Type Rules

Ilene Strizver is the founder of The Type Studio in Westport, Connecticut. She writes and teaches extensively on typography. During her career, she has been creative and produc- tion director of U&lc magazine, as well as director of typeface development at International Typeface Corporation (ITC) in New York City, where she developed more than 300 text and display typefaces with respected type designers such as Sumner Stone, Erik Spiekermann, Jill Bell, Jim Parkinson, and the late Phill Grimshaw. In addition to penning the popular TypeTalk column for creativepro.com, Ilene is a featured contributor to the Fontology series for fonts.com.

Acknowledgments x

Preface xi

Introduction 1

Chapter One A Brief History of Type 3

Sounds to Symbols 3

Gutenberg and Movable Type 6

The Industrial Revolution and the Mechanization of Type 8

Photocomposition 8

Herb Lubalin and Expressive Typography 11

Into the Digital Age 12

Notable Type Designers 14

Exercises: 22

Design Guidelines, Nancy Sharon Collins 22

Typographic Timeline, Ilene Strizver 24

Historical Design, Ilene Strizver 25

Chapter Two From Metal to Mac: Understanding Font Technology 27

What Is a Font? 27

Font Formats 27

Type 1 (PostScript) Fonts 28

TrueType Fonts 29

OpenType Fonts 29

Techtip: OpenType Features 32

Hinting 33

Font Management Utilities 33

Techtip: OpenType Font Identifiers 33

Typetip: Long S 34

Typetip: Font vs. Typeface 34

Exercise: 35

Exploring Your OpenType Fonts, Ilene Strizver 35

Chapter Three What Makes a Typeface Look the Way It Does? 37

Parts of a Character 38

Type Categories 40

Serif 40

Sans Serif 42

Scripts 43

Handwriting 44

Blackletter 45

Titling Fonts 45

Opticals and Size-Sensitive Fonts 46

Typetip: One- and Two-Storey Lowercase As and Gs 47

Decorative and Display 48

Typetip: Character vs. Glyph 49

Exercises:

Think Like a Type Designer, Ilene Strizver 50

Letter Parts Assignment, Catherine Begle 51

Personal Type Specimen Catalog, Ilene Strizver 54

Type Specimen Book and Typeface Analysis, Audrey G. Bennett 55

Typeface Comparison Book, Joey Hannaford 57

Block Type Project, Erich Doubek 62

Chapter Four Selecting the Right Type for the Job 65

Factors to Consider 65

Design Goals 65

Identify Your Audience 67

Type Size 68

Type Color 68

Legibility and Readability 68

Paper and Surface Considerations 70

Printing Method 70

Low-Resolution Environments 70

What Makes a Good Typeface? 71

Consistent Design Characteristics 71

Legibility 71

Spacing 71

Kerning 72

Even Color and Texture 72

Text vs. Display 73

Type Super Families and Systems 74

Script, Calligraphic, and Handwriting Fonts 77

When the Best Font for the Job Isn’t a Font 78

Typographic Illustration 85

Mixing It Up 89

Text with Display 90

Serif with Sans 90

Weight Contrast (Light with Heavy) 91

Width Contrast (Wide with Narrow) 92

Script and Decorative Designs 92

Type Super Families and Systems 96

Dos and Don’ts 97

Typetip: Type Specimen Materials 98

Typetip: What’s New on the Font Scene 98

Typetip: A Bodoni by Any Other Name? 99

Exercises:

Why Are All the Scary Typefaces Pointy? Christopher Andreola 100

A Garamond Is a Garamond Is a Garamond . . . or Is It? Ilene Strizver 101

Six-Word Memoirs Poster, Elizabeth Resnick 104

Real Signage Critique, Amelia Hugill-Fontanel 107

Chapter Five Formatting Your Type 109

Type Size 109

Line Length 110

Line Spacing (Leading) 110

Techtip: Auto Leading 113

Alignment 114

Typetip: Fine-Tuning Justified Type 116

Indents and Other Paragraph Separators 125

First Line Indent 125

Extreme Indent 125

Hanging Indent (r Outdent) 126

Dingbats 126

Line Space 126

Typetip: Standard Ligatures 126

Techtip: Style Sheets 128

Typetip: Footnotes and Endnotes 129

Techtip: Importing Copy 130

Exercises:

Typographic Lecture Series Brochure, Karen Cheng 131

Visualizing Poetry, Cassie Hester 134

Chapter Six Typographic Hierarchy and Emphasis 137

Typographic Hierarchy 138

Techniques for Emphasis 142

Italics and Obliques 142

Boldface (Weight Contrast) 143

Underscores 143

Case (Caps vs. Lowercase) 145

Type Size 145

Wide vs. Narrow 146

Changing Typestyle 146

Changing Color or Shade 146

Typetip: Avoid Computer-Generated Styling 151

Exercises:

