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Typography class 2
This document provides information on type anatomy, classification, and history. It begins by defining various aspects of type anatomy such as x-height, ascenders, descenders, etc. It then discusses type classification systems including distinguishing humanist, old-style, transitional, modern, and slab-serif typefaces. Sans serif classifications of grotesque, neo-grotesque, humanist, and geometric are also outlined. Finally, there is a brief overview of the history of typography and an example demonstrating the use of a panagram to evaluate typeface characteristics.
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Typography class 2
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- 2. typography and communicationdesign lesson 02 & 03 the faces of type • type anatomy • type families • type classification • brief history
- 3. anatomy Double chin? Big feet? BowedLegs? “you just want me for my body ” Tall & Curvy? type
- 4. little details willtell you alot about your type. GO AHEAD AND CHECK THEM OUT. IT’S NOT SHALLOW. IT’S YOUR JOB.
- 5. More than anypart of the body, the x-height can dramatically affect the type readability. Avoid extremely of very large x-heights if that is important to you. ASCENDER Quite ambitious, this part of a lower case letter rises above the x height. SET WIDTH Width of a character in relation to the height. Being wider than you are tall isn’t always a bad thing. X-HEIGHT The height of a lower case x of the height of lower case letters. CAP HEIGHT The distance between the baseline and the top of a capital letter. BASELINE The imaginary, yet crucial line where all obedient letterforms sit. COUNTER The enclosed negative space within a letter. DESCENDER The male anatomy of a lower case letter that hangs below the baseline. TERMINAL Even though it sounds life-threatening, it is just the endpoint of the letterform.
- 6. A font consistsof a set of character of consistent design. A font family extends this to become a set of fonts, designed to work together. A family consist of the variations (styles) of the basic font. The names of the variations or styles are not consistent, and alternatives are given with the descriptions. The most basic variations are bold and italics. Most well-designed fonts have at least these. The family may consist of more. Here are some of the most common. families type
- 7. ROMAN Also called ‘book’,‘normal’, ‘regular’. The normal form of the typeface, the term comes from early type being derived from Roman inscriptions. ITALIC (OBLIQUE) Italics are a less formal version of a typeface, derived from 15th-century italian handwriting. It is important to recognized the difference between true italics, which are designed as a separate but consistent face, and obliques, which are more like what you get when u click the italic button in a word processor: pushed over roman. Oftentimes the italic version of sans-serif type is called oblique, so the confusion deepens. BOLDFACE Bold, black, heavy, poster. A thicker stroke weight than the roman form. Bolds are proportionally thicker. Depending on the thickness, there are variations such as semi-bold, medium, demi-bold, ultra-bold, black, extra-bold, super, or poster. Avant Garde Book Helvetica Regular Minion Pro Regular Avant Garde Book Oblique Helvetica Oblique Minion Pro Italic Avant Garde Bold Helvetica Bold Minion Pro Bold
- 8. LIGHT The opposite ofbold, light has a thinner stroke weight than roman. Again, there may be levels and naming variations such as ultra-thin, thin, and ultra-light. CONDENSED Sometimes termed ‘compressed’, this is a horizontally thinner version of a typeface. May have its own variations in stroke, such as ultra-light condensed. EXTENDED A horizontally extended version of the roman, again may have stroke variations. Much more common with sans-serif families. Avant Garde Extra Light Helvetica Bold Futura Std Light Avant Garde Book Condensed Univers Condensed Futura Std Condensed Univers Extended Helvetica Extended Eurostile Extended
- 11. A basic systemfor classifying typefaces was devised in the nineteenth century, when printers sought to identify a heritage for their own craft analogous to that of art history. Humanist letterforms are closely connected to calligraphy and the movement of the hand. Transitional and modern typefaces are more abstract and less organic. These three main groups correspond roughly to the Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment periods in art and literature. Designers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have continued to create new typefaces based on historic characteristics. classification type
- 12. Type classification, whilehelpful, is often confusing and even controversial. Type classification is also helpful in pairing typefaces for projects, sometimes based on historical proximity but also by noting similar features that unify the typefaces, such as axis or x-height. In some cases, by finding enough disparity in the small features, very different typefaces become complementary. Part 1: Classifying Serif Typefaces Part 2: Classifying Sans Typefaces
- 13. Part 1 Classifying Serif Typefaces Humanist/ Old-Styled / Transitional / Modern / Slab Serif
- 14. Humanist faces werevery calligraphic in nature • Notable calligraphic influence, patterned after handwriting. • Sloping “e” crossbar. • Relatively small x-height. • Strongly angled axis or stress. • Inconsistent stroke weight. • Low contrast between thick and thin strokes. • Based on typefaces designed in Renaissance cultural hubs such as Venice. Humanist (mid 1400s)
- 15. Old-Style (late 1500s– 1700s) The serifs become more carefully formed, and characters are designed more proportionately • Less calligraphic influence because type began to be viewed as separate from writing. • Axis or stress but less angled. • Larger x-height compared to Humanist type. • Increased difference between heavy and light strokes. • Named after influential type designers Claude Garamont and Aldus Manutius.
