- Composition of text by means of arranging physical types or digital equivalents. Stored letters and other symbols (sorts in mechanical systems and glyphs in digital systems) retrieved and ordered.
The Line - Reading Process
- Your eyes spring forward and jumps back known as saccades, they alternate with fixed periods lasting 0.2-0.4 seconds.
Typography
- 3 x Elements
- The letter - design of the individual characters/glyphs and anatomy
- The word - how these glyphs fit together.
- The line - combination and arrangement of word in body or sequence.
Hierarchy
- In every communication some messages will be more vital than others. Type size, style, colour, wright, treatment.
Alignment
- Left Aligned - Ranged left with ragged right edges
- Justified Text - Can look clean and classic
- Centred and right aligned - not commonly used and is harder to read
- In typography - "rag" refers to the irregular or uneven virtual margin.
Paragraphs
- Consistent paragraph style cement the look and feel of type
- Indented - small indentation at start of paragraphs. first paragraph does not have indentation.
- Full line break - full line in-between paragraphs
Letter spacing/leading
- Refers to distance between the baseline of successive lines of type. Originates from hand typesetting, strips of lead were used to increase the vertical distance between lines.
- Text is set with bad leading appears cramped with ascenders and descenders can clash and touch this is confusing to the eye due to lack of white space
- Leading needs to be slightly higher than point size. 12pt text, 12pt leading.
Tracking
- Same as leading but horizontally.
- Amount of space between groups of letters to affect the density in a line or block of copy. Readability decreases when negative tracking is applied.
- Don't go below -40 or about 40 tracking.
Kerning and Pairs
- Kerning is the process of adjusting spaces in-between individual characters/letterforms in proportional font, achieve a visually pleasing result.
- Some letter pairings often letter with overhang, may need particular kerning
Hidden Characters
- Invisible characters such as returns, spaces, tabs, etc. only appear when have "show hidden characters" turned on.
- Show how the text is constructed. Useful for finding double spaces and unintentional line breaking.
Line Length
- Go from anything between 8 words and 12 words per line.
- Anything more than 12 words becomes to long and hard to read.
- Overly extremely short line length causes ugly rag in a body of text.
Widows and Orphans
- Words left alone at the end of a paragraph, hanging or separated from a complete block of text.
- Look awkward and should be avoided.
- Use tracking and line spacing to remove any widows and orphans.
Dashes and Spaces
- Never use a hyphen (-) in places of an en dash (–) or and em dash (—).
- Hyphens - used at the end of a line to connect a word. Also used for two words that have a new meaning or concept.
- En Dash - used to show the range of things (e.g. London – Leeds) Needs spacing in-between to show they are separate.
- Em Dash - longer than an en dash. used in speech to show if someone is being interrupted. Can also be used to show a pause. Needs spacing like the en dash to show they are still separate words.
Reading:
www.punctuationguide.com
Grids
- Raster Systeme: Josef Mulle-Brockmann
- Considered by some to be the most important part of type setting and graphic design.
- Should always be using a grid when designing for publication and experimenting with the different grid layouts.
- Type is set to grids to keep it clean and organised.
Rivers
- Gaps in typesetting which appear to run through the paragraph of text due to coincidental alignment of spaces.
- Can test for rivers by turning a proof sheet upside down to examine the text.
Baseline grid
- All text has to fit on a baseline grid - meaning that everything is horizontally aligned keeping everything systematic and organised.
- Just like writing on a piece of lined paper.
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