Endeavor by katielee

acending new heights

TYPE CASTING BACK TO THE BASICS GROOMING THE FONT INSPIRE: URBAN TYPOGRAPHY PROJECT Fall 2014 Vol 1 No. 1

Executive Editor Leslie Knope

acending new heights

leslie.knope@endeavor.com

Managing Editor Anne Perkins

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Technology Editor Tom Haverford

tom.haverford@endeavor.com

Designer/Art Director Katie Lee Browne

katielee.browne@endeavor.com

Creative Consultant Donna Meagle

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Customer Service Representative April Ludgate april.ludgate@endeavor.com

General Manager Ron Swanson

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Advertising Director Ben Wyatt ben.wyatt@endeavor.com

OfďŹ ce Administrator Chris Traeger

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Founder Katie Lee Browne

Publication December 10, 2014 Issue1 32 pages Quarterly Publication Published By: Pawnee Publishing Co. Pawnee Publishing Co. 5555 15th Ave Pawnee, Indiana 47997

acending new heights

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TYPE CASTING BACK TO THE BASICS GROOMING THE FONT INSPIRE: URBAN TYPOGRAPHY PROJECT Fall 2014 Vol 1 No. 1

Pawnee Publishing Co. 5555 15th Ave Pawnee, Indiana 47997 Cover layout, design and image by Katie Lee Browne Magazine layout and graphics designed by Katie Lee Browne

Customer Service Call (321) 123-4567

Back to the Basics: Stopping Sloppy Typography by John D. Barry, Director of the Scripta Typographic Institute

Inspire: Urban Typography Project by Katie Lee Browne, Installation Artist

Typecasting: Into the Typeface Ratrace by Steven Brower, Director for the MFA Program for Working Professionals

Grooming the Font: Tending to the Typeface by Robert Bringhurst, Typography Historian

Letter from the Publisher Trends in Typography by Lana Luna, Designer and Blogger

Technology and Typography by Adam Prattler, Blogger and Web Designer

Alive and Well by Thomas Phinney, Product Manager at Extensis

The Artist Connection by Carolyn Knight, Blogger, Author and Designer

Establishing Your Look by Carrie Cousins, Author, and Designer

Letter from the Publisher Dare to embark on a journey with Endeavor! Endeavor is a brand new typography magazine designed to inspire you our readers and fellow creatives. Our first issue of Endeavor features articles and columns all about typography. Back to the Basics: Stopping Sloppy Typography by John D. Barry, Director of the Scripta Typographic Institute discussed the importance of carefully editing your text. Typecasting: Into the Typeface Ratrace by Steven Brower, Director for the MFA Program for Working Professionals is a piece reminding of the days before computer were used for design. Grooming the Font: Tending to the Typeface by Robert Bringhurst, Typography Historian is a look at how designers should all be responsible for maintaining and improving typefaces. Our cover story for this month, Inspire: Urban Typography Project by Katie Lee Browne, Installation Artist, is a look at how typography influences and inspires us continuously. Our columns included Alive and Well by Thomas Phinney, Product Manager at Extensis. The column will commentate on how typography is still heavily used and designed in todays world. The Artist Connection by Carolyn Knight, Blogger, Author and Designer talks about taking typography to the next level by using it to connect emotionally as an artist. The column Trends in Typography by Lana Luna, Designer and Blogger will share the current common trends in the typography movement. Technology and Typography by Adam Prattler, Blogger and Web Designer, will of course share tips relating technology and typography and how to better use technology to the create mindsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; advantage. Last but not least, Establishing Your Look by Carrie Cousins, Author, and Designer discusses how to use typography to create you own personal style. We hope you enjoy Endeavor and are inspired as a designer through it. We look forward to your feedback!

TRENDS IN TYPOGRAPHY

by Lana Luna, Designer and Blogger.

4 Typography Trends for 2014

Web design trends change from year to year – and thus, so

do the trends in the components that make them up. One of the most important components of web design is typography, and 2014 is going to bring some new, exciting and interesting trends in the way we see fonts across the web.

Handwritten fonts

Today is an age of social media – and people are communicating more rapidly, more frequently, and more publicly than ever before. With that comes the frequent need to personalize the font you are using, to make it feel as if whatever it’s saying is coming directly from a person. With this new emphasis on written communication via the web is handwritten fonts – ones without clean lines, and that often have irregularly sized letters and weights.

Flat Design Typography

2013 was a year that saw a huge rise in sites designed with flat design. That trend is going to continue into 2014, and many designers are going to favor sites that promote function over form, and place a clear emphasis on simplicity, minimalism, and intelligibility. With that continued emphasis on flat design comes the trend of choosing fonts that are easy to read, use clean lines, and even strokes. The fonts that will become popular due to flat design are ones that are sharp and crisp – but still visually interesting.

Mix & Match Typography

In 2014, some web experts are predicting that designers will begin to mix and match fonts on their sites more than ever before. While the idea might sound muddled, busy, or confusing, it can work and be really successful (especially if you avoid these comment mistakes) – like the beautiful new websites of the Brooklyn Soap Company. Combining a bunch of different fonts that go well together can create an artistic, handcrafted but still polished and purposeful look on a site.

Large Type

So this isn’t a specific typeface trend – but, rather, a stylistic one. In 2014, web designers will use bigger fonts than ever before. Falling in line with the emphasis on content over aesthetic, upping the font size on webpages ensures that the text is clear, readable and comprehensible. Because of increased screen resolutions, the standard 12 point font is no longer as readable as it was before. Designers will implement the change particularly in page headings – where large fonts can help quickly and effectively communicate the purpose of the site they are visiting. Viewers tend to make very quick, snap judgments about whether a site is worth browsing or not, and large titles can help draw them in and encourage them to explore further. Left top: Example about typographical hierarchy from designshack.net Left bottom:Example 2 about typographical hierarchy from designshack.net Right top: Example of a handwritten font from creativemarket.com Right center: Example of flat design from creativemarket.com Right bottom: Example ofmix and match design creativemarket.com

F D E A

U A N L

N M T S

Back to the Basics: Stopping Sloppy Typography There’s billboard along the freeway in San Francisco that’s entirely typographic, and very simple. Against a bright blue background, white letters spell out a single short line, set in quotation marks: “Are you lookin’ at me?” The style of the letters is traditional, with serifs; it looks like a line of dialogue, which is exactly what it’s supposed to look like. Since this is a billboard, and that text is the entire message of the billboard, it’s a witty comment on the fact that you are looking at “me” – that is, the message on the billboard – as you drive past.

But, as my partner and I drove past and spotted this billboard for the first time, we both simultaneously voiced the same response: “No, I’, looking at your apostrophe!” The quotation marks around the sentence are real quotation marks, which blend in with the style of the lettering – “typographers’ quotes,” as they’re sometimes called – but the apostrophe at the end of “lookin’” is, disconcertingly, a single “typewriter quote”, a straight up-and-down line with a rounded top and teardrop tail at the bottom. To anyone with any sensitivity to the shapes of letters, whether they know the terms of typesetting or not, this straight apostrophe is like a fart in a symphony – boorish, crude, out of place, and distracting. The normal quotation marks at the beginning and end of the sentence just serve to make the loud “blat!” of the apostrophe stand out. If that had been the purpose of the billboard, it would have been very effective. But unless the billboards along Highway 101 have become scene of an exercise in typographic irony, it’s just a big ol’ mistake. Really big, and right out there in plain sight.

by John D. Barry, Director of the Scripta Typographic Institute

maybe, maybe, they’ll become slightly less commonplace, at least for awhile.

