Typography

Humanist Sans Serifs

(Antique Olive, Calibri, Johnston, Lucida Grande, Segoe UI, Gill Sans, Myriad, Frutiger, Trebuchet MS, Tahoma, Verdana and Optima). These are the most calligraphic of the sans-serif typefaces, with some variation in line width and more legibility than other sans-serif fonts.

Geometric Sans Serifs

(Futura, ITC Avant Garde, Century Gothic, Gotham, or Spartan). As their name suggests, these sans-serif typefaces are based on geometric shapes, like near-perfect circle and square. Note the optically circular letter "O" and the simple construction of the lowercase letter "a". These sans-serif fonts have a very modern look and feel. Of these four categories, these fonts tend to be the least useful for body text.

Widow

A line of text at the end of a paragraph separated from the rest of the text, meaning that this line is either in the next column or in the next page. It can also appear as an opening line of a paragraph at the bottom of the column or a page, thus separated from the rest of the paragraph.

Formal Script Type (or Engraved Script)

A majority of these scripts are based upon the letterforms of seventeenth and eighteenth century writing-masters like George Bickham, George Shelley and George Snell. The letters in their original form are generated by a quill or metal nib of a pen. Both are able to create fine and thick strokes. Typefaces based upon their style of writing appear late in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Contemporary revivals of these script faces can be seen in Kuenstler Script and Matthew Carter's typeface Snell Roundhand. These typefaces are frequently used for invitations and diplomas to effect an elevated and elegant feeling.

Running Header or Footer

A one of these are a guide at the top to indicate your position in a manuscript. You'd find information like title, chapter title, section title, author, etc located here. The other is information placed at the bottom of the format.

Orphan

A word or few words in its own row that end a paragraph, thus creating too much white space between paragraphs.

Type races

Classifications of broad groups of type: serif, sans serif, square serif, decorative, roman, script/cursive, blackletter

Modern Type

Created in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Distinguishable by their sudden-onset vertical stress and strong contrast. Modern serifs and horizontals are very thin, almost hairlines. Although they are very striking, these typefaces are sometimes criticized as cold or harsh, and may not be quite as readable for very extensive text work, such as books.

Typeface

Group of characters, such as letters, numbers, and punctuation, that share a common design or style. Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica and Courier are all typefaces.

Flowlines

Horizontal lines that break the space into horizontal bands. They can be used to help guide the eye across the page and can be used to impose starting and stopping points for text and images to be aligned. When elements are aligned to the top it it's called a hangline as the elements appear to hang from the line.

Type families

The different options available within a typeface make up a type family. Many typefaces are at a minimum available in roman, bold and italic. Other families are much larger, such as Helvetica Neue, which is available in options such Condensed Bold, Condensed Black, UltraLight, UltraLight Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, etc.

Ligature

Two characters tied to each other in such a way that they appear to be one unit

Point

Used to measure the size of a font. One point is equal to 1/72 of an inch. When a character is referred to as 12pt, the full height of the text block (such as a block of movable type), and not just the character itself, is being described. Because of this, two typefaces at the same point size may appear as different sizes, based on the position of the character in the block and how much of the block the character fills.

Columns

Vertical bands of modules. There can be any number of columns in a grid. More of them leads to more flexibility, but can also make the grid difficult to work with. Their widths can be equal or they can vary across a grid.

Rag

When text that is left aligned is uneven/broken on the right hand side.

Wood Type

Wood type answered some of the needs of display advertising during the industrial revolution. It derives its name from the fact that instead of being made of metal, the type is carved from wood, cut perpendicular to the grain. It is distinguished by strong contrasts, an overall dark color, and a lack of fine lines. It may be unusually compressed or extended. Many have an "Old West" feel, because they are most strongly associated with America in the 1870-1900 period. Some of the them most widely available today are those in an Adobe pantheon released in 1990, which includes Cottonwood, Ironwood and Juniper.

Glyphs

full set of letters, numbers, symbols, and special characters available to a given font

Display Type

large or eye-catching type used for headings or advertisements.

The Greeks

This group of people created the first system for reading from top to bottom and left to right

When was the first book every printed?

