Thursday, 4 February 2016

typography and me

Typography is so interesting! I'm really enjoying every and anything design-based. Becky's lesson today covered everything from the conception and appropriateness of a font to the more technical terminology. Some important books on the subject that I'll have to note down here are:














We looked at finishes that can be overlaid onto book covers to make the book stand out. Finishes like this require a much higher budget, and can be reserved for star authors or very promising titles. Extras include but are not limited to:

  • Matte 
  • Super matte
  • UV overlay
  • Holographic overlay
  • Foil overlay 
  • Embossing 
  • Adding stickers
  • Cloth binding

I also noted down some important technical terms from the lesson:

Kerning- the letter spacing horizontally, this can be used for making sure the text fits nicely on the page or altering the font to make it more spaced-out or close-together.

Leading- is the space between the lines. Reducing the space between the lines can be useful if there is a lot of text to reduce page number, but increasing the space between the lines can increase readability. Larger spaces are generally more helpful for children.

Serif font- a font that has the little lines on the bottom.

Sans-serif font - a font that doesn't have the lines on the bottom.

Superscript- the little 'st' in 1st.

Baseline- the invisible line on which the text sits.

Widow- A widow is a short line/word that sits at the bottom of a paragraph. This makes the text look messy and leaves a larger blank white space below the paragraphs that hinders readability. Adjusting the kerning or leading can prevent this

Orphan- As above, but an orphan describes a single word or few words at the top of a page, above a paragraph.

Ligature- is the joining of two letters together during font design.


A little note about punctuation for budding typesetters: 

  • Hyphen '-' for joining words like 'mother-in-law' 
  • En dash '–' for joining dates/time, to indicate the passing of time '18th–21st of March' 102pm'
  • Em dash '—' to indicate a pause, 'everyone stopped talking—'
  • Quotation marks - '' (obv for quotations) (around 'sloped' on the diagram below)
  • Speech marks - (obv for speech) (around 'blocky' on the diagram below)

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