“Typography ought to be part of the education of every graphic designer.” Typewriter quotes and straight apostrophes are actually on the wane, thanks to word-processing programs and page-layout programs that offer the option of automatically changing them to typographers’ quotes on they fly. (I’m not sure what has made the phenomenon I spotted on that billboard so common, but I’ve noticed a lot of examples recently of text where the double quotation marks are correct but the apostrophes are straight.) But those same automatic typesetting routines have created another almost universal mistake: where an apostrophe at the beginning of a word appears backwards, as a single open quotation mark. You see this in abbreviated dates (‘99, ‘01) and in colloquial spellings, like ‘em for them. The program can turn straight quotes into typographers’ quotes automatically, making any quotation mark at the start of a word into an open quote, and any quotation mark at the end of a word into a closed quote, but it has no way of telling that they apostrophe at the beginning of ‘em isn’t supposed to be a single open quote, so it changes it into one. The only way to catch this is to make the correction by hand – every time.

The Devil Is in the Details

Anemic Type

This should not be so. These fine points ought to be covered in every basic class in typography, and basic typography ought to be part of the education of every graphic designer. But clearly, this isn’t the case – or else a lot of designers skipped that part of the class, or have simple forgotten what they once learned about type. Or, they naively believe the software they use will do the job for them.

Fake caps are what you get when you use a program’s “small caps” command. The software just shrinks the full-size capital letters down by a predetermined percentage – which gives you a bunch of small, spindly-looking caps all huddled together in the middle of the text. If the design calls for caps and small caps – that is, small caps for the word but a full cap for the first letter – it’s even worse, since the full-size caps draw attention to themselves because they look so much heavier than the smaller caps next to them. (If you’re using caps and small caps to spell out an acronym, this might make sense; in that case, you might want the initial caps to stand out. Otherwise, it’s silly. (And – here comes that word again – distracting.)

This may be a particularly large-scale example, but it’s not unusual. Too much of the signage and printed matter that we read – and that we, if we’re designers or typographers, create – is riddled with mistakes like this. It seems that an amazing number of people responsible for creating graphic matter are incapable of noticing when they get the type wrong.

Maybe it’s time for a nationwide – no, worldwide – program of remedial courses in using type.

Automated Errors

As my own small gesture toward improvement, I’ll point out a couple of the more obvious problems – in the hope that

The other rude noise that has become common in the symphony hall is fake small caps. Small caps are a wonderful thing, very useful and sometimes elegant; fake small caps are a distraction and an abomination.

If it weren’t for a single exception, I’d advise everyone to just forget about the “small caps” command – forget it ever existed, and never, ever, touch it again. (The exception is

Adobe InDesign, which is smart enough to find the real small caps in an OpenType font that includes them, and use them when the “small caps” command is invoked. Unfortunately, InDesign isn’t smart enough, or independent enough, to say, “No, thanks,” when you invoke “small caps” in a font that doesn’t actually have any. It just goes ahead and makes those familiar old fake small caps.) You don’t really need small caps at all, in most typesetting situations; small caps are a typographic refinement, not a crutch. If you’re going to use them, use a real small caps: properly designed letters with the form of caps, but usually a little wider, only as tall as the x-height or a little taller, and with stroke weights that match the weight of the lowercase and the full caps of the same typeface. Make sure you’re using a typeface that has true small caps, if you want small caps. Letterspace them a little, and set them slightly loose, the same way you would (or at least should) with a word in all caps; it makes the word much more readable.

“Pay attention. Proofread. Proofread again.” Pay Attention, Now

There are plenty of other bits of remedial typesetting that we ought to study, but those will do for now. The obvious corollary to all this is, to produce well-typeset words, whether in a single phrase on a billboard or several pages of text, you have to pay attention. Proofread. Proofread again. Don’t trust the defaults of any program you use. Look at good typesetting and figure out how it was done, then do it yourself. Don’t be sloppy. Aim for the best. Words to live by, I suppose. And, certainly, words to set type by.

John D. Barry is the President of the Association Typographique Internationale and the former editor and publisher of U&lc. He writes, speaks, and consults extensively on typography, and he has won numerous awards for his book designs. He is ccurrently the Director of the Scripta Typographic Institute. He also teaches typography and design at Cornish College of the Arts. He can be contacted through his website at johndberry.com.

TECHNOLOGY AND TYPOGRAPHY by Adam Prattler, Blogger and Web Designer

Tips for Keeping it Proffessional Web design is the field that is always growing through the efforts of a ton of different developers working online at any one time. However, since it’s such a huge body of knowledge it can be hard to reign in the things you need to know about. In fact, the influx of new ideas or the coalescence of two different concepts makes it even harder to keep track.

Everything from the art of the color scheme to your choice of topography can affect how your site works with the users. Unfortunately, while there are sets of core rules, you can still grow from those foundations. This makes it almost paralyzing when you have to make a concise choice about design. But you have to make those choices because professionalism shows clear through form as well. If you’re a little confused as to what you should be doing with your site then don’t stress. The core fundamentals, no matter wherever you grow with them, are still a great place to start. You can fall back on them at any time you need. Here are some tips that can help you improve your site and even make it look a little more professional.

Figuring out Fonts, Typography, and Typefaces While it may seem a little confusing, all three of these elements differ wildly from each other. You see, a font is the package from which you pick a typeface. The typeface itself is a certain form selected from the font package. Typography is a set of rules and shapes that compose how typefaces are structured within your site. At the same time, they’re also the main means through which your written content is framed on a page.

Considering Readability

Readability is just that; the level of clearness which enables your users to browse through your content. There are many different things that dictate how readable your site really is. To jump back to something discussed earlier, color is also a huge factor in how well your users can read your site. Usually, contrasting is the best way to go about it but that can be a tricky thing to get a handle on.

do you deal with spacing in a manner that’s constructive to you? First off, your choice of font family and typeface is very important. While it may seem a little tempting to use a typeface that is fancy, users might not agree with your choice. The monospace family is a great collection of equidistant lettering that is easy to read. You should look into the different fonts that are both user created and have been standard for years. The second part of spacing will involve the placement of content. Just imagine, for a moment, a site wherein all the articles are squished together in order to make space for other elements of the page. After that, try and imagine a page wherein content is too spaced out. Both situations make for bad points of focus, which can both mess with your site’s navigation and flow. However, this problem is easily rectified through the use of equal distancing of each post.

Conclusion

When it comes to professionalism, there are other things you’ll need to learn about in order to reach that lofty height. There’s also team building, newer developing concepts, the importance of responsive design, and the looming shift in Google’s search algorithms. However, from a design standpoint, the tips above should really help you get by. Remember to consider a simplified but concise approach to your posts, as they will be able to help you a lot. Other than that, have fun with it! There’s so much more you could be learning about the huge world of design and development. You can even learn about the intricacies of remote access software or mobile development if you wanted.

Colors

A basic rule to follow when picking the right contrast is to remember brightness. For example, if your basic font color is black, then that’s a stable and good choice. However, if you mix it up with a very bright blue or yellow, you’ll get an eyestrain effect. That will repel many people from reading through a whole post so make sure to avoid that at all costs. Instead, try and think about subtle contrasts like black typefaces and grey backgrounds. Looking at these simplified combinations makes it much easier to read text and such.

Spacing

Spacing is also another thing you have to think about when it comes to readability. Even the smallest spaces like those between letters can lead to bad user experiences. So, how

INSPIRE: Urban Typography Project by Katie Lee Browne, Installation Artist

Inspire

is a conceptual typography installation that gives voice to how inattentiveness may affect lack of enthusiasm––in an indirect but surprising way.

