Sunday, 25 November 2012

Design Principles - Type and Character

The anatomy of type part  3

'Type is speech made visible' 

Type transformed fundamentally when print was invented 
Type grew when people started to learn to read and write 
Communication changed from word of mouth to type becoming the visual representation of that speech. 



Definitions of a font and a typeface


FONT - Same weight, individual. The physical means used to create a typeface be it computer code, lithograph film.

TYPEFACE - A collection of characters, letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation etc. Which have the same distinct design. Group of fonts is a typeface 


4 Key Fonts

BLOCK - display fonts, big, black heavy fonts 
GOTHIC - Sans Serif 
ROMAN - Serif 
SCRIPT - Hand written, brush 

Our fonts separated into these groups 








Readability and Legibility 

Legibility is the degree to which glyphs (individual characters) in text are understandable or recognisable based on appearance. 

Readability is the ease in which text can be read and understood. It is influenced by line length, primary and secondary leading, justification, typestyle, kerning, tracking, point size ect. 

These are maximised through appropriate type and layout. 


Counter: defining factor if something is eligible, makes something readable. Area in and around a letter (negative space).  


Different fonts are easier to read, for example, a sans serif is easier to read on the scale of 12 - 14pt and a serif is easier to read at a scale of 9 - 11pt. 


In Word when changing a sentence/word to bold they extend everything so there is more space between the counters, it becomes more legible. 






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