All Types In One Place
he f t e o p ry Sto ege Ty _ n l Col allatio t Ins
Here’s a TIP 3
Type Casting 5 Questions for the New Design Observer 11
Back to Basics: stopping sloppy Typography
13
Golden Section 17
Guide
Grooming The Font
Page
19
Art Work 25
Story of the College Type Instalation l 27 Three Essential Books Fro Type 33
Letter of the Editor/ Food for Thought 35
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Here’s a...
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Type Casting My first job in book design was at New
American Library, a publisher of massmarket books. I was thrilled to be hired. It was exactly where I wanted to be. I love 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 approxi¬mately 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 liter¬ature and design, gaudy and unsophisticated. I came to understand that this was due
to the fact that mass-market books, sold extensively in super¬markets and convenience stores, had more in common with soap detergent and cereal boxes than with their much more 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 the literary and design worlds, was the trade paper edi-tion, a misnomer that does not refer to a specific
Steven Brower Graphic Designer, Design Writer, Typographer
audience within an area of work, but, rather, to the second edition of the hardcover, or first edi-tion, 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 or the eyes of the viewer. The interiors tended to be printed on 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 lors, thermography, and even holography), all designed to jump out at 1 and into your shopping cart as you walk down the aisle. The tradition mass-market covers had more in common with, and, perhaps, for the part is the descendant of, pulp magazine covers of earlier decades, their colorful titles and over-the-top illustrations, than that of its stylish, larger, and more expensive cousins.
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I Learned
S
o, 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 ever dreamed possible.
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” 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 company 20 percent. Sometimes, we would cut the type and extend it 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 the “appropriate” type solution 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, distinct 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: Square serif=western Script and cursive=romance LED faces=Science fiction Nueland=African (though German origin) Latin=Mystery Fat, round serif faces=Children’s Sans serif=nonfiction Hand scrawl=horror 1950s bouncy type=humor-teen titles
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 create the very best romance covers around. Sure, I would 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 job, 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.)
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 create 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 is that it has a 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.
I’ve said, it is a common mistake among young
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.
As
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 the typographic equivalent of clip art. Viewers know they have seen it before. Rather than being evocative, it mainly evokes the program it was created in.
The Rules
designers to think a quirky novelty face equals creativity. Of course, this couldn’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. a general rule, no more than two faces should be utilized in any given design, usually the combination of a serif face and a sans 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 design 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.
I would caution you in the judicious use of drop
Hard drop shadows, ones that are 100 percent of
a color, are easily achieved 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 in 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.
Do not use text type as display. Even though If you must use a solid drop shadow, it should 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 an 0 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
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 the 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 than asymmetrical copy. Large
One of Steven’s covers http://www.marywood.edu/
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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 and 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.
connection with Reid Miles’ Blue Note album covers. He answered, “Because I thought it was cool.” I lectured him profusely on selecting type simply 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.”
It is also common today to see very wide columns Breaking the Rules of text, with the copy set at a small point size. The problem is that a very wide column is hard to Of course, there are always exceptions 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.
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.”
A final consideration is the size of the 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 abound. 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
the rules. An infinite number of faces can be used within one design, particularly when you employ a broadside-style ^e 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 I960 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 hands of the right... designer.’” 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 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 good type is much less desirable than good use of bad type.
When I first began in 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.
Steven Brower cover example, from www.skirbymuseum.org
Steven Ian Brower is an American graphic designer, and writer. His work appears regularly in international and national design annuals and books on design, and he writes for several publications. Brower attended the High School of Music & Art and the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is a graduate of California State University, Fullerton and National University. He is currently on the faculty of Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania and The School of Visual Arts in New York City. http://stevenbrowerdesign.com/noflash.html Page 9,10
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Back to Basics: Stopping sloppy Typography John D. Berry:Microsoft Program Fonts manager
T
here’s a 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 the 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.
B
ut, as my partner and I drove past and spotted this billboard for the first time, we both simultaneously voiced the same response; “No, I’m looking at your apostrophe!”
T
he 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 a teardrop tail at the bottom.
T
o 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 the scene of an exercise in typographic irony, it’s just a big ol’ mistake. Really big, and right out there in plain sight. The Devil Details
Is
In
the
T
his 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.
T
his 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 typographica.org
typographica.org
graphic designer. But clearly, this isn’t the case—or else a lot of designers skipped that part of the class, or have simply forgotten what they once learned about type. Or, they naively believe the software they use will do the job for them.