Design Team

Katie Lee Browne: I came up with the installation concept for “Inspire”. I choose the typeface, pixel, found and purchased materials, built the structure, installed the project, designed and set up the display table and Shaina Lilly: aided me in installing the finished letters in the student center. Grant Neilson: gave me use of the area in the student center in order to display my installation project.

Project Brief Situation Since the beginning time, Typography surrounds us: it informs us; it inspires us - from signs on the side of the road to works of art. The typography that is a fundamental part of our lives today is the culmination of innovation, it is the inspiration of the modern world. However, often we are unaware of the impact that typography has on our everyday lives, we are oblivious to its roots, its existence and its purpose. The purpose of this urban installation project is to draw attention to the presents and purpose of typography, and how it can inspire our lives. Investigation Type’s key role in communication means that it can often be tied to a specific event in history or cultural epoch. Type occupies a formal role in the recording of history. I began by researching old historical documents. St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States, and therefore has some of the oldest documents. I discovered old handwritten contracts, maps, city ordnances, hotel menus and protest signs, all from different centuries, with different typefaces, different purposes, but one common thread, they all have the ability to inspire. Throughout history, even though the original intended use for each of the items is over and done, the words, the beautiful typography, still has the ability to inspire, even today. Insight The research helped me to gain a better understanding and appreciation of typography. I enjoyed being able to share my project with others and share about what typography is and how it can inspire us. Idea I choose the word “inspire” because I truly feel that typography has the ability to inspire us. Typography inspires. Typography should instill a desire to learn, to create, to move in a direction. When we look at a word, our first instinct is to read that word. But before we even have a chance to read the word, typography has already begun its inspiring work. And

typography impacts the way that we view that word, and what we in turn do with that word. It inspires the way we begin to turn the word in our mind without even realizing it. Typography acts us so much more than we realize. I choose to use coffee cups as a pixel because coffee gives us energy to be creative, productive, innovative, inspired. Materials and Budget Green PVC Coated Steel Perimeter Fencing - $10.87 Coffee Cups with lids and sleeves - 105 - $34 Erasers - 2 packs of 100 - $2 Recycled paper - 315 sheets - Free Zipties - 100 - $2.74

“The word “inspire” means “fill with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative”.” Process The Concept The word “inspire” means “fill with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative”. Inspire is a conceptual typography installation that gives voice to how inattentiveness may affect lack of enthusiasm––in an indirect but surprising way. The Typeface I studied and tested a considerable amount of different typefaces before I settled on the typeface Single Sleeve. I choose the typeface Single Sleeve because I wanted it to be legible, cohesive with the theme ad well as fit within the space constraints. I was very happy with the way the typeface was displayed in the final project. The Pixel I decided that I wanted to use coffee cups as my pixel because coffee gives us energy to be creative, productive, innovative, inspired. The create challenge was to find a way to fasten the cups and create legible letters. I brainstorms several different ideas, and finally decided that securing the cups with wire would be the best course of action. Prepping the Materials I found Green PVC Coated Steel Perimeter Fencing on sale which I cut the top and the bottom off of using wire cutters. I also purchased small erasers which I would used to secure the cups to the wire. I poked holes through the erasers and the center of the bottom of the coffee cups using an ice pick. Creating the Grid I created a grid by scaling the typeface to the appropriate size and created circles to represent the pixels in Adobe Illustrator. I then printed the grid so I would be able to

“this Project was inspiring and Facinating.”

“fonts can [spark] ideas, we ‘breathe’ in and process the ideas society gives us.” 11

correctly form the letters. Constructing the Letters I gridded each letter, measured and cut the correct length of wire, and then placed a coffee sleeve on the coffee cup, fit hole in the bottom of the coffee cup into to producing piece of wire, secured with and eraser, stuffed with 3 pieces of paper and then placed the lid on the coffee cup. I repeated the process until all the protruding wires were covered.

were positive and insightful. Everyone I spoke to enjoyed the project, even before they knew that I had created it. I was able to speak to a number of student about the impact of typography on our everyday live and how it has the ability to influence and inspire us. It was very encouraging to see and hear such positive responses to the project and see the inspiration that came from it.

Installing Inspire I installed the letters with the help of Shaina Lilly. We used zip ties to secure the wire frames of each letter to the banister and wires along the landing in the Ringhaver Student Center. The Inspire Installation project remained up in the student center for 48 hours. I also set up a display table with information about the project as well as a feedback form. I was able to interact with several students about the project as well. They were very inquisitive about the project and about typography as a whole. On the whole, I received positive feedback.

Katie Lee Browne is an art student at Flagler College, pursuing her B.A. in Graphic Design. Her work can be found at katieleeartanddesign.blogspot.com

Inspire lead visitors on a thought-provoking journey through a popular urban site. Inspire lead visitors on a thought-provoking journey through a popular urban site, the Ringhaver Student Center. Using coffee cups as pixels and the site as canvas, Inspire, designed in a fluid style, evoked creative energy and innovative thoughts.

Challenges

There were several challenges during this project. The first was that the project was intended to be a group project. I was unable to participate in it as such, so I choose to complete it without a team. Thus, the challenge for me was to decide on a project that was unique and engaging as well as practical for me to execute without a team to assist. Another challenge was that I was unable to participate in the Art Walk festival, which was the original date of the installation project. I found a second location, and was able to install my project in the Ringhaver Student Center for 48 hours. I believe that this location actually better suited my project then I thought originally because it was impactful and meaningful for college students. Yet a third major challenge was taking video and photographs of the process. I had the idea to set up my computer to video record the whole process, which in the end work out beautifully. I do wish I had someone to take better photo graphs of the process and the final product, but I was unable to do that myself.

Effectiveness

I believe that the Inspire Urban Typography Installation Project was a success. The reactions I received form the audience, both in person and through the feedback form

Left top: Quote from audience Left Center: Image of INSPIRE installation project from Browne Left Bottom left: Feedback from audience. Left bottom right: Katie Lee in process from Browne Above: Image of Katie Lee Browne from Browne

Alive and Well

by Thomas Phinney, Product Manager at Extensis

How to Explain Why Typography Matters

"What do you do?" "I’m a typographer."

"Oh, you’re a topographer. So does that mean you have a geology background, or you mostly work with maps?" "Erm, not exactly. I’m a typographer, I work with fonts." "Funds? Like an investment banker?" If you are a designer who cares about typography, odds are that you regularly try to explain to somebody–whether a client or someone at a party–why anybody should care about typography. Web designers are beginning to face these same questions that have long plagued graphic designers, thanks to new Web technologies such as @font-face and CSS3 typography features. In the past decade, awareness of fonts and typography has become a bigger part of mainstream culture than it once was, thanks to such things as Gary Hustwit’s documentary film Helvetica, frequent news coverage of people who hate Comic Sans and type designer Matthew Carter winning a MacArthur “genius” grant. But all too often one is met with a blank look and/or confusion as to why anyone would bother about such things. Having encountered this regularly in my professional career as a typographer, I thought I’d share some of the ideas, arguments and information I’ve marshaled over the years: explaining branding, analogies about film, fashion and furniture, and summarizing recent research. Why care about typography and fonts at all? The branding argument is an easy one to make. The brand is the unique personality that identifies a product, service, person or place. Design gives us the visual instantiation of a brand. The selection of typefaces and the arrangement of them can be as important as the use of color, images or abstract graphics in creating a brand, and this is usually easy to explain. But wait, your client says, “I already have a logo. Why worry about fonts and typography everywhere else?” New York-based designer James Puckett had a great explanation when we discussed the issue on Typophile.com: “I always tell people that the difference between good typography and [bad typography] is the difference between work that looks professional and work that looks like someone threw it together in MS Word. One reason Apple’s stores look so good is the careful and consistent application of [the typeface] Myriad. But Kmart’s careless mashup of Helvetica, Gill Sans, News Gothic and Gotham looks like, well, Kmart.” OK, so being consistent is good, but why not just be consistent with Times or Courier? Why do people keep designing

