Type
what you don't know can hurt you
Alix Fraser
Let's get defining
A font is a complete set of characters in a particular size and style of type
A font family (also called a typeface) contains a series of fonts
A glyph is an individual character of a font
A serif is a flourish (little "feet") at the tip of glyphs
Can you name any font families?
Type sets the tone
Badly chosen font and typesetting can leave you with little or no audience
Well-styled type impacts readability, legibility, visual hierarchy, and tone
Properly paired fonts are harmonius, not discordant
Categorize
The shape of a font's glyph's determines its category
Some basic and common font categories are:
Old Style and Transitional
Classic and traditional serif fonts
• Old style serifs start thick and taper to thin
• They contain thick stem strokes and thin hairline strokes
• A diagonal line can intersect the thinnest part of most O-shaped old style glyphs
• Transitional fonts evolved from old style and share many of the same characteristics
• Both font categories are best for print body copy
• Both font categories can get lost on television and computer screens if they aren't big and bold
Sans Serif
Contemporary fonts
• Sans serif fonts have no serifs
• Variations include Grotesque
(uniform thickness), Humanist
(variations in thickness),
Geometric (geometric
shapes)
• Sans serif fonts are best used
in print for headlines and brief
amounts of side text
• Sans serif fonts are the best
choice for readability on
television and computer
screens
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Slab Serif
Uniformly thick sans serif fonts
•A slab serif font looks
like a hybrid between old
and style and sans serif
fonts
•Slab serif fonts were
made for bold retail
displays
•A slab serif font is good
for print headlines, but
not for body copy
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Choose one of the following and tweet what kinds of fonts you would use for the titles, body paragraphs, and ornamental flourishes: 1. An online wedding invitation for a young couple having a classic wedding
2. A local print magazine for indie music fans
3. A flyer for print and email advertising discounts on furniture for seniors
Choose, use, and don’t abuse
Do not go wild choices.
Pair carefully
Make sure you avoid using too many competing font styles
Pick one font for your body copy that is appropriate for the medium (old style for print, sans serif for onscreen)
Body fonts are best selected from a larger typeface
The best way to keep your body copy harmonious is to pick fonts from the same family (Garamond regular, italic, and bold)
Keep on pairing carefully
Pick a second font for contrasting headlines
If you’ve used an old style font for your body, you can use a font from almost any category for a harmonious pair
You can pick a font from the same font family for your body, but you want to make sure you have clear visual contrast with the headline
Sans serif fonts are neutral and pair well with other fonts
Out of tune fonts
Don’t pair decorative fonts together
Don’t pair script fonts together
Don’t pair modern or slab serif fonts with old style fonts if you want contrast
Don’t choose fonts with a lot of fine detail for onscreen projects
Don’t ever, under any circumstance, in any context, use comic sans
Tweet if you know why comic sans is a bad choice!
A tangled web
When picking fonts for reading onscreen, you need to keep in mind the basics of harmonious font pairings and the limitations of web fonts
There is a much smaller pool of fonts to choose from with web design, because if a designer not using CSS uses a specialized font your computer doesn’t have, you’ll see only a boring default font
Cascading Style Sheets is a language for web styling that is helping expand the fonts available for online use, but not all fonts translate well from print to screen
Choose your web fonts carefully, and keep in mind trying to find the best design for web design may take a lot of trial and error
Not all tens are made equally
Points are how the size of a font is measured
Not every font will be the same size at 10 points
In print, 10 or 11 point old style fonts are a safe choice for reading copy
Onscreen and for other font categories, you will have to use your best judgement
This is 18 points This is 18 points
Extra style options
Once you’ve chosen your fonts, you can vary them further using different font sizes for emphasis and context
Remember your audience, because older readers might prefer larger fonts
Use font sizes to further contrast your header and body copy fonts in a harmonious way
Keep in mind that there are factors beyond your control that will impact some font sizes on the web and design accordingly
To counteract any unwanted font size changes onscreen, use web fonts set in ems instead of points, as ems adjust the font by percentage
Even more extra options
Bold and italic type can add variation without making your design too busy with too many font choices
Keep reliance on these variations for contrast to short copy situations, as bold and italic fonts are not appropriate for entire pages or paragraphs
Keep in mind that not all bolds are equal, and adjusting font size may have a better impact