Typographic Hierarchy Study, Elizabeth Resnick 154

Currency Redesign, Jimmy Moss 156

Expressive Typography, Stephanie Nace 158

Chapter Seven Fine-Tuning and Tweaking Your Type 161

Punctuation 161

Quotation Marks 161

Apostrophes 162

Primes 163

Techtip: Unwanted Smart Quotes 163

Hyphens, En Dashes, and Em Dashes 164

Hyphenation 166

Visual Alignment 167

Optical Margin Alignment 167

Techtip: Discretionary Hyphens 168

Techtip: Hung Punctuation and Optical Margin Alignment 168

Horizontal Alignment 168

Vertical Alignment 170

Rags 172

Techtip: Adobe Text Composer 173

Widows and Orphans 173

Typetip: Breaking for Sense 174

Techtip: Glyph Positioning and Baseline Shift 175

Exercise: Editorial Design, Ilene Strizver 176

Chapter Eight Spacing Considerations 179

Tracking 179

Techtip: Adjusting Tracking 182

Kerning 183

Custom Kerning 184

Typetip: Scaling Logos 185

Techtip: Adjusting Kerning 188

Word Spacing 190

Techtip: Adjusting Word Spacing 191

Typetip: Type on a Curve 192

Typetip: Double Word Spaces NOT! 193

Exercise:

Spacing, Kerning, and Visual Alignment Exploration, Ilene Strizver 194

Chapter Nine Finessing Your Type 197

Small Caps 197

Techtip: How to Access True-Drawn Small Caps 198

Initial Letters 200

Raised Initial 201

Dropped Initial 202

Decorative Initial 203

Boxed, Reversed, Oversized, and Overlapped Initials 203

Swash Characters 207

Alternate Characters 208

Type and Color 209

Exercises:

Information Hierarchy Book, David Kadavy 210

Concert Poster Design, Frank Armstrong 212

Chapter Ten Figures, Fractions, Signs, Symbols, and Dingbats 215

Figures 215

Techtip: Accessing Figures in OpenType Fonts 218

Techtip: Tabular to Proportional Shortcut 218

Fractions 219

Techtip: Creating Fractions in OpenType Fonts 219

Bullets 220

Registered, Trademark, and Copyright Symbols 220

Techtip: Indenting Bulleted Lists 221

Techtip: Circle P 223

Accents and Accented Characters 224

Typetip: Creating Accented Characters 224

Parentheses, Brackets, Braces, and Angled Brackets 225

Euro 227

Ellipses 227

Dingbats and Ornaments 227

End Marks 228

Typetip: Typographic Checklist 229

Exercises:

Typographic Principles Card Set, Regina Rowland 230

Spa Brochure, Ilene Strizver 232

Chapter Eleven Type on the Web (and Other Digital Formats) 235

Characteristics of Type on the Web 235

Font Style 235

Type Size 236

Column Width/Line Length 237

Line Breaks 237

Column Depth 238

Color 238

Web-Safe Fonts 238

Sans Serif 238

Serif 239

Symbol Fonts 239

Web Fonts 240

Web-Font Availability 242

Typetip: Web-Font Services 242

Smart Punctuation on the Web 243

Cascading Style Sheets 244

Type as Graphic 244

Typographic Hierarchy on the Web 244

Dos and Don’ts 246

Smartphones, Tablets, E-readers, and Other Devices 248

Exercises:

The Crystal Goblet Online: An Assignment in Two Parts (Transparent and Opaque), La254ura Franz 250

ENCODE / DECODE, Heather Shaw258 254

IPad Editorial, Marty Maxwell Lane 258

Chapter Twelve Type in Motion 263

Combining Type and Motion 264

Basic Guidelines 265

Font Selection 265

Movement 266

Color 266

Sound 267

How to Get Started 267

Dos and Don’ts 268

Exercises:

Four Squares: Text, Color, Motion, Heather Shaw 270

Design is …, Marty Maxwell Lane 274

Film Title Sequence, David Peacock and Michaela Wagoner 276

Digital Narrative, Dermot Mac Cormack 278

Chapter Thirteen Designing Your Own Typeface 281

Handwriting Fonts: A Good Place to Begin 281

Three Approaches to Designing a Typeface 284

Professional Guidelines 286

Techtip: Font Production Editors 287

Exercises:

On Beyond Zebra: The 27th Letter Assignment, Virginia Rougon Chavis 288

Introduction to Type Design: Symphony, James Montalbano 290

Digitize Your Signature, James Montalbano 293

Appendices

Digital Font Foundries and Distributors 295

Web-Font Services 295

Typographic Resources 295

Glossary 296

Bibliography 301

Picture Credits 302

Index 303