"new fonts anyway, don’t we have enough already? Hasn’t everything already been invented by now? Typography is like fashion, or furniture. With rare functional exceptions, the world doesn't “need” new clothing or furniture designs, but people want to look different or evoke a particular feeling or fit with a particular “look,” and there are trends and styles. While true innovation is rare, people consistently come up with variations on existing themes, or combine existing elements in new ways, whether in type design, clothing or furniture. Typefaces, too, are artifacts that can be aesthetically pleasing and functional at the same time. A great chair is not only visually attractive, but comfortable to sit in; a great typeface can be pleasing to the eye, and perform other functions as well, such as being legible for printing a newspaper, or on screen at body text sizes. Like furniture and clothing design, type design is a craft, blending art and science. “Sure, that’s all very well, but I hardly notice the difference between this Aerial and Gill Sans, and I’m sure my customers won’t either. Same with all these fancy features you talk about, like ligatures and old-fashioned numbers.” It would be great to answer this objection by quoting differences in reading speed and comprehension from good typography. But it turns out that even aesthetically unappealing choices rarely make a difference in those kinds of objective measures. One has to go to serious extremes to have a major impact on such variables. Even so, as psychiatrist/philosopher Paul Watzlawick said (oft-quoted by Erik Spiekermann and others), “One cannot not communicate.” Applied to typography, this suggests that even using system fonts and default settings in Microsoft Word is a choice that has an effect. Viewers don’t have to be consciously aware of the details to experience the collective impact of typography. Even if the effective communication of the typography is “this is a typical office document.” That is a statement in itself, and one that can matter—particularly if the desired communication is “this is a menu from a fun restaurant.” Once clients or acquaintances are convinced that typography matters, often they want to do things that we might consider, well, cheesy. Or at least excessive. In an online discussion, Italian designer Andrea de Franco observed, “There’s a general urge for something that shouts the communication as loud as possible, confusing accessibility and clarity with mere visual pollution.” Of course, there is a place for evocative typography, but unless one is being deliberately campy, there are limits. So how does typography communicate without people noticing typography? It’s like watching a film: The average movie-goer knows little or nothing about camera movement

and film editing, and rarely consciously notices these things, yet directors can still affect viewers by using these techniques. Similarly, people can be affected by good typography without being actively aware of it. Yet if good typography doesn’t affect reading speed or comprehension, what difference does it make, and how do we know? More sophisticated research techniques are beginning to show how good typography affects a reader’s mood and even performance on other tasks. Microsoft may not have a great rep with creative professionals, but they deserve props for having Kevin Larson, a cognitive psychologist on staff who focuses solely on reading, fonts and typography. Microsoft sponsors all sorts of research in this area by Larson and others, notably the set of studies by Larson, Hazlett, Chaparro and Picard published as “Measuring the Aesthetics of Reading,” results of which were first presented at the ATypI conference in Helsinki in 2005, and later published in 2006. In short, they found two ways to measure the impact of good versus bad typography. One was “reduced activation in the corrugator muscle” (people frowned less), and the other was “improved performance on creative cognitive tasks” tackled after reading. Again, this was with documents that did not produce differences in reading speed or comprehension. Until not long ago, most research on typography, and especially research on legibility in type design, was lacking. Luckily, there is a whole new wave of psychologists and typographers doing serious experimental research on the effects of good typography, and even what constitutes good typography or legible typeface design, and doing it in ways that are not leading to ridicule from typographers and type designers. Sofie Beier, for her PhD at the Royal College of Art in London, has done some fabulous research (published as a paper with Larson in Information Design Journal, 2010) on designing letterforms for legibility. Cognitive psychologist Dawn Shaikh, who has an extensive background in typography and legibility research, is now a user experience researcher at Google. Other recent Micosoft-sponsored research looks at new ways of measuring eye fatigue during reading, which also seems likely to show dividends from good typography. The orbicularis oculi is the big muscle around the eye that we use for blinking and squinting, and hooking sensors up to it during reading allows measurement of what we might think of as eyestrain. Initial results from this line of research tell us that black on white text is more legible than gray on gray, and also that twelve point text is usually better than nine point. I like to cite these points because they support my own pro-legibility prejudices, but I will be the first to note that they do not necessarily mesh with current typographic fashion, especially in Web design. Orbicularis research notwithstanding, as best as we can tell, most of what passes for typographic wisdom has a strong basis, not only in the tradition and culture of typography and design, but even in recent science. Many years ago I found it frustrating to justify why typography matters, but today I relish it.

Above: Typography poster by Tom Jaeger from serialthriller.com Right: A Piacenza, Sede Ediprima, 2011 by David Groppifrom davidegroppi.com

TYPE CASTING

by Steven Brower, Director for the MFA Program for Working Professionals.

Into the Typeface Ratrace.

My first job in book design was at New American Library, a publisher of mass-market books. I was thrilled to be hired. It was exactly where I wanted to be. I loved the written word, and viewed this as my entrance into a world I wanted to participate in. Little did I suspect at the time that mass-market books, also known as “pocket” books (they measure approximately 4” x 7”, although I have yet to wear a pocket they fit comfortably into), were viewed in the design world as the tawdry stepchild of true literature and design, gaudy and unsophisticated. I came to understand that this was due to the fact that mass-market books, sold extensively in supermarkets and convince stores, had more in common with soap detergent and cereal boxes than with their much ore dignified older brother, the hardcover first edition book. Indeed, the level of design of paperbacks was as slow to evolve as a box of Cheerios. On the other hand, hardcover books, as if dressed in evening attire, wore elegant and sophisticated jackets. Next in line in terms of standing, in both literature and design worlds, was the trade paper edition, a misnomer that does not refer to a specific audience within an area of work, but, rather, to the second edition of the hardcover, or first edition, that sports a paperbound cover. Trade paperbacks usually utilize the same interior printing as the hardcover, and are roughly the same size (generally, 6” x 9”). Mass-market books were not so lucky. The interior pages of the original edition were shrunk down, with no regard for the final type size of the eyes of the viewer. The interiors tended to be printed in cheap paper stock, prone to yellowing over time. The edges were often dyed to mask the different grades of paper used. The covers were usually quite loud, treated with a myriad of special effects ( i. e., gold or silver foil, embossing and de-bossing, spot lamination, die cuts, metallic and Day-Glo pantone colors, thermography, and even holography), all designed to jump out at you and into your shopping cart as you walk down the aisle. The tradition of mass-market covers had more in common with, and, perhaps, for the most part is the descendant of, pulp magazine covers of earlier decades, with their colorful titles and over-the-top illustrations, than that of its more stylish, larger, and more expensive cousins.

by hand, which created less distortion but still odd-looking faces. Once, I was instructed by the art director to cut the serifs off a

face, to suit his whim. It’s a good thing there is no criminal prosecution for type abuse.

The art director usually commissioned the art for these titles. Therefore, the job of the designers was to find “appropriate” type solutions that worked with these illustrations to create the package. It was here that I learned my earliest lessons in the cliches of typography. Mass-market paperbacks are divided into different genres, district categories that define their audience and subject matter. Though they were unspoken rules, handed down from generation to generation, here is what I learned about type during my employ: Genre Western Romance Science Fiction African (in spite of the fact that the typeface is of German origin) Mystery Children’s Nonfiction Horror Humor/Teen titles

What I Learned

And so it went. Every month, we were given five to six titles we were responsible for, and every month, new variations on old themes hung up on the wall. For a brief period I was assigned all the romance titles, which, themselves, were divided into subgenres (historical, regency, contemporary, etc). I made the conscious decision to use script and cursive type, but I would use better script and cursive type, so distinctive, elegant, and beautiful that I, or anyone else, would recognize the difference immediately. (When, six months after I left the lob, I went to view my achievements at the local K-Mart, I could not pick out any of my designs from all the rest on the bookracks.)

