338.03 Type Journal by Erin Herndon

TYPO GRAPHY

II JOURNAL

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THOSE WHO DON’T BUILD MUST BURN.

—RAY BRADBURY Quote selected by Samantha Soper UI/UX Developer at Golfsmith International

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TYPO GRAPHY

II JOURNAL ERIN HERNDON

INTRODUCTION Being a graphic designer is largely about creative communication, unique thinking, and a having a good sense of visual design principles. Most people think of designers as simply creators of beautiful layouts and illustrations but in truth, a massive part of what we do is based in typography. Whether it is creating bold, attractive headers or refining the tiniest of details in a caption, it is all essential to making good design.

This class taught us just that; the importance of details­. Butterick’s Typography was a fantastic resource for brushing up on all the rules; with a refreshing writing style and plenty of examples, his teachings proved both memorable and valuable. However the most useful aspects of this class, by far, were the projects. They were challenging yet rewarding, and gave us a fantastic platform to practice and hone our typography skills. And finally, the classroom and critique setting solidified the value of this class, as we were given objective and constructive feedback to take with us.

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IN CLASS LECTURE NOTES

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READING ASSIGNMENTS

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PROJECTS AND EXERCISES

IN CLASS

LECTURE

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TYPOGRAPHIC REFINEMENT: THE DETAILS What is point size?

• Press printing in 1450’s Germany, led to an increase in literacy in the pre-renaissance era • French designer Pierre Simon Fournier le Jeune created the point system in 1737. The term point size originates from letterpress printing, the Point was the measure of the entire letter block. Lead type had a set of traditional type sizes form 5–72. The bigger sizes were made out of wood which withstood the weight of the press better than lead.

point size face

nick

set width

What makes a workhorse typeface?

• Type has regular weight with robust proportions. Must have at least one bold weight with notable weight contrasts and contain an italic version. Must have egible numerals and be narrow enough to fit a lot of copy in a small face

Adobe Garamond

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789

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The devil is in the details • Kering: use metric rather than optical, because metric is technically how the typographer who made the typeface meant for it to be used • Leading: 120%–140% of the point size • Line Length: 8–13 words per line • Tracking: for body text, track as needed to maintain a clean rag but never track +30 or -30. For all caps, always track out at least +10 • Dashes: Hyphens are for breaks in words, en dashes are for duration em dashes are used as a grammatic break in flow similar to a semicolon • Quotations: always make sure smart quotes are turned on.

And don’t use smart quotes instead of prime marks, which are used for measurement.

“hello” smart quotes

“hello“ dumb quotes

5’10’’

prime marks

CHOOSING TYPEFACES AND UNDERSTANDING FONTS Factors to keep in mind when choosing a font • How long is the text and what is the content about? Who is your audience? What is the format and context in which you audience will be viewing this text?

• Does the font have a full character set with different weights, italics, and numerals? Is it a web or print font?

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Where do you buy fonts? Why so expensive?

• When you buy a font, you’re purchasing a license to use it how the typographer has specified • Resources: Google Fonts, Lost Type Co-Op, League of Movable Type, Font Squirrel, Fontspring, Houe Industries, Fonts.com • In general, you want to have the minimum number of fonts installed and try to keep them organized and categorized.

• Font management program resources: FontExplorer X Pro, Suitcase Fusion 6

TYPESETTING IN INDESIGN: TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES Paragraph Styles • Help manage paragraph level attributes like leading, tabs, indents, space before and after, hyphenation and justification settings, rules above and below, bullets and numbering character color, etc.

• Control basic text settings: font, font style, size, leading, kerning, tracking and case

Character Styles • Used to style text within a paragraph, often single words or expressions such as bold text, italic text, run-in subheads, or custom bullets or numbers

Table Styles • Holds style preferences for multiple tables withing a document. It defines spaces, lines, borders, cell styling, etc.

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TYPOGRAPHY ON SCREEN What to consider for on-screen type • High contrast fonts are great for big headers but never for body text, it will not hold up with large amounts of small type • X-Height: a high x-heigh is ideal, but make sure not to use a font that goes to extremes

Futura

Century Gothic

good x-height

extreme x-height

• Character Distinction: make sure commonly mistaken letters like I, i, and l have distinctly different characteristics • Some fonts will have different optical sizes, such as a caption or body size and a specified header or larger sizes

Pairing typefaces • Avoid pairing typefaces that are too similar, you might as well just use the same typeface • Take advantage of display typefaces that are funky but well designed. They often pair well with most body text • Try using a type family that has both serif and sans serif version, which are built on the same structure • Build outward! Pick body text first, then subheads, then heads • Evaluate typefaces critically. Learn to trust your instincts. Experiment. Look and see.

