Typography Graphic Design Fundamentals

What is Typography?  A vast majority of what is created by multimedia professionals includes type. The word “typography” refers to the art and process of arranging type on a page. Changing the typeface (font), size, color, weight, and placement of type in your design can add extra emphasis to your words and enhance the visual appeal of your message.

Example Type has character take a look below, which one of the font types would best describe the feeling of anger?

Something to think about… What were some of the things you were looking for? Why did you decide on that one: was it color, weight (bold), size, font?

Something to think about… Your answers to the last question will give you an idea of what elements of typography are important to a designer.

Get Creative Using typography is one of the most interesting and enjoyable parts of image creation. There are all kinds of things you can create with letters, not just words! Sometimes just textures and designs are what works

Some interesting notions.... Characteristics and terms Try to read what's below

Some interesting notions.... Characteristics and terms It is a little easier to read the item below than the one previous. The tops of the letters are more important than the bottoms. If you want to distort some part of the type in an image, which part should you keep in tact?

Type Terms You all know what a font is, we have discussed this before, but you may never have heard the following terms which are use to describe letters and fonts in graphic design:

Typeface A typeface is the basic design of a character. Each typeface has a design for each letter of the alphabet, numbers, punctuation symbols and may contain other symbols. Example: ArialABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Typeface Categories Typefaces can be divided into four main categories. – Serif – Sans Serif – Script – Decorative or Ornamental –

Sarif and San Sarif The parts of the letters have names. The little "feet" you see on a type font are called "sarifs". I am using Arial in this lesson, it has no sarifs and is called "san (meaning without) sarif".

Serif Typefaces Examples:  Bodoni  Courier  Goudy  Times New Roman Used for body text in printed publications.  Business correspondence  Book text  Magazine article text  Newspaper text  Recommended sizes for body text are 10 to 12 points. k

Sans Serif Typefaces Examples: Arial  Gill Sans Berlin Sans  Verdana Used for very large or very small text and for digital display. Web pages  On-screen display Headings  Tables Captions  Headlines k

Ornamental or Decorative Typefaces Designed strictly to catch the eye Should be used sparingly. Can be hard to read. Examples Chiller  Broadway Webdings  engravers MT Used for decoration. Headlines on flyers or advertisements. Webdings can be used for symbols in logos.

Script Typefaces Appear to have been written by hand with a calligraphy pen or brush – Should never be used to key in all caps. Example French Script Uses Formal Invitations Place cards Poetry Announcements

Font Style The font style refers to the slant, weight and special effects applied to the text. Examples: – Bold – Italic – Underline – Shadow – Outline – Small Caps

Font Families A font family is the different sizes, weights and variations of a typeface. Examples:Arial Arial Black Arial Narrow Arial Rounded MT Bold

Ascenders and Dec Enders Some letters have parts that go above the center line and some have parts that go below the bottom line. If a part of a letter goes above the center of a line, like a "b" then the back of the b is called an ascending letter. The letter "g" would be called a descending letter because part of it drops below the line.

Case Issues Additionally, lower case is easier to read than capitals! That doesn't mean to avoid using capitals, punctuation and grammar rules may apply in what you do. It depends on what you are making and why.

Other Terms Monospace Proportional Tracking Leading Kerning

Monospaced Typefaces Each letter takes up the same amount of space regardless of the letter size. Advantages – Easier to see thin punctuation marks. – Similar characters look more different. – If limited to a certain number of characters per line, each line will look alike. Courier is monospaced

Proportional Typefaces The amount of space each character takes up is adjusted to the width of that character. – Therefore, an i is not as wide as an m and receives less space. Advantages – Does not take up as much space as monospaced typefaces. – Easier to read. Times New Roman is proportional

Tracking Adjusting the space between letters.

Leading Adjusting the space between lines. In most software programs, it is referred to as line spacing. If there were no space between the lines of text, the letters would touch the lines above and below them and would be extremely difficult to read.

Kerning Horizontal spacing between pairs of letters Used to add or subtract space between pairs of letters to create a more visually appealing and readable text. BOOK – before kerning. – after kerning the O’s.

Some Simple Rules Don't use all capitals with fonts that are meant to be used as mostly lower case! It is very difficult to read fonts that are very elaborate if all capitals are used. Script fonts should also not be used in all capitals

Some Simple Rules: Align text when ever possible. If you are grouping text together, align the beginning of each line, or center or right align, but be sure you align! Staggered text works sometimes, but is more difficult to pull off. The text in the image below is not aligned well and the whole image is not very effective. Take a look at the second try for a different approach. The first image is OK, the color of the text is better than in the second image, but the alignment of the text in the second image is much more interesting.

Some Simple Rules: Alignment is a big issue. If you have a lot of text to put into an image like the one below, grouping the text using alignment works well.