15th century

Golden Ratio

1:1.68

Typographic Color

Amount of gray or shadow caused by density. The overall tonal value of a block of type on a page, as perceived when the eye combines the positive and negative shapes of the layout

The Earliest Form of Written Communication

Cave paintings

Neo-grotesque Sans Serifs

During the 1950s a simplification in design, called Swiss modernism, gave birth to the even cleaner typefaces. The most common typefaces in this group are Helvetica and Univers, which are both cornerstones of typography. Though derived from their grotesque cousins, these have almost no variation in stroke thickness. Jawed characters are much more open. Round characters are more circular and the lower case "g" has an open tail.

Spatial Zones

Fields of adjacent modules. Each one can be assigned a specific function within the design. A long horizontal on might be used to place long horizontal images. A long vertical field might be used for long blocks of text. A large rectangular field might be used for video. Design elements will often be placed inside one as opposed to a single module.

Monoline Script Type

Lacking significant contrast in the letter strokes. One such is Freestyle Script.

Leading

Refers to the distance between lines of text. This distance, measured in points, is measured from one baseline to the next. A block of text may be referred to as being 12pt with 6pts of extra leading, also known as 12/18. This means there is 12pt type on 18pts of total height (12 plus the 6pts of extra leading).

Folio

These are created when page numbers are placed consistently in the margin, usually above or below the composition.

Clarendons or Ionics

a contemporary remake of the slab serif typeface.The difference between them and many other slab serif fonts is that there is a bracket rather than a 90 degree angle connecting the joints and the serifs are thinner than the letter.

Blackletter Type

also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, Old English or Textura, It was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of faces is known as Fraktur.

Hyroglyphics

an egyptian form of writing in which pictures stand for both ideas and sounds

Johan Gutenburg

printed the Latin Bible in 1456, it was the first book ever printed

Format

the area in which the design sits. In a book or magazine it is the page. On a website it is the browser window. It defines the live area of a design where type, images, and other media are present.

Typography

the study of type

Text Type

type set in small sizes, usually set between 7 and 10 points, and intended for continuous reading.

Art Deco Type

If Art Nouveau was about finding beauty in organic intricacy,this typ was perhaps about finding beauty in geometric simplicity. First appearing in the 1920s and 30s,it made a comeback in the 1970s and 80s as well. Almost by definition, It meant sans serif type. The most common such face is Avant Garde (1974, Lubalin), which is striking but hard to read at length. A more graceful geometric sans is Futura (Renner, 1927-39). There are also more quirky faces in this category, such as Kabel (Koch, 1927-30). A recent popular display face is ITC Anna (1991 - ?).

Italienne Slab Serif Model

In this slab serif model, the serifs are even heavier than the stems, forging a dramatic, attention-drawing effect. Some Italienne slab serifs, such as Playbill, have a characteristic Western appearance, likely as a result of their frequent use in western-era posters.

Modules

Individual units of space that are separated by regular intervals. They are the basic building blocks of grids. When repeated they create columns and rows. Ideally the width of it will be based on the measure of a line of text. The height would be based on some multiple of the type's leading or line-height. The upper left corner of it is considered to be the active corner and the lower right corner, the passive corner.

Transitional Type

Its distinguishing features include vertical stress and slightly higher contrast than old style typefaces, combined with horizontal serifs. The most influential examples are Philippe Grandjean's "Romain du Roi" for the French Crown around 1702, Pierre Simon Fournier's work circa 1750, and John Baskerville's work from 1757 onwards.

The two basic measurements of a font

Picas and Points

Markers

Placement indicators for subordinate or consistently appearing information. They can be used to denote the location of folios, page numbers, etc. These last 3 are more commonly found as described in print, but there's no reason they couldn't also be used on a website. For example blog posts aren't usually given page numbers, but they often display the publication date. When present the date is usually shown at the top of the post, but there's no reason it couldn't be included in a running header or as a substitute for the page numbers of a folio.

Sans Serif Typefaces

Small lines at the ends of character strokes. Sans serif, or without serif, refers to typefaces without these lines. Sans serif faces are often used when a large typeface is necessary, such as in a magazine headline. Helvetica is a popular sans serif typeface. Sans serif fonts are also common for website text, as they can be easier to read on screen. Arial is a sans serif typeface that was designed specifically for on-screen use.

