Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as a decorative device, unrelated to communication of information.
Character Studies | A
ABOUT THIS FONT Palatino is the name of an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1948 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company. Named after 16th century Italian master of calligraphy Giambattista Palatino, Palatino is based on the humanist types of the Italian Renaissance, which mirror the letters formed by a broad nib pen; this gives a grace reflecting Zapf’s expertise as a calligrapher. Its capital ‘Y’ is in the unusual ‘palm Y’ style, inspired by the Greek letter upsilon, a trait found in some of the earliest versions of the letter such as that of Aldus Manutius.
Ox Head
Phoenician Alef
Greek Alpha
ABOUT THIS LETTER A is the first letter and the first vowel in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The upper-case version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lower-case version can be written in two forms: the doublestorey a and single-storey. The letter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. The earliest certain ancestor of “A” is aleph, the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants.
Later Greek Alpha
Roman Ah
PA L AT I N O
Character Studies | T
PHOEN
T is the 20th letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in English language texts....Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets. The sound value of Semitic Taw, Greek alphabet Tιυ (Tau), Old Italic and Latin T has remained fairly constant,
representing [t] in each of these; and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets. In English, usually denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive , as in tart, tee, or ties, often with aspiration at the beginnings of words or before stressed vowels.In the orthographies of other languages, is often used for /t/, the voiceless dental plosive /t/ or similar sounds.
PHOEN
PHOEN
GRE
NECIAN
NICIAN
NICIAN
Cambria is a transitional serif typeface commissioned by Microsoft and distributed with Windows and Office. It was designed by Dutch typeface designer Jelle Bosma in 2004, with input from Steve Matteson and Robin Nicholas. It is intended as a serif font that is suitable for body text, that is very readable printed small or displayed on a low-resolution screen and has
even spacing and proportions. It is part of the ClearType Font Collection, a suite of fonts from various designers released with Windows Vista. All start with the letter C to reflect that they were designed to work well with Microsoft’s ClearType text rendering system. The other fonts in the same group are Calibri, Candara, Consolas, Constantia and Corbel.
EEK
CAMBRIA
Character Studies | &
ABOUT THIS FONT Baskerville is a serif typeface designed in the 1750s by John Baskerville (1706–1775) in Birmingham, England and cut into metal by John Handy. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, intended as a refinement of what are now called old-style typefaces of the period, especially those of his most eminent contemporary, William Caslon. Compared to earlier designs, Baskerville increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes, making the serifs sharper and more tapered, and shifted the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. The curved strokes are more circular in shape, and the characters became more regular. These changes created a greater consistency in size and form.
ABOUT THE AMPERSAND The ampersand is typographic shorthand for the word and. The ampersand is halfway between a ligature and a contraction, it’s a stylized depiction of the Latin word et. The ampersan is one of jauntiest characters. Font designers often use it as an opportunity to show off. Traditional ampersands thake the shape of letters et. Modern ampersands are often more stylized. Ampersands are completely correct when they’re part of a proper name. Past that, they should be handled like any other contraction: the more formal the document, the more sparingly they should be used. here and there, but not everywhere.
Character Studies | @
HISTORY
Y OF
The at sign, @, normally read aloud as “at”, also commonly called the at symbol or commercial at, was originally an accounting and commercial invoice abbreviation meaning “at a rate of ” (e.g. 7 widgets @ £2 = £14). In contemporary use, the at sign is most commonly used in email addresses and social media platform handles. It was not included on the keyboard of the earliest commercially successful typewriters, but was on at least one 1889 model and the very successful Underwood models from the “Underwood No. 5” in 1900 onward. It is now universally included on computer keyboards. ABOUT THIS FONT
Tahoma is a humanist sans-serif typeface that Matthew Carter designed for Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft first distributed it, along with Carter’s Verdana, as a standard font in the initial release of Windows 95. While similar to Verdana, Tahoma has a narrower body, smaller counters, much tighter letter spacing, and a more complete Unicode character set. Carter first designed Tahoma as a bitmap font, then “carefully wrapped” TrueType outlines around those bitmaps. Carter based the bold weight on a double pixel width, rendering it closer to a heavy or black weight.
CAROL TWOMBLY
D
uring her childhood in New England, Carol Twombly spent much of her time exploring various artistic disciplines. Settling on sculpture, Carol followed her architect brother to Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Once there, however, she decided that graphic design would be a more practical course of study. Though graphic design became her career focus, Carol hasn’t abandoned her other artistic pursuits, which include basketweaving, drawing, painting, and jewelry making. After graduation from RISD and a year spent working in a Boston graphic design studio, Carol accepted an invitation from Bigelow to join a small group of students in a newly formed digital typography program at Stanford University. The program, since discontinued, awarded Carol and her colleagues Masters of Science degrees after two years of study in computer science and typographic design. Carol began working for Adobe Systems and in 1988 became a full-time type designer in the Adobe Originals program.
During her eleven+ years with Adobe, Carol has designed a number of very popular text and display typefaces. Designs like Trajan, Charlemagne, Lithos, and Adobe Caslon are inspired by classic letterforms of the past - from early Greek inscriptions, circa 400 B.C., to William Caslon’s typefaces of the 1700s. Designs like Viva and Nueva explore new territory while maintaining traditional roots. In 1994, she received the Charles Peignot award from the Association Typographique Internationale for outstanding contributions to type design. She was the first woman and only the second American to receive this prestigious honor.
M U S E U M O F M O D E R N T YPOGRAPHY
The Museum of Modern Typography Presents:
Rosew
June 21 - Se
Museum of Mode
221 S Gra Los Angele Admission: Fr
wood
eptember 18
ern Typography
and Avenue es, CA 90012 ree to the public