My Little Type Journal.
My Little Type Journal By Alexandra Rosado Typography II Winter Quarter 2016
Title Page | 3
What is this?
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This journal is contains Alexandra Rosado’s Typography II lecture notes, critique notes, reading reviews, and process thoughts. Therefore, if you thought you hit the jackpot and stumbled upon my personal dairy of intimate thoughts, you didn’t. Instead what you will find is my personal learnings and thoughts over the course of winter 2016 quarter at Cal Poly. The idea is that in the future when I’m trying to remember what I learned back in school, I can take out this bad boy and reference back to it. In theory a good idea, now whether I do that or not is a different story.
Introduction | 5
Lecture Notes
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General Must-Knows about Type • Body text on screen should be 14 pt or larger for long reading. (phones different type challenge) • Workhorse Typeface: good regular weight, robust proportion, at least 1 bold, italic version, very legible numbers • Leading 120%–145% • Line length: about 8–13 words per line on average • Stop tracking at -10, don’t go beyond i.e -20, -30, -50 • Smalls caps should never be used; real small caps will be a style under a typeface like italics and bold. • Don’t use underline unless it’s a hyperlink (rule of thumb)
Pica Conversions: 6 picas = 1in 72 pts = 1in 1p6 = 1 pica + 6 pts 12 = 1 pica 3 picas = 1/2 in
Lecture Notes | 7
All About Typefaces & Purchasing Fonts Technical factors to Consider: • Content: how long is the text. What is it about? • Audience: young, old? broad? • Does the font have a full character set, including all punctation, glyphs necessary? • Does the font have multiple weights and styles? • Doe the font have small caps? • Does the font have a web versions? • Want to look for Opentype fonts, which means it work cross-platforms
What are you buying when purchasing a font? • Font license grants owner the right to use a typeface in a specific manner as outlined in the license. • You need to ask: can I use this font for commercial work? • How much does it cost 8 | Type Journal
• Can I use online, or just print? • What about apps, and ebooks?
Some places to buy fonts: • Google fonts are free for print and web: some good, some not so good. • Lost Type Co-op is pay what-you-want type foundry: you can buy 10$, 5$, or 0\ • League of Moveable Type free fonts, can be used on the web. * Lee Gothic. • Font Squirrel free fonts for commercial use. • Fontspring gathered fonts with similar licenses so you can use for commercial use. • House Industries very expensive, very wellmade fonts. Can purchase a vector version of just a word. 1940’s, 50’s, & 60’s style. • My Fonts huge range, lots of international type designers. Pricing ranges from 900$- 25$. • fonts.com wide range, pretty expensive.
Where do fonts live in my computer? • User:~/Library/Fonts (user has complete control over the fonts installed in their home) Lecture Notes | 9
• Local:/Library/Fonts (Any local user of the computer can use fonts installed in this folder)
Do need a font manager? • Not technically, but you should. Font Book is an option • It’s free and pretty easy to use, can set font sets, resolves font conflicts, can deactivate fonts in the /Library/fonts/ Font Book Cons: • Makes it impossible to activate another type of font with the same name without having to firs manually remove the conflicting. • In general, you want to have the minimum number of fonts installed . • Makes it easier to find the fonts you’re looking for. • Use sets to keep fonts organized and categorized: i.e slab serifs, feminine sans serif.\ • Recommendation font management program: Font explore X Pro
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Paragraph & Characters Styles Paragraph Styles: • Most styles in your document will be paragraph styles. • Changes in paragraph is indicated in two ways: first line indent, OR little line spacing between (typically half of the leading.) • To hang a bullet point, if you left indent 35 px then first line indent -35 px does not always have to be exact number, depends on how much space you want. • Paragraphs rules: use for linear elements • Bullets and Numbering: set up lists with auto bullet points or numbering. Can work, but also can cause problems. • Export Tagging: turns style into CSS.
Character Styles: • Are used for styling text within a paragraph, for things like: bold, text, italic, text, run-in subheads, custom bullets or numbers. Lecture Notes | 11
• Usually want to click apply style. • Don’t mess with leading. • Table Styles: Use for styling tables within a document. Great for positioning text side by side. • Cell Styles: used for styling individual cells, or rectangular divisions of the table. The cell style defines: the borders around the cells, how text is positioned in the cell.
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Choosing & Pairing Typefaces Type on Screen: • Tiny x-hieght= will be set smaller, harder to read on screen. • Tight spaces between strokes and counters, the tighter the spacing the harder it will be to read for long periods of time. • Two typefaces used on screen: Georgia and Verdana.
Typeface Contrast: • Amount of contrast between thick and thin strokes of characters • Higher contrast typefaces should be used more in display texts • Choose typeface with high x-height, it’s ideal. • Beware about extreme x-heights, i.e. century Gothic, ITC Garamond • Character distinction; differentiating between key characters is important. Lecture Notes | 13
• Making sure the typeface has a wide range of characters to support all your needs, so needs to have full character set • Optical Sizes: some typefaces have family members that suit a specific size range • Finding alternatives, look for typefaces that share some similar traits to favorite classics, Helvetica= Museo Sans / Georgia= Droid Serif
Pairing Typefaces: • Don’t choice two typefaces that look very similar. Like having two old style serifs together. • It’s good to pair display type with a body text type. • Look at harmony, their visual relationship
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Lecture Notes | 15
Reading Reviews
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Readings From:
Butterick’s Practical Typography Why Typography Matters • Typography is more than just picking typefaces and making it look pretty. Typography can help you engage readers, guide them, and ultimately persuade them. • Typography is the visual component of the writ ten word. • Typography is for the benefit of the reader, not the writer. • Bad typography can distract your reader and undermine your message. • Good typography is measured by how well it reinforces the meaning of the text, not by some abstract scale of merit.
Reading Reviews | 17
Text Formatting • Never use underlining. It makes things uglier and harder to read. Instead try all caps, or a change in point size. • Monospaced fonts: every character is the same width. Examples: Courier, Monaco, and Con solas. Meant to meet typewriter requirements. Not practical for body text. • Bold and italic: 1st pick one or the other. 2nd use as little as possible. • Limit yourself to three levels of headings. Two is better. • Use bold not italics for headings. Easier to read. • Body text in printed documents (e.g., résumés, research papers, letters) must always be set in black type.
Type Composition • Don’t use quotation marks for emphasis. That’s a job for bold or italic. • Always put exactly one space between sentences. • A colon usually connects the introduction of an
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idea and its completion. • A semicolon is used for two reasons: 1st used in stead of a conjunction to combine two sentences. 2nd separates list elements with internal commas (We visited Tulsa, Oklahoma; Flint, Michigan; and Paducah, Kentucky). • (Parentheses) are for separating citations or other asides from the body text. • [Brackets] show changes within quoted material. • {Braces} are not typically used except in technical and mathematical writing.
Page Layout • Centered Text: Whole paragraphs should never be centered. typographic equivalent of vanilla ice cream—safe but boring. • First Line indent should be no bigger than four times the point size. i.e. 12 point should have a first-line indent of 12–48 pts. • Space between paragraphs should be a space equal to 50–100% of the body text size. Large the point size the larger the space between should be.
Reading Reviews | 19
• Strongly recommends serifs for body text in print, says its still a traditional and best choice. • Sans serif or serif can be used on screen. • Space above and below can be a good way to add dramatic emphasis without having to change the text mark. • Keep lines together ensures that all lines in a paragraph appear on the same page. If the last line of the paragraph won’t fit on the current page, the whole paragraph gets moved to the next page.
Links To Articles http://practicaltypography.com/why-typography-matters.html http://practicaltypography.com/text-formatting.html http://practicaltypography.com/type-composition.html http://practicaltypography.com/page-layout.html
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Articles on the Use of Grids
Grid, Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton This article talks about grids systems being used. I remember reading this section in Type I when we made a spread using the grid system. I do agree that sometimes with grids, my design becomes very rigid and a little stale. I like the idea of organization that the grid system gives a layout, and unifies everything. Although I think I need to get better at breaking the grid more, and following the system, but to not feel like I must always align everything to my grid. The Gold Rule is an interesting concept to me. I have learned about this gold spiral since I started design in school. To be honest I get the idea of the perfect proportions, but I just never use this rule. I think it’s very important to have the right scale and proportions, but as far as using the Golden Rule, I never voluntarily use it if I don’t have too. Base line grids confuse me, they always have so it was refreshing to hear that you may not have to use baseline grids too much.
Reading Reviews | 21
Using Layout Grids Effectively, Designers Insights Tips on how to make a layout more visually interesting is always helpful. Having huge chunks of text is always a challenge for me to make it flow and more dynamic. I am definitely a person who gets stuck in the grid. Using organic shapes to break up the straight columns of text is a good way to help the look. At the end it had a blurb about how you should always start your design projects with a grid layout, which I have a bit of mixed emotions about. I feel you don’t always have too, but it definitely helps.
Links To Articles http://www.thinkingwithtype.com/contents/grid/ http://www.designersinsights.com/designer-resources/ using-layout-grids-effectively
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Articles by Peter Bil’ak
“Family planning, or how type families work” This article was pretty much talked about the history of type families. It first started talking about how for that about 400 years there was just a single weight and then about in the mid-19th century the idea of varying the weight of a single typeface came about. Now it is standard for a typeface to have varying weights within one family. Later in the article it became talking about not only a varying in weight, but also width. It showed a table analyzing the type family Univers, which is definitely known for having a large family. This article was a good piece for me to brush up on my typography history knowledge.