Tracking, kerning and letterspacing

The distance between characters is controlled by tracking, kerning and letterspacing. Tracking is adjusted to change the space between characters consistently across a block of text. This may be used to increase legibility for an entire magazine article. Kerning is the reduction of space between characters, and letterspacing is the addition of space between characters. These smaller, precise adjustments may be used to tweak a specific word, such as in a logo design, or a large headline of a story in a newspaper. All of the settings may be experimented with to create artistic text effects.

Rows

The horizontal equivalent of columns. Online it's harder to plan for them as the height of the format is often inconsistent and dynamic. On some pages your design may call for a fixed height, though on most pages your design is allowed grow vertically with the content.

Art Nouveau

The late Victorian era, from 1880 to World War I, was characterized by this ornamental style of art, with its organic, asymmetrical, intricate and flowing lines. This type (French, meaning "new art") produced similarly distinctive typography, which saw a revival during the 1960s. There are a fair number of digital revivals of art nouveau faces, although few are widely used. Some of the more common digital typefaces are Arnold Boecklin (Weisert, 1904), Artistik , Galadriel and Victorian.

Grunge Typography

The most recent typographic wave is one which has sometimes been called after the musical movement originating in Seattle. Although it is far too early to judge the ultimate impact of this type, the form is seen as the merger of the industrial functionalist movement called Bauhaus (contemporary with Art Deco, named after the architectural school) with the wild, nihilistic absurdism of Dadaism. This type, like many typographic/artistic movements before it, is a rebellion; but this rebellion denies not only the relevance of anything previous, but sometimes even the relevance of legibility itself, in the belief that the medium is the message.

Margins

The negative space between the edge of the format and the outer edge of the content. The proportions of it help to establish the overall tension (or lack of tension) in a composition. The smaller it is the more tension is created. Larger ones create more whitespace and help focus attention on the positive space of the design. Larger ones also help the eye find a place to rest and can be a good area to place subordinate information.

Gutters

The spaces separating modules either vertically or horizontally. Typically we think of themas the space between columns, but they are also the space between rows.

Slab Serif

These faces have block-like rectangular serifs, sticking out horizontally or vertically, often the same thickness as the body strokes. It was first commercially introduced by Vincent Figgins under the name Antique, with copies of specimen dated 1815 and 1817

Casual script Type (or Brush Script Type)

These scripts show a less formal, more active hand. The strokes may vary in width but often appear to have been created by wet brush rather than a pen nib. They appear in the early twentieth century and with the advent of photocomposition in the early-1950s their number rapidly increased. They were popularly used in advertising in Europe and North America into the 1970s. Examples of casual script types include Brush Script, Dom Casual (Dom, 1952) Kaufmann and Mistral.

Fat Face Type

These types were an offshoot of the moderns, intended for display purposes (that is, to be attention-getting for use in large sizes, particularly advertising). The first such types appeared from 1810-1820. They further exaggerated the contrast of modern typefaces, with slab-like vertical lines and extra emphasis of any vertical serifs, which often acquired a wedge shape. Bodoni Ultra, Normande and Elephant are all examples of fat face types which are closely based on early to mid-19th Century originals, and are available in digital form.

Sans Serif (a.k.a. Gothic or Grotesque)

They made their first appearances around 1815-1817. Both are marked by simpler letterforms with (usually) relatively uniform stroke weight, lacking significant contrast, often geometric in underlying design. It means without a serif.

Script Type

This type is based on handwriting; but often this is handwriting with either a flexible steel nib pen, or a broad-edged pen, and is thus unlike modern handwriting.

Oldstyle Type

This type is generally considered "warm" or friendly, thanks to its origins in Renaissance humanism. The main characteristics of these typefaces are low contrast with diagonal stress, and cove or "bracketed" serifs (serifs with a rounded join to the stem of the letter). The earliest (Venetian such as Jenson, or , such as Goudy Old Style Roman) of these typefaces (originally 15th-16th Century) have very minimal contrast, and usually a sloped cross-bar on the lower-case "e." One such is Bruce Rogers'* Centaur (1916), based on Monotype's Bembo (1929) is based on the work of Francesco Griffo*, thought to have designed the first italic typeface, circa 1499.