There, type was always condensed or stretched so the height would be greater in a small format. The problem was that the face itself became distorted, as if it was put on the inquisitionist rack, with the horizontals remaining “thick”

Soon after, I graduated to art director of a small publishing house. The problem was, I still knew little of and had little confidence in, typography. However, by this time I knew I knew little about typography. My solution, therefore, was to created images that contained the type as an integral part of the image, in a play on vernacular design, thereby avoiding the issue entirely. Thus began a series of collaborations with talented illustrators and photographers, in which the typography of the jacket was incorporated as part of the illustration. Mystery books especially lent themselves well to this endeavor. A nice thing about this approach os that it has a

So, when I made my entry into the elite world of literature, I began in the “bullpen” of a mass-market house. I believed I would be afforded a good opportunity to learn something about type and image. Indeed, in my short tenure there, I employed more display typefaces in a year and a half than I will in the rest of my lifetime. And, I abused type more than I even dreamed possible.

and the verticals thinning out. Back then, when type was “spec’d” and sent out to a typesetter, there was a standing order at the type house to condense all type for our cpm[any 20 percent. Sometimes, we would cut the type and extend it

certain informality and familiarity with the audience. It also made my job easier, because I did not have to paste up much type for the cover (as one had to do back in the days of t-squares and wax), since it was, for the most part, self-contained within the illustration. This may seem like laziness on my part, but hey, I was busy. Eventually, my eye began to develop, and my awareness and appreciation of good typography increased. I soon learned the pitfalls that most novice designers fall into, like utilizing a quirky novelty face does not equal creativity and usually calls attention to the wrong aspects of the solution. The importance of good letterspacing became paramount. Finding the right combination of a serif and sans serif face to evoke the mood of the material within was now my primary concern. The beauty of a classically rendered letterform now moved me, to quote Eric Gill as much “as any sculpture or painted picture.” I developed an appreciation for the rules of typography.

The Rules

As I’ve said, it is a common mistake among young designers to think a quirky novelty face equals creativity. Of course, this could’t be farther from the truth. If anything, for the viewer, it has the opposite of the intended effect. Rather than being the total sum of individual expression, it simply calls attention to itself, detracting from, rather than adding to, the content of the piece. It is no substitute for a well-reasoned conceptual solution to the design problem at hand. As a general rule, no more than two faces should be utilized in any given design, usually the combination of a serif face and a san serif face. There are thousands to choose from, but I find I have reduced the list to five or six in each category that I have used as body text throughout my career:

Serif Bodoni Caslon Cheltenham Garamond Sans Serif Franklin Gothic Futura Gill Sans News Gothic Trade Gothic You should never condense or extend type. As I stated, this leads to unwanted distortions. Much care and consideration went into the designs of these faces, and they should be treated with respect. There are thousands of condensed faces to choose from without resorting to the horizontal and vertical scale functions. Do not use text type as display. Even though the computer will enlarge the top beyond the type designer’s intention, this may result in distortions. Do not use display type as text. Often, display type that looks great large can be difficult to read when small.

Do not stack type. The result is odd-looking spacing that looks as if it is about to tumble on top of itself. The thinness of the letter I is no match for the heft of the O sitting on top of it. As always, there are ways to achieve stacking successfully, but this requires care. Also, as I noted, much care should be given to letterspacing the characters of each word. This is not as simple as it seems. The computer settings for type are rife with inconsistencies that need to be corrected optically. Certain combinations of letterforms are more difficult to adjust than others. It is paramount that even optical (as opposed to actual) spacing is achieved, regardless of the openness or closeness of the kerning. It helps if you view the setting upside down, or backwards on a light box or sun-filled window, or squint at the copy to achieve satisfactory spacing.

“[There] is no substitute for a well-reasoned conceptual solution to the design problem at hand.” I would caution you in the judicious use of drop shadows. Shadows these days can be rendered easily in programs such as Adobe’s Photoshop and Illustrator, and convincingly, too. The problem is, it is so easily done that it is overdone. Thus, the wholesale usage of soft drop shadows has become a typographic equivalent of clip art. Viewers know they have seen it before. Rather that being evocative, it mainly evokes the program it was created in. Hard drop shadows, ones that are 100 percent of a color, are easily achieves in Quark and placed behind the main text. This method is generally employed when the main text is not reading against the background, because of a neutral tone or an image that varies on tone from dark to light. The handed-down wisdom is: If you need a drop shadow to make it read, the piece isn’t working. These solid drop shadows always look artificial, since, in reality, there is no such thing as a solid drop shadow. There should be a better solution to readability. Perhaps the background or the color of the type can be adjusted. Perhaps the type should be paneled or outlined. There are an infinite number of possible variations. If you must use a solid drop shadow, it should never be a color. Have you ever seen a shadow in life that is blue, yellow, or green? It should certainly never be white. Why would a shadow be 100 percent lighter than what is, in theory, casting a shadow? White shadows create a hole in the background, and draw the eye to the shadow, and not where you want it to go: the text. Justified text looks more formal than flush left, rag right. Most books are set justified, while magazines are often flush left, rag right. Centered copy will appear more relaxed then asymmetrical copy. Large blocks of centered type can create odd-looking shapes that detract from the copy contained within. Another thing to consider is the point size and width of body copy. The tendency in recent times is to make type smaller

rand smaller, regardless of the intended audience. However, the whole purpose of text is that it be read. A magazine covering contemporary music is different from the magazine for The American Association of Retired Persons. It is also common today to see very wide columns of text, with the copy set at a small point size. The problem is that a very wide column is hard to read because it forces the eye to move back and forth, tiring the reader. On the other hand, a very narrow measure also is objectionable, because the phrases and words are too cut up, with the eye jumping from line to line. We, as readers, do not read letter by letter, or even word by word, but, rather, phrase by phrase. A consensus favors an average of ten to twelve words per line.1 Lastly, too much leading between lines also makes the reader work too hard jumping from line to line, while too little leading makes it hard for the reader to discern where one line ends and another begins. The audience should always be paramount in the designer’s approach, and it is the audience – not the whim of the designer, or even the client – that defines the level of difficulty and ease with which a piece is read. As Eric Gill said in 1931, “A book is primarily a thing to be read.”2

type designer whose work appears regularly in Emigre, concurs: “Good designers can make use of almost anything. The typeface is the point of departure, not the destination.” Note the caveat “almost.” Still, bad use of the good type is much less desirable than good use of bad type. When I first began publishing, a coworker decided to let me in on the “secrets” of picking the appropriate face. “If you get a book on Lincoln to design”, he advised, “look up an appropriate typeface in the index of the type specimen book.” He proceeded to do so. “Ah, here we go – ‘Log Cabin!’” While, on the extremely rare occasion, I have found this to be a useful method, it’s a good general rule of what not to do. Notes 1. Eric Gill, “An Essay on Typography” (Sheed and Ward, 1931), p. 136; (Godine, 1988). 2 and 3. Richard Hendel, On Book Design (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

A final consideration is the size of type. As a rule of thumb, mass-market books tend to be 8 point for reasons of space. A clothbound book, magazine, or newspaper usually falls into the 9.5 point to 12 point range. Oversized art books employ larger sizes – generally, 14 point to 18 point or more. Choosing the right typeface for your design can be time-consuming. There are thousands to choose from. Questions about. Is the face legible at the setting I want? Does it evoke what I want it to evoke? Is it appropriate to the subject matter? There are no easy answers. When a student of mine used Clarendon in a self-promotion piece, I questioned why he chose a face that has 1950s connotations, mainly in connection with Reid Miles’ Blue note album covers. He answered, “Because I thought it was cool.” I lectured him profusely on selecting type simple based on its “coolness”. Later, I relayed the incident to Seymour Chwast, of the legendary Pushpin Group (formerly Pushpin Studios). He observed that Clarendon is actually a Victorian face, which he and his peers revived as young designers in the 1950s. When I asked him why they chose to bring this arcane face back to life, he replied, “Because we thought it was cool.”