M
aybe it’s time for a nationwide—no, worldwide—program of remedial courses in using type. Automated Errors
A
s my own small gesture toward improvement, I’ll point out a couple of the more obvious problems—^in the hope that maybe, maybe, they’ll become slightly less commonplace, at least for a while. ypewriter 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 the 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 the apostrophe at the beginning of ‘em isn’t supposed to be a single open quote, so it changes it into
T
one.
T
he only way to catch this is to make the correction by hand— every time.
Anemic Type
T
he other rude noise that has become common in the symphony hall is fake small caps. Small caps are a wonderful thing, very useful and some-times elegant; fake small caps are a distraction and an abomination.
F
ake 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.)
I
f 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. Page 13,14
John Berry uses these basic rules to develope typefaces, like the ones above. www.ilovetypograpgy.com
(
The exception is Adobe InDesign, which is smart enough to find the real small caps in an Open Type 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 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 Now
T
here 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.
W
ords to live by, I suppose. And, certainly, words to set type by.
John Berry usually describes himself as an editor & typographer — reflecting his care for both the meaning of words and how they are presented. He is Honorary President of ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) and the former editor and publisher of U&lc (Upper & lower case). He writes, speaks, and consults extensively on typography, and he has won numerous awards for his book designs. He has written and edited several books, including Language culture type: international type design in the age of Unicode (ATypI/Graphis, 2002), Contemporary newspaper design: shaping the news in the digital age (Mark Batty Publisher, 2004), and U&lc: influencing design & typography (Batty, 2005). He has been a program manager on the Fonts team at Microsoft, where he established improved typographic standards for Windows and other Microsoft products. He is Director of the Scripta Typographic Institute. He teaches typography and design at Cornish College of the Arts. He lives in Seattle with the writer Eileen Gunn. http://johndberry.com/bio-contact/
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T h i n t ki y p ng e . wi c o th m
-
Golden Section
No book or magazine about typography would be complete without a discussion of the golden section, a ratio (relationship between two numbers) that has been used in Western art and architecture for more than two thousand years. The formula for the golden section is a : b = b : (a+b). This means that the smaller of two elements (such as the shorter side of a rectangle) relates to the larger element in the same way that the larger element relates to the two parts combined. In other words, side a is to side b as side b is to the sum of both sides. Expressed numerically, the ratio for the golden section is 1 : 1.618. Some graphic designers are
fascinated with the golden
section and useit to create various grids and page formats-indeed, entire books have been written on the subject. Other designers believe that the golden section is no more valid as a basis for deriving sizes and proportions than other methods, such as beginning from standard industrial paper sizes, or dividing surfaces into halves or squares, or simply picking whole number page formats and making logical divisions within them.
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The Font Robert Bringhurst:Typographer and Typographic writer
W
riting 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.
10.1 LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS 10.1.1 CHECK THE LICENSE BEFORE TUNING A DIGITAL FONT. igital 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 Bf Sheng’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.
D
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 stich provision. Monotype’s says instead that “You may not alter ^ .f Font Software for the purpose of adding any functionality..,. You V agree not to adapt, modify, alter, translate, convert, or otherwise change the Font Software....” If your license forbids improving the font itself, the only the Font 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- r ‘’ need be, by this means.
10.2 ETHICAL & AESTHETIC CONSIDERATIONS
A
10.2.1 IF IT AIN’T BROKE.... ny part of the font can be tuned lettershapes, character set, character encoding, fitting and sidebearings, kerning table, hinting, and, in an OpenType font, the 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 a frog, you might cremate or bury the results.
10.2.2 IF THE FONT IS OUT OF TUNE, FIX IT ONCE AND FOR ALL.
O
ne way to refine the typography of a text is 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. 10.2.3 RESPECT THE TEXT FIRST OF ALL, THE LETTERFORMS SECOND, THE TYPE DESIGNER THIRD, THE FOUNDRY FOURTH.
N
eeds of the text should take precedence over the layout of I 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. 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 Ethical and There is no such thing as the perfect font.
CONSIDER- 10.3 HONING THE CHARACTER SET 10.3.1 IF THERE ARE DEFECTIVE GLYPHS, MEND THEM. f 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 supple¬mentary characters. Where this is the case, you can usually rest’ assured that the basic letterforms are the work of a real designeii’ 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.
I
You may find for example that analphabetic characters such. as @ + ± X = *- -- © 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 a 9 e n 6 u are poorly drawn, poorly postioned, or out of scale with the letterforms. l + 2 = 3<9> 6±l -2x4 a + b = c * a@b • © 2007 I + 2 = 3<9>6±I -2x4 a + b = c * a@b * © 2007 Jose Mendoza y Almeida’s Photina Is an excellent piece of design, but in every weight Page 19,20
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. euoa->euoa Frederic Coudy’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 accepted shorts as 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 Aclobe in 1989. Below right: the same glyphs, revised by Slimbach ten years later, while preparing the OpenType version of the face.
