Understanding Typography

Understanding Typography

1. What is Typography?

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language readable and appealing. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point size, line length, line-spacing (leading), letter-spacing (tracking), and adjusting the space within letters pairs (kerning).

1. a) Typeface

In typography, a typeface (known as font family) is a set of one or more fonts each composed of glyphs that share common design features. Each font of a typeface has a specific weight, style, condensation, width, slant, italicization, ornamentation, and designer or foundry (and formerly size, in metal fonts).

1. b) Point size

Point is the smallest whole unit of measure in typography. It is used for measuring font size, leading, and other minute items on a printed page. Different points have been used since the 18th century, with measures varying from 0.18 to 0.4 millimeters.

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1. c) Line length

Line length is the width of a block of typeset text, usually measured in units of length like inches or points or in characters per line. A block of text or paragraph has a maximum line length that fits a determined design. Line length is determined by typographic parameters based on formal grid and template with several goals in mind; balance and function for fit and readability with a sensitivity to aesthetic style in typography. Text can be flush left and ragged right, flush right and ragged left, or justified where all lines are of equal length. In a ragged right setting line lengths vary to create a ragged right edge of lines varying in length. Sometimes this can be visually satisfying. For justified and ragged right settings, typographers can adjust line length to avoid unwanted hyphens, rivers of white space, and orphaned words/characters at the end of lines.

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1. d) Line-spacing (leading)

Line spacing is the vertical distance between lines of text. Most writers use either double-spaced lines or single-spaced lines--nothing in between--because those are the options presented by word processors. These habits are held over from the typewriter era. Originally, a typewriter's carriage could only move vertically in units of a single line. Therefore, line-spacing choices were limited to one, two, or more lines at a time. Double-spacing became the default because single-spaced typewritten text is dense and hard to red. But double-spacing is still looser than optimal.

**Line spacing has a much more significant effect on the length of a document than point size. If you need to fit a document onto a certain number of pages, adjust the line spacing first.

**Different fonts set at the same point size may not appear the same size on the page. A side effect is that fonts that run small will need less line spacing, and vice versa.

Examples:

This block of text has default leading:

Typography (Greek: typos "form", graphein "to write") is the art and technique of setting written subject matter in type using a combination of typeface styles, point sizes, line lengths, line leading, character spacing, and word spacing to produce typeset artwork in physical or digital form.

The same block of text set with 50% leading is easier to read:

Typography (Greek: typos "form", graphein "to write") is the art and technique of setting written subject matter in type using a combination of typeface styles, point sizes, line lengths, line leading, character spacing, and word spacing to produce typeset artwork in physical or digital form.

The same block of text at 100% leading is again easier to read but makes less efficient use of vertical page space:

Typography (Greek: typos "form", graphein "to write") is the art and technique of setting written subject matter in type using a combination of typeface styles, point sizes, line lengths, line leading, character spacing, and word spacing to produce typeset artwork in physical or digital form.

1. e) Letter-spacing (tracking)

In typography, letter-spacing, usually called tracking by typographers, refers to a consistent degree of increase (or sometimes decrease) of space between letters to affect density in a line or block of text. Letter-spacing should not be confused with kerning.

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1. f) Kerning

In typography, kerning (less commonly mortising) is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result.