Typography and typeface design

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During the days of hot metal, each type size featured its own specific design, created to improve legibility and harmony. Today, more and more new typefaces use this concept. Small caps, Capitals. Small caps italic, Capitals italic. Lowercases (with their ligatures). Lowercases (with their ligatures).

ggg 0123456 0123456

àbcdé ABCDÉGHIJKLMÔPQRS àbcdé ABCDÉGHIJKLMÔPQRST

0123456 àbcdéfghijklmnôpqrstüvwxyz&fict 0123456 àbcdéfghijklmnôpqrstüvwxyz&fiflffict $¢£¥ƒ€ geometrical

Small Medium Large

Lowercase figures recommended for text setting.

Weights: Thin, Light, Normal, Regular, Demi bold, Bold, Extrabold, Black. Widths: Condensed, Narrow, Normal, Wide, Extra wide.

Caps figures recommended for caps setting

Monetary symbols are generally designed to be the same width as figures.

Letterforms that take their structure from humanistic handwriting are more legible than purely geometrical forms. humanistic

bar, arms

cuppen step

hairline

ear

top serif

ascender

Ascenders Capitals

counter

ear

x-height stem

terminal

Descenders curve, stress

tail

lobe

descender

shoulder

Pedagogy panel: Typefaces & typography minimal knowledge. Conceptualized in 2004 by Jean François Porchez.

Typeface without serifs

Typeface with serifs.

relief greffier affluent RELIEF greffier

Les yeux du lecteur parcourent la ligne de texte par sautillement Les yeux du lecteur parcourent la ligne de texte par sautillement

Lowercase text is easier to read. Words set it capitals have less contrast, and can take 20% longer to read.

Top parts of lowercases are more distinctive: The eye focuses on the top third part of letters (such as a, n and e) during reading process.

Ligatures improve the shape of words set in small sizes.

Schematic reading process.

affluent

Typefaces with open counters are easier to distinguish.

Les yeux du lecteur parcourent la ligne de texte par sautillements successifs marqués par des fixations d’environ 0,2 à 0,35 seconde et par des aller-retours plus ou moins importants selon la dihculté de compréhension du texte.

Paragraph alignements. Ragged right jutified on the left

Book layouts need to follow Golden section and its variantes to create optically correct proportions.

Jutified Typefaces don’t grow on trees, they are all original designs.

Verdana

Georgia

Matthew Carter, 1996

Matthew Carter, 1996

Helvetica

Times

Trebuchet

Palatino

Gill sans

Garamond

Futura

Optima

Arial

Didot

Vincent Connare, 1996

Eric Gill, 1932

Paul Renner, 1928

Robin Nicholas, 1982

Stanley Morison, 1932

Hermann Zapf, 1956

Ragged left jutified on the right, (less legible).

The grid helps to create clear navigation on the page. It ensures the presence of margins, key aspect of good balance.

Centered (less legible).

Claude Garamond, 1530 into a version designed by Jean François Porchez, 2002

Hermann Zapf, 1958

Firmin Didot, 1784 into a version designed by Adrian Frutiger, 1991

jfp©2004 › typofonderie.com

Max Miedinger, 1959

The current versions of historical typefaces are interpretations (in the same way as leaders in classical music) that also encompass major contributions from their contemporary designers.


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