Steven Brower is the Director for the MFA Program for Working Professionals. He also works as an assistant professor at Marywood University and continues to work as the Freelance Art Director for the National Magazine. His work appears regularly in international and national design annuals and books on design, and he writes for several publications, and he has been awarded numerous awards for is efforts, including being honored by the AIGA, the Art Directors Club, the American Center for Design and the Type Directors Club. His website is stevenbrowerdesign.com.

Breaking the Rules

Of course, there are always exceptions to the rules. An infinite number of faces can be used within one design, particularly when you employ a broadside-style type solution, a style that developed with the woodtype settings of the nineteenth century. Another style, utilizing a myriad of faces, is that influenced by the Futurist and Dada movements of the early twentieth century. As Robert N. Jones stated in an article in the May 1960 issue of Print magazine: “It is my belief that there has never been a typeface that is so badly designed that it could not be handsomely and effectively used in the ads of the right…designer.”3 Of course, this was before the novelty type explosion that took place later that decade, and, again, after the advent of the Macintosh computer. Still, Jeffery Keedy, a contemporary

Above: Image of Steven Brower from flickr.com Top Left: Gold foil, a material Brower used to create to covers of mass-market books from simplestories.com Bottom Left: Example of bookcovers from flickr.com. Top Right: Typesetter tool that was used to set type before computers were widely used in graphic design from freeimages.com.

The Artist Connection

Carolyn Knight, Blogger, Author and Designer

When Typography Speaks Louder Than Words

Clever graphic designers love to use typography to explore the interaction between the look of type and what type actually says. In communicating a message, a balance has to be achieved between the visual and the verbal aspects of a design. Sometimes, however, designers explore the visual aspect of type to a much greater extent than the verbal. In these cases, the visual language does all the talking. This article explores when the visual elements of typography speak louder than words.

The role — and, in fact, the obligation — of the designer in establishing a tone that adds meaning to the verbal message is a matter of regular debate. Many graphic designers and academics argue that the designer has a responsibility to add “flavor” to their work, not only helping to convey and enhance meaning, but also making the message enjoyable and encouraging to “read” and also memorable.

Cal Swan, author of Language and Typography, makes this point well when he says, “These two distinct areas often come together in practice as there is clearly a very strong relationship between the conception of the words as a message and their transmission in visible form.” To avoid any misunderstanding, let’s clarify what the terms “visual language” and “verbal language” mean. In professional graphic design, visual language refers to the meanings created by the visual appearance of both text and image. In this article, the term “visual language” refers to the character and significance created by carefully selected typography. Verbal language is the literal meaning of words, phrases and sentences.

Manipulating Feelings and Reactions

The visual language established when designing with type can bring into play not only emotions, but also physical responses. The following examples are simple illustrations of the varied and emotive effects and highly dominant control that can be achieved by changing the visual language of a message, while still presenting the same verbal language.

Making The Most Of Visual Language

Verbal language is often used to inspire and shape design and typography in order to get a message across, with the goal being to make the most of the viewer’s reaction. Carefully mixing a design’s implication with literal meaning can lead to a memorable outcome. The following designs are great examples of the effects that can be achieved by employing verbal language that has helped to inspire a visual treatment. Typography is used to communicate tone of voice, personality, age, gender and mood, and it can be easily manipulated. Judging simply by the font, tone can shift with a simple change of typeface.

The Power Of Typography Cannot Be Underestimated Typographic treatment works alongside verbal language to create, enhance and alter meaning. While the aesthetic value of design is always important, the significance of type in influencing meaning should not be underestimated.

Left: The Worst Mistake by Peter Kowalski from designincstudios.com

Typographical Print by Bryony Gomez-Palacio from underconsideration.com

Establishing Your Look by Carrie Cousins, Author, and Designer

The Three Levels of Typographic Hierarchy

One of the most important elements for people looking at

anything you design is the type. It needs to be clear and readable and it should direct users through a design, from most important elements to least. And that, in a nutshell, explains typography hierarchy. But to really master the art of type, you need to understand how to layer type throughout a design to achieve maximum impact. Read on to learn how to master typography hierarchy and create effective type in every project. Typographic hierarchy is another form of visual hierarchy, a sub-hierarchy per se in an overall design project. Typographic hierarchy presents lettering so that the most important words are displayed with the most impact so users can scan text for key information. Without typographic hierarchy, every letter, every word and every sentence in a design would look the same. Can you imagine reading something where everything is the same font and size and color? Where do you start? How do you know what matters most?

work best when applied to text of the same size and typeface used in the tertiary level. Effects are used sparingly and for only a few words in sequence. Examples of other levels include links that are underlined, bold words for impact or italics or color for emphasis.

Conclusion Chances are you design with some sort of typographic hierarchy even without thinking about it. But considering how type will align in a big picture way can improve your overall design. Use typographic hierarchy to add emphasis, impact and create calls to action that users can see and react to quickly. Remember to think about readability, scanability and overall comprehension when making decisions about a typeface, size and effects applied to it. Your readers (or users) will thank you.

Typographic hierarchy creates contrast between elements. Designers achieve this through the use of typefaces, size, weight, capital and lowercase letters, bold or italics, orientation and color. Combinations of those design tools are used to create type that falls into distinct layers.

Primary Level

The primary level of typography is all of the big type. It’s headlines and decks – also known as “furniture” – that draw readers into the design. This is the biggest type in the design (unless you are using typographic art).

Secondary Level

The secondary level of typography are the nuggets of scannable information that help readers stay with the design. This includes elements such as subheads, captions, pull quotes, infographics and other small blocks of text that add information to the primary level of text. The design of these text blocks is on the large side, but typically much smaller than lettering in the primary level of typography.

Tertiary Level

The tertiary level of typography is the main text of your design. It is often some of the smallest type in the design, but it needs to be large enough to be completely readable by all potential users. The typeface should be simple and consistent in design, spacing and overall usage.

Other Levels

The other levels of typography include effects applied to type in the tertiary level for small areas of impact. Effects such as bolding, italics, underlining and color can bring attention to specific areas of the main text. These effects

Grooming The Font by Robert Bringhurst, Typography Historian

Tending to the Typeface

Writing begins with the making of meaningful marks. That

is to say, leaving the traces of meaningful gestures. Typography begins with arranging meaningful marks that are already made. In that respect, the practice of typography is like playing the piano – an instrument quite different from the human voice. On the piano, the notes are already fixed, although their order, duration and amplitude are not. The notes are fixed but they can be endlessly rearranged, into meaningful music or meaningless noise. Pianos, however, need to be tuned. The same is true of fonts. To put this in more literary terms, fonts need to be edited just as carefully as texts do – and may need to be re-edited, like texts, when their circumstances change. The editing of fonts, like the editing of texts, begins before their birth and never ends. You may prefer to entrust the editing of your fonts, like the tuning of your piano, to a professional. If you are the editor of a magazine or the manager of a publishing house, that is probably the best way to proceed. But devoted typographers, like lutenists and guitarists, often feel that they themselves must tune the instruments they play.

