Typography

“Philosophy is written in this grand book the Universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and to read the alphabet in which it is composed.”
Galileo Galilei.

So what is typography, in short it is the art and technique of arranging type. It is an integral part of the designers skill and is about so much more than making the words legible.

The choice of typeface and how it works with the layout, grid, colour scheme and design scheme can make all the difference between good and bad design.

It can, like photography, be almost intuitive, but it is difficult to become skilled in typography unless we have a basic understanding of the art involved.

We need to have a good grasp of the rules of typography, especially if we mean to break them.

So let’s have a look at some of the basic concepts for good typography use and design.

It’s always a good idea to use a professionally designed font, because like any form of great design, a good typeface will have been created  by a craftsman who has used his talent and experience to fine tune his design. There are thousands of fonts to choose from, but in this case less is more and there is something to be said for painting with a limited palette.

Some fonts, such as Helvetica or Times New Roman, have stood the test of time and will continue to serve us well.

Size  –  Not all typefaces are created equally. Some are fat and wide, some long and lean, some thin and narrow and words set in these different styles can take up a totally different amount of space on the screen or page.

The height of each character is called the ‘x-height’. When mixing different typefaces it’s a good practice to use sets that share a similar x-height. More  appealing to the eye that way. The width of each character is called the ‘set width’, this spans the body of the character plus  the space that acts as a buffer between the characters.

Leading  –  Strips of lead were originally used to separate lines of text in metal typesetting, hence the name.

Leading is the vertical space between each line of text. Its a good rule of thumb to have the leading value greater than the font size, about one and a quarter to one and half times larger, it makes for text thats comfortable to read.

Kerning  –  the art of creating space between characters to produce a harmonious pairing.

Where an uppercase ‘A’ meets an uppercase ‘V’ their diagonal strokes are usually kerned so that the top left of the ‘V’ sits above the bottom right of the ‘A’.

Tracking – similar to kerning, but not the same thing, tracking relates to the spacing of all characters and is applied evenly.

Measure  –  this describes the width of the text block. For best reading experience this should be considered carefully.

Hierarchy and Scale  –  if all the type is the same size it can be difficult to figure out what is the most important information on the page. In order to lead the viewer headings are usually large, sub-headings smaller and the body text  of the article smaller still.

Of course size is not the only method to define hierarchy, it can also be defined using colour, spacing and weight.