- 16. Transitional (mid 1700s) •No calligraphic influence. Designed independently, sometimes on a grid. • Visually vertical axis or stress. • Serifs are less bracketed and flatten out. • High contrast between heavy and thin strokes. • First appeared in the late-17th century. Details become very refined
- 17. Modern (1800s –1900s) • Extreme contrast between thick and think. • Rigidly vertical axis or stress. • Apertures (the place where character opens) are generally very tight. • Poor choice for chunks of text. • Work best at large sizes. • Named after Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni. Very precisely designed.
- 18. Slab Serif (1800s) •Created for advertising, posters and large media. • Easiest to identify because of their obvious appearance. • Very heavy weight. • Low contrast between thick and thin. • Unbracketed, prominent serifs. • First typefaces created expressly for display purposes. No-nonsense Attitude.
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- 20. Here’s a littleexercise to test your comprehension of what we’ve covered so far. Take a look at these specimens and comment on how you’d classify them. Keep in mind that classification is an aid, rather than a hard and fast system. 1 What? Why? 2 What? Why? 3 What? Why? 4 What? Why? 5 What? Why? 6 What? Why?
- 21. Part 2 Classifying Sans Typefaces Grotesque/ Neo-Grotesque / Humanist / Geometric
- 22. Grotesque (1800s) The capitalG in a Grotesque is usually spurred • Early, original Sans Serifs • Variation in the thickness of strokes. • Tall x-height. • Examples of the Grotesque category include Franklin Gothic, Monotype Grotesque and Schelter Grotesk
- 23. Neo-Grotesque Created with anemphasis on neutrality and simplicity • Also known as Transitional or Realists. • Much more refined than the Grotesque. • Less variation in the line weight. • Often a single-story “g” • Tight apertures. • Examples of the Neo-Grotesque category include Universe, Helvetica, Arial, Bell Gothic and DIN.
- 24. In 1957, abig year for Neo-Grotesque sans serifs, as Frutiger’s Univers as well as Folio were released. Haas Foundry released Max Miedinger’s Neue Haas Grotesk, which drew heavily on Schelter and Akzidenz Grotesks. In 1960, Haas, in an effort to market it more effectively, rebranded Neue Haas Grotesk to what we know as one of the most ubiquitous typefaces of all time... HELVETICA Many people love Helvetica so much that they’ll hang prints of vintage Helvetica specimens as decoration.
- 25. Humanist • Humanist sanseven feature some stress, and nearly all other sans serifs have a completely vertical axis. • Much higher stroke contrast. • Often two-story lowercase “a” and “g”. • All of these characteristics combine to make most Humanists a more legible choice than other types of sans faces. • Examples of the Gill Sans, Frutiger, Myriad, Trebuchet and Calibri. Humanist faces were very calligraphic in nature
- 26. Geometric • Geometric linealsare among the least legible of sans serifs and are usually suitable only for display type. • Usually show little or no stroke contrast • Often a single-story lowercase “a” • Examples of the Futura, ITC Avant Garde, Century Gothic, Gotham and Spartan. They are built on geometrical shapes
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- 28. Examples: Posters createdusing Bodoni Typeface (Modern) EXAMPLES > MODERN • Style development in the late 18th through 19th Century. • High contrast between thick and think strokes. • Flat serifs. • Some may be more difficult to read. • Later... slab serifs / square serifs / related to Clarendon style with less contrast and softer, rounder shapes. • Examples of fonts: Bodoni, Didot, etc.
- 29. Examples: Posters createdusing Bodoni Typeface (Modern)
- 30. Examples: Posters createdusing Didot Typeface (Modern)
- 31. Examples: Posters createdusing Garamond (Old-style) EXAMPLES > OLD-STYLE • Developed by Renaissance typographers to replace the Blackletter style of type. • Low contrast between the thick and thin strokes, bracketed serifs, and a left-leaning axis. • Carried to evolved from 16th through 17th century. (At this point it was called Transitional typefaces) • Examples of fonts: Garamond, Goudy, etc.
- 32. Examples: Posters createdusing Goudy Typeface (Old-style)
- 33. Examples: Posters createdusing Baskerville, Calson, Georgia (Transitional) EXAMPLES > SERIF • Have the little tail found at the tip of the alphabet. • Hairline - much thinner than the main strokes, very very thin lines. • Square(slab) - thicker than hairline serifs all the way up heavier weight than the main strokes. • Bracketed - curved transition between the serif and the main strokes. • Unbracketed - attached directly to the strokes of the letterform, sometimes abruptly/at right angles. • Examples of fonts: Baskerville, Bodoni, Calson, Georgia etc.
- 34. Examples: Posters createdusing Rockwell (Modern) EXAMPLES > SLAB SERIF (A Sub-classification of modern style) • Evolved from the Modern style. • Square and larger, bolder than the older serifs • Examples of fonts: Clarendon, American Typewriter, Rockwell
- 35. Examples: Posters createdusing Clarendon Typeface (Modern)
- 36. last but notleast...
- 38. info good to know Thequick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog The above panagram is extremely useful for designers to choose typefaces. It consists of all the 26 alphabets and shows the characteristic of a type at one glance. meaning: A panagram (Greek: pan gramma, “every letter”), or holoalphabetic sentence, is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once. (source: wikipedia)
- 39. SEE YOU INTHE NEXT LESSON THANK YOU