Adobe Press - Typography Primer.pdf

(1072 KB) Pobierz
type primer.rnd 7
TYPOGRAPHY PRIMER
TYPOGRAPHY PRIMER
What’s in a Letter
Every serious subject has a language of its own. Typography is
no exception. The following diagram shows a few terms used to
talk about letterforms. Many more appear in the Glossary of
Typographic Terms at the end of this document. These terms let
you discuss type like an expert.
Hfgx
x-height
Traditionally, x-height is the height of the lowercase letter x . It a
ff
ects
the feel of a typeface, how many characters fit on a line, and
depending on how the type is set, how easily your text can be read.
At very small point sizes, a font with a larger x-height is easier to
read, everything else being equal. Compare the following examples
of Adobe Jenson, ™ Utopia, ® and Minion, ® all at a point size of
:
ascender
cap
height
x-height
You can’t really talk about type without talking about x-height.
Simply put, x-height is the height of the lowercase letters,
excluding the ascenders and descenders. Unlike point size, x-height
is not a unit of measurement. Rather, it’s a proportional description
of the lowercase letters. A typeface with a large x-height simply
means the lowercase letters are proportionally large in relation to
the ascenders and descenders.
Adobe Jenson 10-point type / 13-point leading (10 /13)
baseline
descender
Serif and Sans Serif
The serif, or cross-line at the end of a stroke, probably dates from
early Rome. Father Edward Catich proposed in his seminal work,
The Origin of the Serif , that the serif is an artifact of brushing letters
onto stone before cutting them. Serif types are useful in text because
the serifs help distinguish individual letters and provide continuity
for the reader’s eye.
Serifs come in many styles. Compare the tapered serifs of Kepler ®
to the slab serifs of Chaparral ® and the wedge serifs of Warnock. ™
You can’t really talk about type without talking about
x-height. Simply put, x-height is the height of the
lower-case letters, excluding the ascenders and
descenders. Unlike point size, x-height is not a unit of
measurement. Rather, it’s a proportional description
of the lowercase letters. A typeface with a large
x-height simply means the lowercase letters are
proportionally large in relation to the ascenders and
descenders.
Utopia 10 /13
Kepler Chaparral
Warnock
. Sans serif designs are also
sometimes referred to as gothic or grotesque designs.
Myriad ®
You can’t really talk about type without talking about x-height.
Simply put, x-height is the height of the lowercase letters,
excluding the ascenders and descenders. Unlike point size,
x-height is not a unit of measurement. Rather, it’s a proportional
description of the lowercase letters. A typeface with a large
x-height simply means the lowercase letters are proportionally
large in relation to the ascenders and descenders.
Minion 10 /13
Cronos
®
Ocean Sans
™
TYPOGRAPHY PRIMER 3 www.adobe.com/type
Typefaces without serifs are called sans serif (sans is French for
without) designs. The fi rst sans serif type design is credited
to William Caslon in England in
221393314.001.png 221393314.002.png
Measuring Type
To understand how type works, you must know how it is measured.
Basically, typefaces are measured in two ways: height and width.
Variations on a Theme
A type family generally contains three variations on the regular face:
italic, bold, and bold italic. However, many families have been
designed to include variation in weight from ultra light to ultra black;
variation in width from condensed to extended; multiple character
sets, such as small capitals, titling capitals, swash capitals, oldstyle
figures, alternates; and more.
This variety enables you to achieve just the look you want and
allows for a good deal of flexibility. For example, it is often necessary
to make a given amount of type fit into a predetermined amount of
space on the page. When space is an issue, a condensed or extended
version of a typeface can be a real lifesaver!
Type Height
In earlier times when type was cast in metal, it was sold in discrete
sizes that were measured in points. Today’s digital fonts can be
enlarged or reduced by simply selecting, or specifying, a point size.
Originally, the term point size referred to the height of the
metal body that held the characters. This was slightly larger than
the distance from the highest to the lowest feature in the design.
A traditional point is approximately 1 / 72 of an inch or .
points, and six picas equal an inch.
This method of measuring is still used for digital type. Typefaces
that have very long ascenders and descenders look smaller than
other typefaces when both are printed at the same point size. This
incongruity is illustrated below.
26pt Postino
Times*
Roman
Italic
Bold
Bold Italic
Adobe Garamond ®
Regular
Italic
Semibold
Semibold Italic
Bold
Bold Italic
®
apitals
SMALL CAPITALS
TITLING CAPITALS
26 oint Bickham Scrip
®
Type Width
In addition to height, a typeface is commonly identifi ed by its width.
The width of a typeface is often expressed in the font’s style name,
such as condensed or extended. Other expressions of width include
compressed, expanded, and wide.
Jimbo ® Regular Condensed
Jimbo Reg Extended
TYPOGRAPHY PRIMER 4 www.adobe.com/type
inch.
With the advent of desktop publishing, the point became exactly
1 / 72 of an inch. Picas are another unit of measurement used for type;
one pica equals
wash
Spacing
Ty p e i s d e fined by the space around it, whether between letters,
words, or lines.
Leading
Leading is the vertical distance between lines of type and is
measured in points. During the days of metal type, printers inserted
extra strips of lead between long lines of text to make them easier
to read. This procedure gave rise to the term leading (pronounced
ledding). Leading is measured from the baseline of one line of text to
the baseline of the next line of text. Most word processing and page
layout applications let you adjust the leading in your documents.
Experiment with this feature to see how it a
Monospaced versus Proportional
Fonts on typewriters were usually monospaced (also known as
fi xed pitch). Monospaced means that each character, whether it’s an
i or an m , takes up the same amount of space. Monospaced digital
fonts, such as Courier, work well when a mechanical typewriter look
is desired or in cases where characters should line up vertically.
ff
ects legibility.
Too much leading causes the eye to jump from line
monospaced (im)
proportionally spaced (im)
to line and is disruptive to reading. Too little leading
creates dark, uninviting color that may cause the eye
Today, most of the digital type used on computers is designed to
be proportionally spaced. With proportional spacing, each letter is
given just the amount of space it needs to look right and be most
legible. Using a proportional font, you can fi t much more text on a
page than using a monospaced font while at the same time making
the text easier to read.
to skip a line when scanning to fi nd the next one.
11-point type / 24-point leading (11 / 24)
Too little leading creates dark, uninviting color
that may cause the eye to skip a line when scanning to
fi nd the next one. Too much leading causes the eye
to jump from line to line and is disruptive to reading.
11 / 11
Line Length
As lines of text get long, it can be difficult for the reader to move
from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. On the other
hand, short line lengths break up the text and interrupt the reader.
The ideal line length depends on the design of the typeface, type size,
line spacing, and length of the copy. Generally, a line should have
characters, or
to
words, for optimal readability.
TYPOGRAPHY PRIMER 5 www.adobe.com/type
to

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin