typotingz

[typotingz]

20. What is uppercase and lowercase?

Uppercase letters are usually used at the beginning of a sentence or proper noun and lowercase letters are used everywhere else in the sentence. ABCDE are uppercase and abcde are lowercase. In the sign, “Bus stop closure” is all uppercase, and that uppercase is being used to call out the most important information on the sign. The rest of the information is formatted as normal with mostly lowercase and uppercase only at the beginning of sentences, with the exception of “COVID” which is a shortened combination of three words, and should therefore be capitalized. This typical mix of uppercase and lowercase is helpful because it allows for the beginning of sentences and important words to stand out while still allowing for easy reading since lowercase letterforms have more variety and are therefore easier to differentiate from one another.

[typotingz]

19. What is a widow and what is an orphan?

Different typographers call these typographical missteps by different names, but generally, widows (red) are a line at the top of a new page with the rest of its paragraph at the bottom of the previous page and orphans (blue) are a line at the bottom of a page with the rest of its paragraph on the next page. However, I have also heard the term orphan used to refer to a single, short word at the end of a paragraph (yellow), but as I was researching, I saw Opus Design call this a runt, which I had not heard before.

[typotingz]

16. What is a dingbat?

Dingbats, although they are more decorative like other typographic elements and punctuation, can also be used to increase readability by breaking up ideas and paragraphs, creating separation borders, and highlighting important information. Sometimes, however, they are also purely decorative and add to the aesthetic of a composition. In the example of this magazine, they serve as symbols of attributes of each location they are assigned to. They help increase comprehension by being something a reader can quickly reference to navigate the page to their interests.

[typotingz]

18. What is a ligature?

A ligature is formed when two letters link together to form one character. In the photo, you can see how typographer Crystian Cruz worked intentionally to create ligatures for some of the most common pairs of letters found in Portuguese when he was designing a typeface for a Brazilian company. The ligatures in this example are all made for the aesthetic purposes but some ligatures, such as æ, represent specific sounds.

[typotingz]

17. Show the difference between italic and regular.

Contrary to what some people may think, italic text is not simply the slanted version of regular text. Rather, italic is a cursive font that is based on the style of calligraphy. When you compare the italic type in this passage with the regular type, you can see that the italic type also takes up less room and has more flourish in the serifs.

Italics can be used for a myriad of purposes, such as for titles, foreign words, and scientific names of organisms. In this page spread, you can see “Buch der Natur” and “Liber Floridus” and italicized since they are titles and “païs des ames” is italicized since it is not in English.

[typotingz]

15. What is a monospaced font?

A monospaced typeface is one whose letters and characters each take up the same amount of horizontal space. In contrast, a proportional typeface is one where the letters and characters take up different spaces. For example, in this typeface that the description is written in, you can see that the l and the m take up very different amounts of space. However, in the typeface that is used in coding in DreamWeaver, is monospaced and each letter and character takes up the same amount of room. Monospaced typefaces are seen as plain and imitate the look that text written by a typewriter has.

[typotingz]

7. and 14. What is “point-size”, how do you measure it?

Point-size refers to how large text is. You can see that this picture has a lot of different point sizes from the huge “Frozen” to the tiny “Sign up for our free e-newsletter at dollartree.com”. Point-size is measured from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the lowest descender. Sometimes, different typefaces with the same point-size may seem to be different sizes which is due to factors such as the x-height and line weight of each typeface.

72 points is equal to 6 pica which is equal to 1 inch, so 12 point font is ⅙ of an inch tall.

[typotingz]

11. What is leading?

Leading is the space between each line of text. The name comes from when typesetting was done by hand and lead was used to separate the lines of text. Signs like these highlight leading because as you can see, the spaces between the lines of text are darker than the parts that have text so you can really clearly see the leading.

[typotingz]

5. What are the four styles of “alignment”?

The four styles of alignment are left aligned (yellow), right aligned (blue), centered (red), and justified (green). As you can see, left alignment and justified alignment are best suited to longer amounts of text. For very long text like in books or magazines, especially if they are in columns, justified is best suited. Justified text communicates a clean and efficient appearance, but a typographer needs to be very careful and make sure that there are no gaps by adjusting tracking. With very short line lengths, like in the columns here where left alignment is used, justification would likely lead to strange gaps because there’s not enough wiggle room. 

Centered alignment and right alignment are best used for titles or subtitles because having a rag, or uneven edge, on the left becomes tiring on the eyes in longer sections since the reader has to find a new position at every new line. Center alignment gives a formal and classical feel, and is commonly used on invitations or certificates. Right alignment is great to break things up and is commonly used in captions or page numbers.

[typotingz]

4. What is display type?

13. What is a slab serif?

A display typeface, seen here in “Glass”, is intended for use at large sizes for headlines, not as paragraph text. A slab serif, seen here in “in domestic building”, is a type of serif typeface that has very thick serifs. Both of these types of typefaces are very bold, but slab serifs are more well suited for longer passages of text than display typefaces. As you can see here, if the display typeface used for “Glass” was used for even the slightly longer but significantly smaller “in domestic building”, it would impede legibility. However, slab serifs can be used much more broadly and look great as a big, bold title as well as a subtitle or passages of text.