“A View of Latin Typography in Relationship to the World” Peter Bil’ak talks about how as we learn typography, a lot of what we read in our textbooks and other materials has a very Euro-centric bias. We often learn about the history of the Latin base language, but that really the first movable type system was more likely created in China around 1040 AD. Reading Reviews | 23
However most of our type classifications apply exclusively to Latin type. Basically we have a very western European approach to learning type. This does not surprise me considering that I would say most of our learnings in school have a Euro-centric bias. It would be nice to incorporate more into our learning, but I guess if you want to learn about it you will have to do it on your own time.
“Beauty and Ugliness in Type design” Peter Bil’ak was invited to a conference in Copenhagen to speak on the subject of conceptual type. What he did there was combined to extreme typefaces, a beautiful one and an ugly one, to come up with a coherent whole. For his beauty one he chose the Modern type of Bodoni and Didot, and for the ugly ‘Italian’ from the middle of the Industrial Revolution. Rather than talk about what he did, I found it better to just add images of what his results were.
The Beautiful Type 24 | Type Journal
The Ugly Type
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”Lava — Voice of a Magazine“ This was an article talking about how he created his typeface Lava. He designed it so that it could work on multiple platforms. Lava was designed to perform optimally in both high- and low- resolution environments. Lava looks closely at system fonts such as Times and Georgia. It delivers refined details, finely tuned proportions and meticulous spacing, which most UI fonts lack. It has been used for two editions of Works That Work magazine. It took about a year of testing, but now they are ready to release it for the public to see.
Links To Articles https://www.typotheque.com/articles/type_families https://www.typotheque.com/articles/a_view_of_latin_typography https://www.typotheque.com/articles/beauty_and_ugliness_in_ type_design https://www.typotheque.com/articles/lava 26 | Type Journal
Miscellaneous Articles
“Eric Gill got it wrong; a re-evaluation of Gill Sans” by Ben Archer I was at first very neutral about my feelings towards Gill Sans. But after reading the article, I still don’t have very strong feelings towards it, but I did not know it was Britain’s main Typeface that they use for everything. Then to my surprise, I learned about how this type face is a flawed master piece. The article went on the further bash the typeface and all it’s many blunders. This helped me to understand what to see what makes a typeface good or not, but as far as my opinion on Gill Sans, it is still pretty much neutral. I don’t hate it I don’t love it, and I barely use it.
“The First Thing I Ever Designed: Elana Schlenker and Gratuitous Type Magazine” by Madeleine Morley This article is about Elana Schlenker sharing are story about starting up her own independent magazine Gratutious Type. She goes on to explain how she has always had an interest in making magazines and printed things, and what started things. It took a lot of trail and error for her to create the interior development. She wanted the issue to be able to change up grid layouts and typeReading Reviews | 27
faces, really to be able to develop something new each issue. It turned out to be a big boost for her career and she was happy with the results. At the end, she mentioned how important it is to trust in yourself and your abilities.
“An Idea of a typeface” by Kai Bernau Kai Bernau explores the idea of what it would mean for a typeface to be truly neutral. He asked a series of questions and did an extensive research in search of his original question. At the end he came to realize while trying to create a neutral typeface, ultimately it was only neutral to him. He came to the conclusion you can’t make something an absolute neutral, but you can come close.
“A Typeface Designed to Revive the Endangered Cherokee Language” by Angela Riechers Two representatives from the Language Technology Office of the Cherokee Nation attended a type conference and expressed the need new digital Cherokee typefaces. Designer Mark Jamra was very interested in the project and would help to create a typeface that will persevere the native language. The two images on the next page show images of the font of the Cherokee language.
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Links To Articles https://www.typotheque.com/articles/re-evaluation_of_gill_sans https://www.typotheque.com/articles/an-idea-of-a-typeface https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/a-typeface-designed-to-revive-the-endangered-cherokee-language-typetuesday/
Reading Reviews | 29
Projects
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Typesetting: Rules of Typography Legibility Exercise Analysis While looking over the print version of our exercise I was able to better analyze the text. It was clear that the serif Adobe Garamond Pro was smaller than the sans serif Franklin Gothic. At the 9 pt. size, I feel the Adobe Garamond was just a bit small for a comfortable read. At the point size 10, Garamond was better but needed more leading then 13 pt. because that was a bit tight. Franklin Gothic set at a 9/14 pt. was the best type setting for reading. In both of the types, 13 leading was too tight for a 10pt. Because this text is a smaller paragraph I enjoy reading it in the sans serif, but if it was pages of texts I usually prefer serif. Adobe Garamond Pro at 8/13 was the worst combination of them all because it was just too small and hard on your eyes.