When designing professionally, avoid faux bold and italic by not using automatic bold and italic buttons (such as the ones in Word or PowerPoint) as these only distort your font
Remember font families? If you need to bold your Garamond type, use Garamond bold
instead of automatically bolding your Garamond regular
Caps are extra
The practice of using all caps for emphasis is an old-school style
All caps type is harder to read for extended periods of time
Readers take all caps as shouting and this can distort your message
You should reserve all caps for areas where it won’t change your purpose and meaning, and use it sparsely
Give yourself some space
Line spacing is called leading (pronounced “ledding”)
Although your computer does most of the work with leading, you may still need to adjust the spacing manually sometimes
The adjusting of spacing between a string of characters is called tracking
If you want to change the effect your font has, try adjusting the tracking
The adjusting of the space between individual glyphs is called kerning
Always make sure your font choice has good kerning, or awkward spaces between your letters can happen
More space isn’t always best
Extra space between lines can drastically improve your legibility, but too much can make your type read disjointedly
Fonts with inconsistent kerning will lower readability of your copy
You can manipulate tracking to control how tight or lose your words are and if a word stays on one line, but going so overboard that the tracking is noticeable will confuse your audience
Web applications of spacing can be hard, even with CSS, so use your best judgment
Put it on my tab
You can use tabbing to keep your font aligned, organize columns, and group information
Bullet points/dots help the eye jump the space of the tab
Tabs assist flow
Gather together thoughts
Keep information sectioned off neatly
Help readers understand order
Tweet three examples, print or web, where using tabs would help your message
Break it up
Pages full of unformatted words will turn your audience away
You can carve your content into smaller pieces using a few formatting tricks
Paragraph indicators like tabs and extra lines break up text, but you should manually adjust these spaces
Headings and subheaders provide contrast and can create a hierarchy of content using font size
Display fonts for headlines move the eye through the page
Bullet lists give readers eye entry points and easily digested chunks of information
Newspaper killed the internet star
Headlines
Well-styled headlines are eye catching “Read me!” signs
Graduated headlines make a hierarchy of information
A condensed font for headlines can give you more space for your message
Columns
Columns make it easier for the eye to track back and forth
Two inches is a good column width, and in print, 10-12 inches max for length
Justification
Justification refers to forms of copy alignment
Left justified (flush left with ragged right) is best for reading
Poorly handled justification can lead to awkward gaps
Full justification (right and left edges perfectly squared) is a bad idea for web design
Newspapers have perfected effective formatting and can be great places to look for tips both for print and web
Creative communication
Bold and italic fonts make interesting pull quotes, decks, cutlines, headlines, and other short blocks of type
SMALL CAPS ARE ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS WITH A LARGER FIRST LETTER, AND CAN BE USED IN SHORT
COPY SITUATIONS
Reversed type is light type against a dark background, and is a common technique in headlines, sidebars, and other layout elements—but be careful, as thin serif fonts are not near as good as thick sans serif fonts for this
Initial and caps create dynamic eye entry points for lead information rop D
Advanced Punctuation 265
Most fonts have 265 characters, meaning there are a lot more extra punctuation than there are letters and numbers
Within these characters there are punctuation marks specifically drawn and spaced to match the rest of the glyphs in the font
... are manually typed ellipses, and … are properly formatted ellipses
Different punctuation marks have different uses
Smart quotes are for “quotations”, but straight quotes are for notating inches and feet (5'3")
Hyphens (-) make compound words, en dashes (–) punctuate things such as the “to” in “3–4 weeks”, and em dashes (—) replace commas, colons, and parentheses
Open your mind
OpenType fonts have more than the standard 265 characters
They are functional across Macs and PCs and may have up to 65 000 characters, such as:
Specially designed letter pairs called ligatures (æ)
Decorative alternatives to traditional italic letterforms called swash alternatives ( )
Adjusted numerals to blend in with the rest of the font called old style figures (1234)
Decorative ornaments called dingbats ()
Tweet one of the following: 1. If you’ve ever used any OpenType special characters, tell us
which characters and why
2. If you’ve never used any OpenType special characters, tell us where you might need to use one
Resources used
White Space Is Not Your Enemy by Rebecca Hagen and Kim Golombisky
Verdana regular Verdana italic Verdana bold Garamond regular Garamond italic Garamond bold Century Gothic
Courier new
Comic sans MS
Ingleby regular Wingdings 2
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