[typotingz]

23. What is negative space? What is “type weight”?

Negative space is the empty area surrounding design elements. In typography, it could be the space between letters in the same word, the space between two lines of text, or the space between the headline and the body text. Here, you can see there is a very ineffective use of negative space. The words “Caution gas pipeline” are uncomfortably close to each other with a lack of negative space, yet there is a ton of negative space on the top and bottom of “Gas”. This makes for an unbalanced composition.

Part of why “Caution gas pipeline” looks so awkward is because those words have a heavy type weight, meaning that they would already need more negative space around than characters with a light type weight would need. Type weight is the thickness of the characters relative to their height. You can see here that “Caution gas pipeline” has a much heavier type weight than any of the other text (compare the O in “caution” with the O in “before” and the Es in “pipeline” to the Es in “before”). The text with the lightest type weight in this composition is the very small text at the bottom of both yellow blocks: “©️ 1985 Carsonite”, “Agl-3267”, and “P1805”.

[typotingz]

12. What is an em-dash?

An em-dash (—, green), an en-dash (–, blue), and a hyphen (-, red) may look similar, but there are small differences between them that help define their proper use.

As you can see, the hyphen is the most commonly used of the three, and is used to join separate words into one word or to break a long word into parts so that the word can continue on the next line (hyphenation). The en-dash is a little longer than the hyphen, about the length of the letter n (hence the name), and can be used for any kind of range.

The em-dash is about twice as long as the en-dash, about the length of the letter m (hence the name), and is used to show a sudden break in though. It can be used only once, towards the end of a sentence, like it is used here in “[...] write those famous words—’everyone calls barbarian what is not his own usage’.”, or it can be used twice in the middle of a sentence like in “[...]historical work of our own age—preoccupied as it is with the problem of European and non-European, of black and white— should have been devoted to the study[...]” from page 4 of the same book. 

[typotingz]

9. What is a drop cap?

A drop cap is a large letter that marks the start of an idea or body of text. In this example, the drop cap is used to show the beginning of a new chapter. You can see that the second paragraph does not have a drop cap at the beginning of the paragraph.

Drop caps were first used to guide the reader through the text. Now, we have more sophisticated ways of doing so, but they are still used to communicate an old or traditional feeling to the typography. The book where this image was taken from is about a ship voyage in the 1600s, so it is fitting to use an element that recalls an older time period.

[typotingz]

22. Show the difference between lettering and typography.

The top highlighted word is an example of lettering and the bottom highlighted paragraph is an example of typography. 

Lettering is when the letters acts as an individual illustration. The letters are unique letterforms that are used for a single purpose rather than previously designed letters. In “Secoton”, the S and N are carefully crafted to add balance to the composition and you can see how each letter has its own special style to add to the visual language, rather than them all being part of the same family.

Typography is a repeated system of letterforms. These pre-designed letters are carefully made to have the same feeling so that they can flow seemlessly when arranged in words, sentences, and paragraphs. In the paragraph, you can see how the typography allows for good legibility and readability. 

[typotingz]

8. What is x-height?

6. What are ascenders and descenders?

As you can see in the diagram, x-height is the distance between the baseline, or bottom of letters without a descender, and the top of lowercase letters without an ascender. You can clearly see the x-height across “Avensong” in the first picture. 

Ascenders are the part of some lowercase letters that ascend above the x-height, seen on the d and t in “Serenade Ct” and the h in the diagram. Descenders are the part of some lowercase letters that descend below the baseline, seen on the g and y in “Avensong Ives Wy” and the p in the diagram.

[typotingz]

1. What are serifs and what are they good for?

10. What is a sans serif typeface?

Serifs are the small strokes at the end of letter forms. Typefaces that have these serifs are called serif typefaces. “Bus Stop” in the first picture is written in a serif typeface. 

Sans serif typefaces are typefaces that do not have these small strokes. “MARTA” in the first picture and all of the text in the second picture are written in sans serif typefaces.

Serif and sans serif typefaces have different connotations. Serif typefaces have been around for much longer than sans serif and as a result they can portray tradition and sophistication whereas sans serif is more modern and neutral. Beyond connotation, serifs can actually improve readability because they make each letterform more distinctive which allows the eye to recognize them more quickly.

Serif and sans serif typefaces are commonly paired together. When they are paired, it is important to think of the mood of the typefaces and attributes like the x-height (the distance between the baseline and the top of lowercase letters) that will make the typefaces look good together. The first picture is an example of when typefaces are paired incorrectly. The custom MARTA font is super modern and pairing it with Times New Roman simply does not make sense because they have such different moods. On MARTA’s website, it says that their primary font is Helvetica Neue and I believe that this pairs much better with the logo because it also has a modern feel to it. There are also serif typefaces that have a modern feel but Times New Roman is certainly not one of them.

[typotingz]

21. What is a grid and what is it good for?

A grid is a system of columns and rows that are used to guide layout choices. Grids are wonderful to achieve consistency throughout a multipage design such as a book, magazine, or series of posters. They are also very useful in standalone designs like the orange sticker in the picture because they organize the design and make it easier to navigate and understand.

The orange sticker uses a very basic two column grid. The grid is important here to organize a large amount of type in a small space. Especially since the design is using multiple types of alignments and letter treatments, the grid lends some order to the design. This sticker is warning about the danger of the object it is placed on, so it is essential that the information is easy to navigate and understand, so the grid is helpful and needed here.