Nicola Owen

Typography

In studio this week we looked at typography, here are the basic principles and some websites we looked at:

Definition
- The designated setting of the type.

‘Typography exists to honour content’
(Robert bringhurst, the elements of typographic style.)

Typography is the backbone of graphic design

Font
- Complete set of characters in a particular size and style.

Typeface
- Contains a series of fonts – a font family

Serif
- d
Sans serif

- d

-X-height – Height of the letters, determines the height of all the letters in the font.
-Baseline – imaginary line –, which lines everything up.
-Descanter – lower part of the letter, which falls below the baseline.
-Ascender – the upper part of the letter, such as an h, which is usually higher than the others.
-Stoke – any line of the shape used to create the typeface.
-Stem – up-right element of the character.
-Counter – white space around and inside the characters.

Typography clarity

Legibility
- function of typeface design
- how easy it is to distinguish from one letters to another

Readability
-how the typeface is used, this determines whether it is readable or not.

“ the right typeface can encourage people to read your message. The wrong typeface or bad typography can make your message go un-read.”
(http://www.will-harris.com/)

Topics to read
-Grid, Pantograph, and the Rouler.
-Kerning, Tracking, and Leading.
-Orthography.
-Semiotics, Semantics and Linguistics.

Pioneers
- Eric Gill
- Jan Tschrchold
- John Baskerville
- Neville Brody

Websites

- http://www.designingwithtype.com/
- http://www.creativebehaviour.com/
- http://www.kinetictypography.com/
- http://www.typorganism.com/
- http://www.letterror.com/

posted by monkeynic @ 2:07 am