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EVALUATE TYPEFACES CRITICALLY.

LEARN TO TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS.

EXPERIMENT.

LOOK AND SEE.

LECTURE NOTES

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READING

ASSIGN MENTS 12

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BUTTERICK’S PRACTICAL TYPOGRAPHY Typography in ten minutes • Body text is the most important part of a document • Point Size: 10–12 for print, 12–17 for screen • Line Spacing: 120–140% of the point size • Line Length: 45–90 characters or 2–3 lowercase alphabets • Font choice: don’t use automatic system fonts

Summary of key rules • The four most im­por­tant ty­po­graphic choices are point size, line spac­ing, line length, and font • Avoid goofy fonts, mono­spaced fonts, and sys­tem fonts, es­pe­ cially Times New Ro­man and Arial • Use curly quotes not straight quotes • Never underline except for a hyper link • Rarely use centered text • Only use true small caps • 5–12% extra tracking with all caps • If using first line intents, space in 1–4 times the point size • Always use hyphenation with justified text • Use proper ellipses, not three periods • Apostrophes point downwards • Foot and inch marks are straight

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Forward by Erik Spiekermann • Simply put, type is visible language, the arrangement of prefabricated elements on a page • “Good typography is measured by how well it reinforces the meaning of the text, not by some abstract scale of merit”

Text formatting • Never underline in a printed doc­u­ment. Ever. It’s ugly and it makes text hard to read because it’s me­chan­i­cally ap­plied by the word proces­sor. Bold and italic styles are spe­cially de­signed to match the ba­sic style of the font.

• Avoid goofy fonts at all costs. Dis­tinc­tive is fine. Goofy is not.

• Monospaced fonts are fonts where every char­ac­ter is the same width rather than pro­por­tion­ally spaced. This makes then take up a lot or room horizontally and are harder to read.

this is a Monospaced Font • Try not to use system fonts like Arial or Times New Roman, as they are overexposed and often designed for screen not print • Bold and Italic styles are mu­tu­ally ex­clu­sive. They are tools for em­pha­sis that should be used sparingly.

• Using all Caps ho­mog­en ­ izes the shapes that make letter and word forms distinguishable. Try to only use in headings or short phrases.

• Although MLA and APA require 12pt font size, it really should be much closer to 10pt or 11pt to help save paper and to make reading easier (depending on the proportions of the typeface).

When reading on a screen however, we tend to read farther away, so make the font 14pt+

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GOOD TYPOGRAPHY IS MEASURED BY HOW WELL IT REINFORCES THE MEANING OF THE TEXT.

—SPIEKERMANN

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• Try not to use too many different levels of headings. Never use more than three levels of indentation. Remember K.I.S.S. • Always add tracking to all caps titles, it increases legibility

ALL CAPITALS no tracking is hard to read

ALL CAPITALS adding tracking helps legibility

• Kern­ing is the ad­just­ment of spe­cific pairs of let­ters to im­prove spac­ing and fit. It re­duces the large gaps be­tween cer­tain let­ter pairs, mak­ing them con­sis­tent with the rest of the font.

• Typographic color can create rhythm, texture, movement and other hard to quantify characteristics.

• Turn off superscripts for Ordinals. They are tiny and make the numbered place hard to read.

• For web and email addresses that are too long to put on print, try shortening with tinyurl.com. Also make sure to use a hard like break for the URL so it doesn’t try to hyphenate • Always use real small caps

Fake Small Caps just shrinks the regular caps

Real Small Caps maintain the letter proportions

• Start with A, B, C for hierarchal headings, not I, II, III because they are easier to read at a glance • Mix­ing fonts is like mix­ing pat­terned shirts and ties—some get it, some don’t. Try to mix only for headings and with very different fonts.

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Type composition (non-alphabetic characters) • Curly quotes are for quotations, straight are for measurements • Despite what we were all taught in high school, al­ways put ex­ actly one space be­tween sentences • Only use one exclamation point per 3 pages. Exclamation points and question marks are overused • Brackets and parenthesis should never be italicized • Use the copyright symbol or word, not both • Only use ampersands when they are part of a name or a title • Always use ellipses, never 3 dots • Apostrophes always point downwards • Use glyphs for math symbols, not X’s or hyphens

Page layout • Centered text is overused. Whole para­graphs should never be cen­tered, because the lines start at different places which makes it very hard to read • When using justified text, always turn on hyphenation • A first-line in­dent and space after the paragraph are mutually exclusive. Pick one or the other. Indent should be no bigger than four times the point size.

• When it comes to margins, do not fear white space. Especially for web use. Ignore the traditional 1 inch margin rule and use what will give you the best line length.

• Body text is the most important part of any document. Tackle font, point size, leading, then line length.

• Always use system created bullets and numbering, never manual. Watch out for over large and distracting bullets

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• When making tables, make sure to give the cell generous margins, it helps with legibility • In tra­di­tional print­ing ter­mi­nol­ogy, a rule is a line; a bor­der is a box. For bor­ders, set the thick­ness be­tween half a point and one point.

• Space before and after is the best way to create contrast without being too loud or distracting.

• To assist widow and orphan control, you can link lines to keep then together. This is especially helpful when trying to keep headers together.

• Columns are an easy way to get a shorter and more leg­i­ble line length with­out hav­ing to use large page mar­gins. For a traditional letter size document, two or three columns are fine; four is too many.

Maxims of page layout • De­cide first how the body text will look • Di­vide the page into fore­ground and back­ground (hierarchy and importance) • Make ad­just­ments with the small­est vis­i­ble in­cre­ments • When in doubt, try it both ways! Some things can’t just be solved with logic or a rule, so try it out and see • Be con­sis­tent • Re­late each new el­e­ment to ex­ist­ing el­e­ments • Keep it sim­ple • Im­i­tate what you like. Why reinvent the wheel?

• Don’t fear white space

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THE PAGE IS LIKE A JIG­SAW PUZ­ZLE THAT BE­COMES MORE CON­STRAINED WITH EACH NEW PIECE

—BUTTERICK

READING ASSIGNMENTS

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Why Typography Matters: The Butterfly Ballot • Extremely close election between Bush and Gore, came down to Florida which had a horribly designed ballot • Lack of logical hierarchy • Alignment of dots to bubble with staggered arrangement creates a huge margin for error • Alignment on the right side isn’t right, left, or any aligned • Bold and all caps is asking too much of the viewer • Condensed, tight letter spacing creates a poor legibility for such wide audiences and such a neutral, normally non stylized event where legibility is essential

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Resume Battles • Grey boxes create huge distractions • Bullet points are too decorative and distracting • Huge rivers in the middle

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MY TYPE DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

BY MARTIN MAJOOR A personal account of Majoor’s type philosophy • You cannot be a good type designer if you are not a book typographer. The body text is always the most important.

• Sans Serif fonts originated in 1816, created by William Caslon • In 1928 Paul Renner designed his Futura. It was the first time a sans serif typeface was not based on the watered down classicistic letterforms of the serifs. Futura was influenced by the ideas of the Bauhaus movement and by constructivism.

• Univers, designed by Adrian Frutiger, had one strong feature that was new in type design: it was made up of an almost scientific system of 21 weights and widths that could be mixed perfectly.

• Eric Gill designed Gill Sans in 1928 based on the seriffed typefaces he cad hand-cut for years. Mixed with his seriffed version, Joanna, it creates the perfect pairing.

• Mixing serif with sans only makes sense when the seriffed typeface and the sans are designed from the same basis, or even from the same skeleton • In the 1980s that serif/sans families started to appear • “Shake hands and work together in harmony”

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TYPOGRAPHICA MEA CULPA, UNETHICAL DOWNLOADING

BY STEVEN HELLER Typeface software licenses and how they should be used • “Designers tend to respect one another’s intellectual property lines and do not as a rule engage in extreme larceny. And yet we have a skeweed sense of entitlement when it comes to type.”

