To create an elegant economy of signals, try using no more than three cues for each level or break in a document.

Creating emphasis within running text

·      Emphasizing a word or phrase within a body of text usually requires only one signal.

·      Italic is the standard form of emphasis.

·      There are many alternatives, however, inclucing boldface, SMALL CAPS, or a change in color.

·      You can also create emphasis with a different font; a full range type family such as Archer has many font variations designed to work together.

·      If you want to mix font families, such as Archer and Futura, adjust the sizes so that the x-heigts align.

Web Hierarchy

·      Most websites are controlled by hierarchies in an even more systematic way than print documents.

·      A site’s file structure proceeds from a root down to directories holding various levels of content.

·      An HTML page contains a hierarchy of elements that can be nested one inside the other.

·      The site’s organization is reflected in its interface — from navigation to the formatting of content.

·      Typography helps elucidate the hierarchies governing all these features.

·      Dynamic Web sites use databases to build pages on the fly as users search for specific content.

·      Databases cut across the planned hierarchy of a site, bringing up links from different levels and content areas — or from other web sites.

·      Typographic style sheets are used to weight the information gathered, helping users find what they need.