Legal Considerations Check the license before tuning a digital font. Digital fonts are usually licensed to the user, not sold outright, and the license terms vary. Some manufacturers claim to believe that improving a font produced by them is an infringement of their rights. No one believes that tuning a piano or pumping up the tires of a car infringes on the rights of the manufacturer – and this is true no matter whether the car or the piano has been rented, leased or purchased. Printing type was treated the same way from Bí Shēng’s time until the 1980s. Generally speaking, metal type and phototype are treated that way still. In the digital realm, where the font is wholly intangible, those older notions of ownership are under pressure to change. The Linotype Library’s standard font license says that “You may modify the Font-Software to satisfy your design requirements.” FontShop’s standard license has a similar provision: “You do have the right to modify and alter Font Software for your customary personal and business use, but not for resale or further distribution.” Adobe’s and Agfa Monotype’s licenses contain no such provision. Monotype’s says instead that “You may not alter Font Software for the purpose of adding any functionality…You agree not to adapt, modify, alter, translate, convert, or otherwise change the Font Software….” If your license forbids improving the font itself, the only legal way to tune it is through a software override. For example, you can use an external kerning editor to override the

kerning table built into the font. This is the least elegant way to do it, but a multitude of errors in fitting and kerning can be masked, if need be, by this means.

Ethical & Aesthetic Considerations If it ain’t broke… Any part of the font can be tuned – lettershapes, character set, character encoding, fitting and sidebearings, kerning table, hinting, and, in an OpenType font, rules governing character substitution. What doesn’t need tuning or fixing shouldn’t be touched. If you want to revise the font just for the sake of revising it, you might do better to design your own instead. And if you hack up someone else’s font for practice, like a biology student cutting up at frog, you might cremate or bury the results.

“To refine the typography of a text to work your way through it line by line, putting space in here, removing it there, and repositioning errant characters one by one.” If the font is out of tune, fix it once and for all. One way to refine the typography of a text to work your way through it line by line, putting space in here, removing it there, and repositioning errant characters one by one. But if these refinements are made to the font itself, you will never need to make them again. They are done for good. Respect the text first of all, the letterforms second, the type designer third, the foundry fourth. The needs of the text should take precedence over the layout of the font, the integrity of the letterforms over the ego of the designer, the artistic sensibility of the designer over the foundry’s desire for profit, and the founder’s craft over a good deal else. Keep on fixing. Check every text you set to see where improvements can be made. Then return to the font and make them. Little by little, you and the instrument – the font, that is – will fuse, and the type you set will start to sing. Remember, though, this process never ends. There is no such thing as the perfect font.

Honing The Character Set If there are defective glyphs, mend them. If the basic lettershapes of your font are poorly drawn, it is probably better to abandon it rather than edit it. But many fonts combine superb basic letterforms with alien or sloppy supplementary characters. Where this is the case, you can usually rest assured that the basic letterforms are the workof a real designer, whose craftsmanship merits respect, and that the supplementary characters were added by an inattentive foundry employee. The latter’s errors should be remedied at once. You may find for example that analphabetic characters such as @ + ± × = . - − © are too big or too small, too light or too dark, too high or too low, or are otherwise out of tune with the basic alphabet. You may also find that diacritics in glyphs such as å ç é ñ ô ü are poorly drawn, poorly positioned, or out of scale with the letterforms. I+2=3 <9> 6±I •2×4 a + b = c • a@b • © 2007 I+2=3 <9> 6±I • 2×4 a + b = c • a@b • © 2007 José Mendoza y Almeida’s Photina is an excellent piece of design, but in every weight and style of Monotype digital Photina, as issued by the foundry, arithmetical signs and other analphabetics are out of scale and out of position, and the copyright symbol and at sign are alien to the font. The raw versions are shown in grey, corrected versions in black.

éùôã

Frederic Goudy’s Kennerley is a homely but quite pleasant type, useful for many purposes, but in Lanston’s digital version, the letterforms are burdened with some preposterous diacritics. Above left: four accented sorts are issued by the foundry. Above right: corrected versions. All fonts are candidates for similar improvement. Below left: four accented sorts from Robert Slimbach’s carefully honed Minion, as originally issued by Adobe in 1989. Below right: the same glyphs revised by Slimbach ten years later, while preparing the OpenType version of the face.

áèïû

If text figures, ligatures or other glyphs you need on a regular basis don’t reside on the base font, move them. For readable text, you almost always need text figures, but most digital fonts are sold with titling figures instead. Most digital fonts also include the ligatures fi and fl but not ff, ffi, fj or ffj. You may find at least some of the missing glyphs on a supplementary font (an ‘expert font’), but that is not enough. Put all the basic glyphs together on the base font. If, like a good Renaissance typographer, you use only upright parentheses and brackets (see §5.3.2), copy the upright forms from the roman to the italic font. Only then can they be kerned and spaced correctly without fuss. If glyphs you need are missing altogether, make them. Standard ISO digital text fonts (PostScript or TrueType) have 256 slots and carry a basic set of Western European characters. Eastern European characters such as ą ć đ ė ğ ħ ī ň ő ŗ ș ť ů are usually missing. So are the Welsh sorts ŵ and ŷ, and host of characters needed for African, Asian and Native American languages.

The components required to make these characters may be present on the font, and assembling the pieces is not hard, but you need a place to put whatever characters you make. If you need only a few and do not care about system compatibility, you can place them in wasted slots – e.g. the ^ < > \ | ~ ` positions, which are accessible directly from the keyboard, or slots such as ¢ ÷123 ™ 0/00 1/1, which can be reached through insertion utilities or by typing character codes or by customizing the keyboard. If you need to add many such characters, you will need to make a supplementary font or, better yet, an enlarged font (TrueType or OpenType). If these are for your own use only, the extra characters can be placed wherever you wish. If the fonts are to be shared, every new glyph should be labeled with its PostScript name and Unicode number.

“A well-made font should need little adjustment, except for refining.” Check and correct the sidebearings. The spacing of letters is part of the essence of their design. A well-made font should need little adjustment, except for refining the kerning. Remember, however, that kerning tables exist for the sake of problematical sequences such as f*, gy, “A, To, Va and 74. If you find that simple pairs such as oo or oe require kerning, this is a sign that the letters are poorly fitted. It is better to correct the sidebearings than to write a bloated kerning table. The spacing of many analphabetics, however, has as much to do with editorial style as with typographic design. Unless your fonts are custom made, neither the type designer nor the founder can know what you need to prefer. I habitually increase the left sidebearing of semicolon, colon, question and exclamation marks, and the inner bearings of guillemets and parentheses, in search of a kind of Channel Island compromise: neither the tight fitting preferred by most Anglophone editors nor the wide-open spacing customary in France. If I worked in French all the time, I might increase these sidebearings further. abc: def; ghx? klm! <<non>> abc: def; ghx? klm! <<hmm>> abç: déf; ghx? klm! <<oui>> Three options for the spacing of basic analphabetics in Monotype digital Centaur: foundry issue (top); French spacing (bottom); and something in between. Making such adjustments one by one by the insertion of fixed spaces can be tedious. It is easier by far, if you know what you want and you want it consistently, to incorporate your preferences into the font.

