Introduction to typography

Introduction to typography

What is typography?Typography: The study of all elements of type including the shape, size and spacing of the charactersTypography plays an important role in the audience perception of your document or project and its informationTypography helps to create information relationships in two ways:By the organization of your informationKeeping things interesting through the use of fonts, letters and symbols

Principles of Design for typographyLegibility: Making sure the audience can read and understand your textReverse type: white type on a dark background and is designed to make type stand outSimilarity, alignment: Using typography to create relationships between similar kinds of informationUniformity or consistency: Repeating familiar elements to focus your audiences attentionContrast: Creating interest and distinguishing different types of information with different typefacesHierarchy: Making sure your audience understands that information has different levels of importance

fontsFont: Originally included typeface, style and size, but the term is now interchangeable with typefaceFont Family: A typeface and all its variants such as Times New Roman regular, italic and boldRoman: describes a font without additional attributes such as italicsDecorative fonts: are those used for display purposesScript fonts: designed to imitate handwritingBlackletter fonts: Imitate an antique European fontMonospace fonts: Fonts that mimic the spacing produced by a typewriter

typefacesTypeface: The design for the letters, numbers and symbols that make up a fontSerif: a typeface with extensions at the ends of the main strokes that define each letter. These extensions are called serifs.Bracketed serif: a curved serif that fills in the area between the serif and the strokeSans serif: a typeface without serifsOldstyle fonts: have bracketed serifs, angled stress, and strokes that move gently from thick to thinTransitional fonts: have bracketed serifs, vertical stress and uneven strokes that move quickly from thick to thinModern fonts: have unbracketed serifs, vertical stress and uneven strokesSlab Serif Fonts: have heavy serifs, vertical stress and even strokes

Examples

Serif Font Sans Serif FontSpacing choicesProportional fonts: are spaced according to the size of the letterMonospace fonts: are spaced the same for every letterTracking: the spacing between letters in a wordKerning pairs: sets of letters designed to be spaced closely togetherKerning: spacing of letters generally to make them move closer togetherLigatures: Letters that have historically been attached, creating a single characterLeading: The spacing between lines of a paragraphEm space: a space the width of a capital letter M in the font and point size being usedEn space: half the size of an em space, is the width of a capital letter N in the font and point size being used

Spacing conventionsHanging indents: a paragraphs first line is flush left but the remaining lines are indentedTabs: places on a ruler used to line up textWidows: Single sentences or phrases at the bottom of a column or page. The rest of the paragraph appears on the next page or columnOrphans: Single lines of text that appear at the top of the column or page, with the rest of the paragraph appearing in the previous column or page

AlignmentThere are four primary types:Left Aligned: Often referred to as left justified or flush left, typically the default setting for a document, begins each line along the left margin of the documentRight Aligned: Often referred to as right justified or flush right, it aligns the beginning of each line of text along the right margin of the documentCentered: Text is placed in the center of each line leaving the same margin on both sidesJustified: Each line of text fills the entire space from left to right, except for the paragraph indent and the last line of the paragraph

null3395.917null26016.645null58714.69null45807.785null60855.855null64425.76null43769.504null54763.496