Typography ABCs

Michelle Siegel

Typography

Because things aren’t always #OOOOOO and #FFFFFF

So let’s begin.

Once upon a type...

Aa abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

A sans-serif face walks into the street and is hit by a Swiss Modernist truck. The carnage is grotesk... but you know, akzidenz happen!

Akzidenz-Grotesk : one of the first san serif typefaces to be widely used; it’s design influenced many later neo-grotesque typefaces.

I am not fat I am bold bcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Bold (and semibold) typefaces are used for emphasis within a hierarchy. Bold versions of traditional text fonts were added in the twentieth century to meet the need for emphatic forms.

Bb

Bob: Why the long face, Helvetica Compressed?

Helvetica Compressed: Remember that Bembo from the club last night?

She was Opentype. She let me kiss her and I contracted Monotype!

Cc

cdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Compressed : a version of letters in a typeface that have a narrower set width. Compact styles may also include the words “condensed,” or “narrow” in their names. Just don’t use your computer to condense a type design, it distorts character shapes and ruins proportions. Stick to true-drawn condensed designs.

Dd defghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Dingbat is a man of a few words Dingbat : an ornament used in typesetting to add space around an image or a symbol

Ee efghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

I like my type families how I like my vacations— e x t e n d e d.

Extended font families, which included a wide range of widths and weights, emerged in the early 1900s. Typically typeface families may include from two to thirty or more design variations; they also include all the various sizes in which some typefaces are created.

If you’re having font problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 fonts but Comic Sans ain’t one.

fghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Ff

Font : a particular size, weight, and style of a typeface. Whether made out of metal, wood, or digital data, it is a physical collection of letters, numbers, punctuation, and other symbols used to set text.

Gothic : traditionally, a black-letter typeface, however, this term also sometimes refers to a specific sub-category of black-letter typefaces, the gothic-antiqua designs. In the U.S., gothic also sometimes refers to sans serif typefaces based on sans serif designs created during the nineteenth century; many authors have theorized that this is because the sans serif designs reminded printers of black-letter typefaces.

Gg

ghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Franklin, my dear, I don’t give a gothic

Don’t stop me from having a HELVETICA good time. hijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Helvetica : a transitional sans serif typeface with a uniform, upright character. Designed

by Max Miedinger in 1957, it is one of the world’s most widely used typefaces.

Hh

Ii ijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Be bold or italic, never regular.

Italic : style of letters that usually slope to the rightused for emphasis within text. Especially among serif faces, it often employs shapes and strokes distinct from its roman counterpart.

What did a left aligned text block tell to another left-aligned text block?

Don't justify yourself! jklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Jj

Justified text : the distribution of white space in a line of type where the characters at their normal set width do not fill the entire line length

I care, therefore I kern.

Kk klmnopqrstuvwxyz

Kerning : the adjusting of horizontal space between letters to make a better fit of strokes and white space

lmnopqrstuvwxyz

Ll Flush left : a way type can be aligned in addition to flush right, centered, and justified

When nothing goes right, go left.

You don’t want to cross Page’s margins.

Margin : guidelines in a page layout software that shows a user the body copy areas. It also allows the user to indicate the dimensions.

Margins are not supposed to be printed.

mnopqrstuvwxyz

Mm

Nn

nopqrstuvwxyz

...was it the best of times, the worst of times, or just Times New Roman?

Times New Roman : a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931. One of the most widely used typefaces in history, often in Microsoft documents.

Get with the Times, New Roman.

Oo

opqrstuvwxyz

Oblique type : to be distinguished from italics, oblique letters are merely slanted versions of the standard roman form, often arrived at by mechanical means.

Life is too short to be oblique.

Pp

Point : a standard typographical measurement equal to 1/12 of a pica or 1/72 of an inch pqrstuvwxyz

What did the typographer say to the printer who wouldn’t stop talking?

“Get to the point.”

Qq

"That's what she said," he said.

qrstuvwxyz

Quotation marks set off dialogue.

Quotation marks carve out chunks of white space from the edge of the text. Hanging quotation marks make a clean edge by pushing the quotation marks into the margin. A pandemic error is the use of straight prime or hatch marks in place of apostrophes and quotation marks (also known as curly quotes, typographer's quotes, or smart quotes). Double and single quotation marks are represented with four distinct characters, each accessed with a different keystroke combination.

One font meets the other in Rome. He asks: “Hey, are you a Roman, too?”

“No,” says the other, “but I am an Italic!”

rstuvwxyz

Roman : the roman form, also called plain or regular, is the standard, upright version of a typeface. It is typically conceived as the parent of a larger family.

Rr

Ss stuvwxyz

I like my serifs classy.

A sans serif typeface is one that has no serifs: in other words, semi-structural details on the end of some letters or strokes.

The stroke weight is usually uniform and the stress oblique.

A serif typeface, on the other hand, has counterstrokes on letterforms, projecting from the main strokes.

Typeface : originally comprised a range of fonts that shared an overall design. A typeface is the artistic interpretation of a collection of alphanumeric symbols. This consists of a serires of fonts and full range of characters such as, numbers, letters, marks and punctuation.

tuvwxyz

Tt

A font walks into a bar.

The bartender says, “sorry lad, we don’t serve your type here.”

uvwxyz

Uu Univers : typeface designed by Swiss typographer Adrian Frutiger in 1957, with twenty-one versions in five weights and five widths.

Many type families grow over time, but Univers was conceived as a total system from its inception.

I can see the univers in your 'i's

vwxyz

Vv Verdana : a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation

Sorry Verdana, you’re really not my type.

Ww wxyz

And I think to myself, what a weight-width-full world.

Weight : denotes the thickness of a letter stroke of a specific font: light, extra-light, regular, book, black, medium, demi-bold, heavy, extra bold, and ultra bold.

Width : refers to whether the basic typeface has been lengthened or compressed horizontaly.

Typical width variations include Condensed, Normal, or Extended.

Mr and Mrs Eaves make the perfect pair; their x-heights match so well.

xyz

Xx x-height : the height of the body, minus ascenders and descenders, which is equal to the height of the lowercase ‘x’. It is the distance between the baseline and the mean line in a typeface.

X sure marks the spot

Yy yz

It’s fun to stay at the CYMK

CYMK : an abbreviation for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (which stands for ‘key’, because black separation keys the other three). CMYK is the four-color subtractive color model used in ‘full color’ printing processes.

ZIP file, or Zone Information Protocol : a way of compressing files into a smaller size, so they can be transferred with more ease over the Internet or any other means.

z

Because who actually knows what ZIP stands for?

Zz