Refine the kerning table. Digital type can be printed in three dimensions, suing zinc or polymer plates, and metal type can be printed flat, from photos or scans of the letterpress proofs. Usually, however, metal type is printed in three dimensions and digital type is printed in two. Two-dimensional type can be printed more cleanly and sharply than three-dimensional type, but the

gain in sharpness rarely equals what is lost in depth and texture. A digital page is therefore apt to look aenemic next to a page printed directly from handset metal. This imbalance can be addressed by going deeper into two dimensions. Digital type is capable of refinements of spacing and kerning beyond those attainable in metal, and the primary means of achieving this refinement is the kerning table. Always check the sidebearings of figures and letters before you edit the kerning table. Sidebearings can be checked quickly for errors by disabling kerning and setting characters, at ample size, in pairs: 11223344…qqwweerrttyy…. If the spacing within the pairs appears to vary, or if it appears consistently cramped or loose, the sidebearings probably need to be changed. The function of a kerning table s to achieve what perfect sidebearings cannot. A thorough check of the kerning table therefore involves checking all feasible permutations of characters: 1213141516 … qwqeqrqtqyquqiqoqpq … (a(s(d(f(g(h)j)k)l … )a)s)d)f)g … -1-2-3-4-5 … TqTwTeTrTtTyTuTiToTp … and so on. This will take several hours for a standard ISO font. For a full pan-European font, it will take several days. Class-based kerning (now a standard capability of font editing software) can be used to speed the process. In class-based kerning, similar letters, such as a á â ä à å ā ă ä ą, are treated as one and kerned alike. This is an excellent way to begin when you are kerning a large font, but not a way to finish. The combinations Ta and Tä, Ti and T ï, il and íl, i) and ï), are likely to require different treatment. Kerning sequences such as Tp, Tt and f( may seem to you absurd, but they can and do occur in legitimate text. (Tpig is the name of a town in the mountains of Dagestan, near the southern tip of the Russian Federation; Ttanuu is an important historical site on the British Columbia coast; sequences such as y = f(x) occur routinely in mathematics.) If you know what texts you wish to set with a given font, and know that combinations such as these will never occur, you can certainly omit them from the table. But if you are preparing a font for general use, even in a single language, remember that it should accommodate the occasional foreign phrase and the names of real and fictional people, places and things. These can involve some unusual combinations. (A few additional examples: McTavish, FitzWilliam, O’Quinn, dogfish, jack o’-lantern, Hallowe’en.) It is also wise to check the font by running a test file – a specially written text designed to hunt out missing or malformed characters and kerning pairs that are either too tight or too loose. On pages 204 – 205 is a short example of such a test file, showing the difference between an ungroomed font and a groomed one. It is nothing unusual for a well-groomed ISO font (which might contain around two hundred working characters) to have a kerning table listing a thousands pairs. Kerning instructions for large OpenType fonts are usually stored in a different form, but if converted to tabular form, the kerning data for a pan-European Latin font may easily reach 30,000 f

pairs. For a well-groomed Latin-Greek-Cyrillic font, decompiling the kerning instructions can generate a table of 150,000 pairs. Remember, though, that the number isn’t what counts. What matters is the intelligence and style of kerning. Remember too that there is no such thing as a font whose kerning cannot be improved. Check the kerning of the word space. The word space – that invisible blank box – is the most common character in almost every text. It is normally kerned against sloping and undercut glyphs: quotation marks, apostrophe, the letters A, T, V, W, Y, and often to the numerals 1, 3, 5. It is not, however, normally kerned more than a half either to or away from a preceding lowercase f in either roman or italic. A cautionary example. Most of the Monotype digital revivals I have tested over the years have serious flaws in the kerning tables. One problem in particular recurs in Monotype Baskerville, Centaur & Arrighi, Dante, Fournier, Gill Sans, Poliphilus & Blado, Van Dijck and other masterworks in the

Monotype collection. These are well-tired faces of superb design – yet in defiance of tradition, the maker’s kerning tables call for a large space (as much as M/4) to be added whenever the f is followed by a word space. The result is a large white blotch after every word ending in f unless a mark of punctuation intervenes.

Is it east of the sun and west of the moon – or is it west of the moon and east of the sun? Monotype digital Van Dijck, before and after editing the kerning table. As issued, the kerning table adds 127 units (thousandths of an em) in the roman, and 228 in the italic, between the letter f and the word space. The corrected table adds 6 units in the roman, none in the italic. Other, less drastic refinements have also been made to the kerning table used in the second two lines.

Professional typographers may argue about whether the added space should be zero, or ten, or even 25 thousandths of an em. But there is no professional dispute about whether it should be on the order of an eighth of a quarter of an em. An extra space that large is a prefabricated typographic error – one that would bring snorts of disbelief and instantaneous correction from Stanley Morison, Bruce Rogers, Jan van Krimpen, Eric Gill and others on whose expertise and genius the Monotype heritage is built. But it is an easy error to fix for anyone equipped with the requisite tool: a digital font editor.

typesetting software takes a narrower, more stereotypical view. It recognizes only the nuclear family of roman, italic, bold, and bold italic. Keyboard shortcuts make it easy to switch from one to another of these, and switch codes employed are generic. Instead of saying “Switch to such and such a font at such and such a size,” they say, for instance, “Switch to this font’s italic counterpart, whatever that may be.” This convention makes the instructions transferable. You can change the face and size of a whole paragraph or file and the roman, italic and bold should all convert correctly. The slightest inconsistency in font names can prevent this trick from working – and not all manufacturers name their fonts according to the same conventions. For the fonts to be linked, their family names must be identical and the font names must abide by rules known to the operating system and software in use. If, for example, you install Martin Majoor’s Scala or Scala Sans (issued by FontShop) on a PC, you will find that the italic and the roman are unlinked. These are superbly designed fonts, handsomely kerned and fully equipped with the requisite text figures and small caps – almost everything a digital font should be – but the PC versions must be placed in a font editor and renamed in order to make them work as expected.

Hinting If the font looks poor at low resolutions, check the hinting. Digital hints are important chiefly for the sake of how the type will look on screen. Broadly speaking, hints are of two kinds: generic hints that apply to the font as a whole and specific hints applicable only to individual characters. Many fonts are sold unhinted, and few fonts indeed are sold with hints that cannot be improved. Manual hinting is tedious in the extreme but any good font editor of recent vintage will include routines for automated hinting. These routines are usually enough to make a poorly hinted text font more legible on screen. (In the long run, the solution is high-resolution screens, making the hinting of fonts irrelevant except at tiny sizes.)

Naming Conventions The presumption of common law is that inherited designs, like inherited texts, belong in the public domain. New designs (or in the USA, the software in which they are enshrined) are protected for a certain term by copyright; the names of the designs are also normally protected by trademark legislation. The names are often better protected, in fact, because infringements on the rights conferred by a trademark are often much easier to prove than infringements of copyright. Nevertheless there are times when a typographer must tinker with the names manufacturers give to their digital fonts. Text fonts are generally sold in families, which may include a smorgasbord of weights and variations. Most editing and

Robert Bringhurst is a writer widely known as a scholar of the native cultures of the Pacific coast in North America, and particularly of oral poetry and art of the Haida totem community. In addition, Bringhurst enjoys enormous prestige in creative writing and editorial work. He has published more than a dozen books of poetry, essays and translations. He is also one of the most famous historians of typography in the world, and volume elements of typographic style has been translated into a dozen languages.

Above: Image of Robert Bringhurst from revistaminerva.com Left: Piano from morguefile.com Center: Image of a diagramof the details of typography from ligatureloopandstem.com Right: Frog from morguefile.com Right: Folded Paper Type by Konstantin Datz from pleatfarm.com

“Typography is what language looks like.” - Ellen Lupton

Fall 2014 Vol 1 No. 1

TYPE CASTING

BACK TO THE BASICS

GROOMING THE FONT

INSPIRE: URBAN TYPOGRAPHY PROJECT