‘10.3.3 IF GLYPHS YOU NEED ARE MISSING ALTOGETHER, MAKE THEM.
S
tandard iso digital text fonts (PostScript or TrueType) have 256 slots and carry a basic set of Western European characters. Eastern European characters such as a c d e g h l n o r s t u are usually missing. So are the Welsh sorts “w and y, and a 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 A <> \ | ~ ‘ positions. Honing the Character Set
a e i u->a e i u
10.3.2 IF TEXT FIGURES, LIGATURES OR OTHER GLYPHS YOU NEED ON REGULAR BASIS DON’T RESIDE ON THE BASE FONT, MOVE THEM.
F
or 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, ffl, 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.
bitwallpaper.net
10.3.4 Check and correct the sidebearings.
T
he 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/*,gy, “A, To, Va and 74. If you find that simple pairs such as 00 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 or 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? klml «hmm» abf: def; 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.
10.3.5 Refine the kerning table.
D
igital type can be printed in three dimensions, using 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 as two. Two-dimensional type can be printed more cleanly and sharply Grooming than threedimensional type, but the gain in sharpness rarely the Font 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.
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 is to achieve what perfect sidebearings cannot. A thorough check of the kerning “table therefore involves checking all feasible permutations of charac¬ters: 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 a a a a a a a a a a a a a, 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 Ta, Ti and Ti, il and 11, i) and 1), 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 / =/(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
This imbalance can be addressed by going deeper into two dimensions. Digital type is capable of Page 21,22
additional examples: McTavish, FitzWilliam, O’Quinn, dogfish, Honing the jack o’-lantern, Hallowe’en.) Character It is also wise to check the font by running a test file - a spe- Set daily 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 thousand 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 pairs. For a wellgroomed Latin-Greek-Cyrillic font, decompiling the kerning instructions can generate a table of 150,600 pairs. Remember, though, that the number isn’t what counts. What matters is the intelligence and style of the kerning. Remember too that there is no such thing as a font whose kerning cannot be improved.
digital reviv¬als 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 & Blados Van Dijck and other masterworks in the Monotype collection. These are well-tried 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/ is followed by a word space. The result is a large white blotch after every word ending in/unless a mark of punctuation intervenes.
10.3.6 kerning space.
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 b’e on the order of an eighth or a quarter of an em. An extra space Ibat large is a prefabricated typographic error - one that would bYing snorts of disbelief and instantaneous correction from |tanley 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.
T
Check of the
the word
he 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 hair either to or away from a preceding lowercase/in either roman or italic. A cautionary example. Most of the Monotype
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/ 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.
to.4 HINTING
10.4.1 If the font looks poor at low resolutions, check the hinting.
D
igital hints are important chiefly for the sake of how the type will |6ok on screen. Broadly speaking, hints are of two kinds: generic Kints that apply to the font as a whole and specific hints applicable only to individual characters. Many fonts are sold unhinted, and 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 l0xt font more legible on screen. (In the long run, the solution is bigh-resolution screens, making the hinting of fonts irrelevant except at tiny sizes.)
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 whenever able. 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 to the same conventions. For the fonts to be names must be identical and the font names must abide by rules. known to the operating system and software use If, for example, you install Martin Sans (issued by FontShop) on a PC, you will find that the italic and the roman are unlinked. These superbly designed fonts, handsomely kerned and fully equipped with the requisite text figures and small caps - almost everything a be - but the PC versions must be placed m a font editor and renamed in order to make them work as expected.
10.5 NAMING CONVENTIONS
T
he presumption of common law is that inherited designs, like 1 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 of ten 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 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 the switch codes employed are generic. Instead of saying “Switch to such and
Robert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. Bringhurst has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo, as well as classical Greek and Arabic. He wrote The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in June 2013.
