Today’s Plan:
- Introduction to Typography
- Homework: Read WSINYE chapter on Typography (“Type”)
Introduction to Typography
So far this semester, we’ve generally worked with layouts and alignment. This week I want to shift gears to start working with typography, which I tend to find a bit more complicated. As we’ve already seen, layouts tend to follow some pretty easy to identify rules. Things are a bit more opaque when it comes to the rules for good typography. While there’s some clear no no’s, the criteria for selecting effective fonts and adjusting text size and space are more context specific and, hence, more fuzzy.
Let’s start with a few typography no no’s.
- Epic Design Fails (contrast, cover/misread, kerning, breaking words, decorative fonts)
A few keys terms:
- Font: style (serif (traditional, old style, modern), sans-serif (thin or slab), decorative (script, weird stuff). (see WSINYE for which fonts work best on paper and which on screen)
- Font: thick / thin
- Space: leading (pronounced ledding), line-spacing. If your letter has exaggerated x-height, then you might increase line-height.
- Space: tracking and kerning, space between letters
Some typography tools:
Homework
Read WSINYE chapter on typography.
We’ll work on a typography project in class on Wednesday.