• All typefaces, from almost every foundry are automatically licensed for a specific number of output devices and CPUs at one location • And there is a way to hand your design job to a service bureau without breaching the font license. You can supply your documents as EPS files or Adobe Acrobat files with fonts embedded so you don’t have to give the service bureau a copy of the font.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

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USING LAYOUT GRIDS EFFECTIVELY The easiest way to add some order to chaos • Without a layout grid, graphic elements will not properly work together and setting up each page of a document consistently will be almost impossible.

• Pay attention when choosing the type of binding to compensate for the gutter. Use wide inside margins to be safe.

• Use the rule of thirds and the Fibonacci golden spiral to help place main subject or focal points on a layout

FAMILY PLANNING, OR HOW TYPE FAMILIES WORK

BY PETER BIĽAK The history and definition of type families • Certain typefaces have included versions cut for specific point sizes with optimised letter widths and contrasts between the thick and thin parts of the letterforms.

• In 1737, Pierre Simon Fournier published a table of graded sizes of printing types, introducing the first-ever standardized system for producing and using type (right)

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• Optically-adjusted sizes for type designs made a minor comeback in the early 1990s, most notably in ITC Bodoni, featuring size-specific designs similar to those used by the types originator, Giambattista Bodoni.

• Over the years, mathematicians and typographers alike have built on the legacy of the old type designers by creating software programs to create typefaces based on a number of variables. The most successful of these creators all use the element of the brush stroke or pen stroke to help track and define each character • Individual members of the family need to share one or more attributes: optical size, weight, width, stylistic differences (sans, serif), construction differences (formal and informal)

THE FIRST THING I EVER DESIGNED: ELANA SCHLENKER AND GRATUITOUS TYPE MAGAZINE The struggles and benefits of creating a magazine • Magazines have become key portfolio pieces for young designers, the perfect medium for showcasing a range of skills.

• The U.S. lacked a graphic design-focused magazine with a more international perspective and aesthetic • It is important to trust in yourself and your abilities. You know what’s in your mind, and it might take a while to realize it in precisely the way you’ve imagined it, but trust in your instincts and give yourself the time you need to get it right.

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TRUST IN YOUR INSTINCTS AND GIVE YOURSELF THE TIME YOU NEED TO GET IT RIGHT.

—SCHLENKER

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ERIC GILL GOT IT WRONG; A RE-EVALUATION OF GILL SANS

BY BEN ARCHER A contemporary critique of the Gill Sans typeface • Gill Sans is the Helvetica of England. Gill Sans is part of the British visual heritage just like the Union Jack and the safety pin.

• Students should approach Gill Sans with caution; it is a hard typeface to use well without making considerable effort.

• Gill Sans is imperfect. Letterforms are different in certain weights. Take note of the g

• There is little form differentiation between some of the letters, namely the I, i, and l

• Monotype released the Eric Gill Series including Gill Sans Nova (a long-awaited update by George Ryan) in November 2015.

This new release now addresses several of the criticisms made.

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STRIKING DESIGN PAIRINGS WE DIDN’T EXPECT TO SEE

BY PERRIN DRUMM Some unexpected and intriguing design pairings • Page spreads that create surprising juxtapositions of designs from various places in the world and points in time • Here are some of our favorites, striking for the tone they strike, despite the decades that divide their original creation dates:

READING ASSIGNMENTS

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A TYPEFACE DESIGNED TO REVIVE THE ENDANGERED CHEROKEE LANGUAGE BY ANGELA RIECHERS The largest tribal nation gets its very own font • Designer Mark Jamra was moved by the need for a typeface that would help preserve a nation’s language and culture • He studied the Cherokee syllabary developed between 1809– 1824, along with 180 years of manuscripts provided by the Cherokee Nation and the Smithsonian Institute.

• He found by using the manuscripts as a reference, the an italic version emerged that mimicked the old handwriting that has become almost extinct.

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AN IDEA OF A TYPEFACE

BY KAI BERNAU The power of neutral typefaces • The absence of stylistic associations can help the reader to engage with the content of a text • Certain typefaces seemed to ‘age better’, or indeed age less than others: there seemed to be something about some of the big milestones of the 20th century like Times or Univers that kept them fresh after more than 50 years.

• The designer created the most neutral typeface he could imagine by tracing over and over the existing versions, each round eliminating imperfections or revealing styles.