westpacificreview.com
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-ART B en L ongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s evolving s eries examines t he v alue o f hard graft associated w ith m anual employment and describes the process of work as a methodical, cumulative e ndeavor. Inspired by h is e xperiences working on building sites as a t eenager, in 2 004 after two years of development for this ambitious series of artworks. Thematically, cultural a rchetypes f amiliar in domestic and decorative a rt, whilst also making reference to art historical i magery s uch as Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer a nd W histlejacketby George S tubbs. W ith each artwork the base structure serves t o visually r einforce t he sculptural intent of the project, making c omparisons w ith the plinth, as w ell as r eminding the viewer o f a conventional familiar right-angle and cross
bracing p rocess.Throughout this p roject L ong has w orked closely with v arious i ndustry specialists i ncluding D +R & Son. These partnerships have helped t o improve working methods, d evelop t echnique and o vercome logistical and
WORK Sculptures m ay b e dismantled to b ecome new a rtworks at a later stage. This s tate o f semipermanence r emains true to t he i ntended f unction of as a c hronological s eries, i t demonstrates L ongâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ambition to c ontinually p rogress in t his unconventional m edium, both in terms of the increase in size each subsequent r endering. Just a s a child p lays w ith a simple building system s uch as L ego o r Mechano, t aking components apart and r ebuilding on a w him, i t is t he continual d evelopment of with each permutation. Relative to t he s ize and c omplexity of each design, a s ingle
takes precedence over any one complete artwork.__________
up to three weeks to construct, the on-going creative act being publicly v isible, and t hereby lending a p erformance a spect to t he p roject.Despite t heir Page
25,26
Story of the College Type Installation Dominic Whitaker-Inrto level Graphic Designer and Typographer
“What is typography?”
This was the question posed to us in ART 227, Typography. It forced us all to think and analyze what we all thought type was. Obviously we encounter it everyday; reading, typing, navigating, but no one really had any ideas as to what we could define it as. The catch was, define it and use our definition (one word by the way) as an inspiration for an installation. The entirety of the class was broken down into groups and each tasked with finding one word to define type. My group, three people including myself, thought long and hard about what simple, yet prominent word we could use to define the field. Coincidently enough, and almost simultaneously, we found our word, “PROMINENT.” SITUATION: We were to use our word to stress just what about type in today’s world is prominent. We wanted to make something that wouldn’t be overlooked as we felt most type things in today’s world are and wanted something
that would capture the attention of passers by. It was during the early planning stages that we encountered another stipulation; we needed to construct our letters from pixels. Not computer pixels mind you, that would have been near impossible, pixels simply meaning small building blocks which in an of themselves don’t make anything significant. Along with this challenge, we needed to find a location that would play into the idea of prominence. INVESTIGATION/DEVELOPMENT:
Next step was fairly straight forward, picking a location and a pixel. The location came to us rather quickly. With the idea of prominent in mind, we settled on the stone yard directly in front of the Ponce De Leon Hotel. We agreed on the hotel for not only is it a geographically prominent location, but historically, it played a key role in the development of St. Augustine and Florida as a whole. Were it not for the Ponce De Leon Hotel and its founder, Henry Flagler much of the state would have remained
agricultural and undeveloped, and almost assuredly, the student body and me would not be able to call Flagler college our institution. As far as selecting a pixel went, there were several phases. First idea, C.D.s, prominent in their day, still have some influence but were too large to work with and not symbolic enough to be associated with prominence. Next idea, pencils. Pencils seemed promising, they remain in use and will continue to do so, especially in the design world, they are ever where and are overlooked often, much like type, and the small size of each pencil segment (each pencil was cut to one inch) proved versatile enough to be used in almost any arrangement. Third and final phase was something, originally I was against but eventually was something I took to heart
and adopted fully, pasta, more specifically rigatoni. Pasta or food in general, much like type, is everywhere and often overlooked. No matter the culture, type and food appear everywhere. Developed nations as a whole over look these essentials of life, but with out either there would be chaos. This being the case, pasta, our representation of food as a whole, was the perfect candidate. Next step was to find a usable typeface. With millions of options on the table, the selection process was surprisingly easy. The previous assignment for the class was to develop and create a usable font. The group agreed to use the font I had made called neo-drive. I must admit this was not my preferred choice but I did admit it would help out font stand out and thus yielded to it use.
As seen on the cover, this assortment of pages and drawings were used in the planing stages of both the typeface used and the final instalation planning. Page 27,28
BUDGET: There was no set budget. Probably a bad thing. The budget would best be explained in chronological order of purchases. -C.D.s= free -Cardboard posters=$20 -Glue and Glue Guns=$15 -Pencils=$25 -Rigatoni=$120 -Close to rigatoni=$30 -TOTAL=$20 The budget exceeded what I assumed it would be, then again when we purchased our pencils we did not know we would need to buy $150 worth of pasta... soooo, yeaaaah….
