Basic Research of Typography

SEMESTER 4 : Typography skills

What is typography?

It is an art form and also a craft that has been around for hundreds of years and present in all forms of text. Words and text are all around us everyday. Typography is not just confined to typefaces and a fonts but also paragraphing, layouts, columns, headings, logos, copy and more.

Typeface vs Font

The common mistake among the different between a typeface and font. Typefaces are font families made up of fonts. So a typeface is the umbrella term for a collection of different sub-classifications called fonts. Examples:

Serif Vs Sans-serif

There are many different classifications and sub-classification of typefaces, but the most common are SERIF and SANS-SERIF. Serif is the most traditional and it is small features at the end of strokes within letters. Sans-serif  is "Sans" in french for  "without" and it is came to fruition during the 19th century and thus considered modern.

Serif          Sans-serif

Basic Concepts

1)     Size

              Typography          Typography

All typefaces are not created equally. Some are fat and wide; some are thin and narrow. Words set in different typefaces can take up a very different amount of space on the page. 

2)     Cap height and X-height

3)     Leading

Leading is the vertical line spacing between lines of text or the line height of the text.

4)     Glyphs

The  word essentially refers to all the available characters in a font, from letters to numbers and all the special characters.     

5)     Ligatures  

Ligatures occur when the element of two characters are too close together. 

                 

6)     Kerning and Tracking

Kerning is the adjustment of the spacing between individual characters. Tracking is the spacing of a group of characters.


                   

7)     Hierarchy and Scale

If all type was the same size, it would be difficult to know which was the most important information on the page. In order to guide the reader the heading are usually large, sub-headings are smaller and body type is smaller. Size is not only the way to define hierarchy, it also can be achieved with colour, spacing and weight.

8)     Rag

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text.

 It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, AFT

making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin profess

at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more 

obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, 

and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, is a

discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from 

1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" 

                             Good Rag

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random te

 It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 4

making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin prof

at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of 

obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ip 

and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, is a

discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsu

1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malo

                                        Bad Rag

Anatomy of Type