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Typesetting: Rules of Typography
Objectives: • To establish information hierarchy in the design and layout of at least five quotes about typography • To consider legibility and readability when selecting typefaces • To research scholarly articles and books about typography
First Draft
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A Few Words On
Typography “
Making type into a picture creates enormous opportunity for the designer. When typography becomes something more than just what it says, its communicative power is dramatically increased. Timothy Samara A Real-World Guide to Using Type in Graphic Design: Typography Workbook, 2004, page 96
Although software generates illusions of smooth curves and continuous tones, every digital image or mark is constructed— ultimately— from a grid of neatly bounded blocks. Ellen Lupton Thinking with Type, 2012, page 151
From an editorial perspective, two successive lines ending with hyphens is undesirable. Timothy Samara Design Elements, 2nd Edition, 2014, page 151
All visual messages have a hierarchal order to the information presented, that is, an order of reading the information according to importance. It is essential for the designer to determine a logical hierarchal order for all elements within a message before beginning design. Kimberly Elam Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type, 2004, page 114
Typeface selection is a skill that requires an awareness or trend, history, and audience. There is no right or wrong way to choose a font, but a project’s success or failure can depend heavily on the chosen typeface and how it is used. Jim Krause Idea Index, 2011, page 175
”
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Critique Minor Issues: • leading slightly tight or too loose • watch for typos! • lack of hierarchy/ separation of info Bigger issues: • Legibility issues: hard to read reversed out, typeface choice, background color, type size • Headline/title lacks weight. • Name of person lacks emphasis • Hierarchy of text is confusing, parallel information is treated differently. • Layout organized, but a little boring
Additional Notes: For my particular project, the reversed out was a big issue. I learned the easiest way to read text is back on white, and that can be broken but for how much text it trying to be rad for this project it probably shouldn’t be. Also the Claredon typeface didn’t seem to be a right pick, curly strokes. Make a connection between title and body text.
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Final
A FEW WORDS ON
TYPOGRAPHY “Making type into a picture creates enormous opportunity or the designer. When typography becomes something more than just what it says, its communicative power is dramatically increased.” TIMOTHY SAMARA A Real-World Guide to Using Type in Graphic Design: Typography Workbook, 2004, page 96
“Although software generates illusions of smooth curves and continuous tones, every digital image or mark is constructed—ultimately—from a grid of neatly bounded blocks.” ELLEN LUPTON Thinking with Type, 2012, page 151
“From an editorial perspective, two successive lines ending with hyphens is undesirable.” TIMOTHY SAMARA Design Elements, 2nd Edition, 2014, page 151
“All visual messages have a hierarchal order to the information presented, that is, an order of reading the information according to importance. It is essential for the designer to determine a logical hierarchal order for all elements within a message before beginning design.” KIMBERLY ELAM Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type, 2004, page 114
“Typeface selection is a skill that requires an awareness or trend, history, and audience. There is no right or wrong way to choose a font, but a project’s success or failure can depend heavily on the chosen typeface and how it is used.” JIM KRAUSE Idea Index, 2011, page 175
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A Dialogue Before
Critique It is important to always check pt. size, and make the leading appropriate. The main goal is to make this easy for the viewer to read. Important to go back and check for type setting details after you get the layout and overall composition down.
After
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Elements of Style Booklet • Making text easier to understand. • Colophon: tells what types you use, and who designed it (me), and when. • Cover might need to be a tiny bit larger. • When placing intro, need to come back to original to find books, to • Odds numbers are always on the right.
Tips: • Lots of breathing room is good, makes the text not as overwhelming. • The goal is to make it easier for the viewer to read. • Don’t make table too cluttered. • Make sure leading isn’t too tight. • Link items that are alike closer together. • Consider having a different type treatment for correct answers.
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Before
After
Type Zine Progress on Layout: I first set up my grid when I began to layout my magazine. This just helped me to visual put my pictures and text. I did not go the route and just getting everything on there to see how many pages I will need and to get a general idea. Instead, I was getting stuck on one layout and messing with it until I visually liked the design. This was a mistake. I would spend to an hour trying to make a layout pleasing to me, and I think this was a huge mistake because it made the layout process twice as long.
• Maybe put more emphasis on the feature articles. • Make them have a unique and bold introduction • Longer spread
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Projects | 41
• How to handle an image heavy article, by making it a gallery-like spread. • Shows a one column grid variation.
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• Make some articles have a bold title to break up from the rest. • Full bleed image can do this
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Designed Alexandra Rosado Typefaces Avenir Chaparrel Pro Published March 2016