PROCESS: “We f****d up a lot and still got it done,” is what I would say if I was talking in a more casual conversation, but in all seriousness, the planning was quick and effective. We established an assembly line and cracked out letters during the first few hours relatively quickly: I had friends making pixels (two by two squares of pasta), I was gluing pixels together to make beams, which my other team mates used to create a quarter of the letters. After that, we each broke off and began conquering the remaining letters on our own. I had the M, R and an N and the other two were responsible for the remaining letters. The
process was admittedly last minute and lead to a 50-hour nonstop work parade but after each letter was complete, they were glued to the black cardboard backing and hauled to our spot in the back of my pickup truck. Mission accomplished. CHALLENGES: Where to begin. As stated, our first committed idea, the use of pencils fell flat before it even got out of the gate. We depleted the local pencil reserves only to find that our efforts were in vein. All our pencils would not so much as create half of one letter. This lead to a frantic search for as many boxes of pasta as we could find. Luckily, there were enough stores carrying
pasta to satisfy this need. The next challenge was the time crunch. By the time we had settled on and gathered our new materials we had 78 hours left to complete our word with nothing thus far to show for it. Luckily enough, we all had friends who proved generous with their time and helped us at least get off the ground. With the end in sight and only two letters left to complete, we experienced a tactical nightmare. As we began work on the last two letters, two completed letters experienced catastrophic failure. With 18 hours left we had three very tired team members, four letters to finish and at this point we had run out of coffee. One teammate retired two thirds of the way through to complete other assignments for
Left: The letter “M,” first letter done. Right: the Letter “R,” second letter done.
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other classes, no hard feelings but it left us with 14 hours left and three letters left. By some miracle we completed the letters and moved to the location… with two minutes to spare by our 5:00P.M. deadline. EFFECT: Unfortunately, we didn’t get nearly as much traffic as we had expected, though we did turn some heads. I simply wanted to get peoples attention and prove how prominent type can be. For those who did stop, we explained to them the purpose of what we did and the air about them when the walked on left me with an impression that they truly took to heart what we were
trying to say. Looking back on it, this project was the greatest source of stress, but also the greatest source of accomplishment I have felt as a designer and up-in-coming typographer since my enrolment in higher education. Though I doubt I could be talked in to repeating those three days of frantic set up, it proved a baptism of fire that I place high value in and wouldn’t trade for anything.
Me sitting with the instalation as a group of students (didnt stay for an explanation of the piece) look upon it from above.
“I can’t wait to destroy this thing....” Dominic Whitaker
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3 Essential Books For Type
TYPOGRAPHIE (1967)
www.thisdisplay.org
In 1967, iconic typography pioneer Emil Ruder penned Typographie: A Manual of Design â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a bold deviation from the conventions of his discipline and a visionary guide to the rules of his new typography. From texture to weight to color to legibility spacing and leading, the 19 chapters gloriously illustrated in black-and-white with some in red, yellow and blue explore insights from the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s studies and experiments. More than half a century later, the book, now in its sixth edition, remains a timeless bastion of typographic innovation across generations and eras.
CULTURAL CONNECTIVES (2011)
rana.im
In an age when we frequently encounter the Middle East in the course of our daily media diets, our true knowledge of the region remains impoverished amidst these often limited, one-note and reductionist portrayals. We know precious little about Arab culture, with all its rich and layered multiplicity, and even less about its language. Cultural Connectives tries to remedy this with a cross-cultural bridge by way of a typeface family designed by author Rana Abou Rjeily that brings the Arabic and Latin alphabets together and, in the process, fosters a new understanding of Arab culture. Both minimalist and illuminating, the bookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stunning pages map the rules of Arabic writing, grammar and pronunciation to English, using this typographic harmony as the vehicle for better understanding this ancient culture from a Western standpoint.
zanda.com
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THE EDITOR
Born in the tropical paradice of Fort Levenworth Kansas, Dominic Chalres Whitaker, born Dominic Vincent Casale, had all the traits of the average everyday super hero except, you know, any actual prowis for being a said average everyday super hero. This young man came into this wolrd with one dream... to become a paleontologist.... As can be seen, dreams can change. Ever since starting college level courses at 15 thanks to the dual enrolment program, he has It is often said that this young man takes himself too seriously... it is also true that people tend to lie just as often. “If you aren’t laughing at yourself you aren’t doing life right.” Lead designer: Dominic. Creative consultants: Tashina, Laura. Photo credit managers: Robert E. Kahn, Vint Cerf Team manager: Romulus. Food runner: Remus. Proof Reader: N.A. Entertainment team: WKUK (Whitest Kids U Know)
FOOD FOR THOUGHT...
I feel as if Banksy’s “Protester” speaks values today, more so than it has in the past.
Stew it over, tell us what you think. Email us at www.patresfamulus@gmail.com
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Autumn
Story of the College Type Instalation
#1