• In the end we can not create something completely neutral, something to which none of us can attribute any qualities. But we can approximate the formal idea of neutrality to a degree • And even if some would not consider this typeface to be neutral at all — maybe it was only through this project that their own thinking about neutrality was triggered. And in that respect also the project would be a success. It is more important to ask the question than to answer it.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

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PROJECTS &

EXERCISES 38

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EXERCISE: LEGIBILITY AND READABILITY STUDY

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EXERCISE: GRID ANALYSIS

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PROJECT 1: TYPESETTING: RULES OF TYPOGRAPHY Critique • The heading, although styled bold is not eye-catching or exciting at all. Make it much larger.

• The body text with the important phrases or words in bold doesn’t really work. It was a good intention but it makes each quote hard to read because you are so focused on the bold words. It also messes up the leading so that the bold words brush the bottoms of the descenders in the above lines.

What I learned • Be wary of white text on black background, if it is too light, it can get lost and compromise legibility • Remember to hang your quotation marks, use em dashes for by lines, and italicize book titles Original/Rough Drafts

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Final Version

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PROJECT 2: A DIALOGUE Critique • Nice illustration with good use of texture, actually feels more like a book cover design though • Utilize space better. It feels like there is a page with just illustrations and a page with all the text crammed onto it. The text page could have a much more interesting layout. The pull quotes help a little, but maybe incorporate illustrations or something else to break up the text because as is, it feels daunting to read.

• Title placement seems random and awkward, the The is unnecessarily small and is brushing the to of the mountains and the sun, making it hard to read. It kind of gets lost up there.

What I learned • Watch our for vibrating edges with red text on blue background. Try changing the value of the colors.

• Don’t be afraid to make a bold title. Remember that contrasting weight is the most eye-catching, so next time use a bold title rather than just giving a large italicized one a bunch of space. Also be intentional with your placement of words.

• Break out of the grid! I know it is easy to stik within the columns but it makes for a boring layout. There are definitely times to stay in the grid, but for something so visually exciting and with very few formal rules, just go for it,

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Process work

PROJECTS AND EXERCISES

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Final Version

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PROJECT 3: ELEMENTS OF STYLE BOOKLET First Critique • There should be no color on the inside, must be just black and white. Also only 2 colors maximum on the front cover. Also make sure you have all the correct info on the cover (no section descriptions) • Good spacing and margins, makes it inviting to read • Remember to make an italicized character style for words

Second Critique • The dividing lines are a little too heavy and become distracting • The style guide seems incomplete, each style changed a bit between the style guide and the final versions. Some of the styling is inconsistent between each of the final three books

What I learned • Space is the best way to separate elements of a different content. When it is an example, I found than space before and after combined with an indent was the best way to clearly identify examples. Don’t overdo the differentiation like in the first draft (color blocks, line dividers, indentation, space before and after, and italics) • Folios: make sure to give plenty of room between the end of the body text and the folio. It should be styled differently too (at the very least, shrink the body text size by 2+ points.

• Craftsmanship can make or break your project, no matter how well it is designed on a computer.

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Individual Version: First Draft

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Individual Version: Final Draft

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Group Version: Final Draft

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PROJECT 4: TYPE ZINE Critique • Pay more attention to the captions, they shouldn’t be an afterthought. They should be consistent in style and placement with relation to the image.

• Do more concept sketches with your grid, when you need ideas for layouts with your grid, consult sketches for ideas • Experiment with more flexible grids (more columns or rows) • Headers are too boring and small even though the intention was to style consistently. Especially in longer titles, key words get lost and make the title lose its power to invite the reader into the article.

• Layouts in general are a little too consistent. The typefaces and colors will bring the magazine together for you, the challenge is to make the article spreads look different and exciting.

What I learned • Never forget about hyphenation, smart quotes, widows, orphans, or any of the details. The small stuff it important.

• Don’t be afraid to occasionally break the grid! Sometimes images wont fit perfectly, so rather than crop them, just let them break the grid.

• Put yourself in the readers shoes. I know it’s hard to detatch from a project you have been immersed in creating, but this “objective view” is so helpful. It can help you correct important organizational aspects like pacing, pagination, clarity of topics, organization and size of elements based on content, and general visual interest.

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Process work

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Zine Final Draft

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ERIN HERNDON Cal Poly SLO, Typography II, Winter 2017 TYPEFACES USED Chaparral Pro and Calibri