WELCOME BACK TO the 3-aricle series on the A to Z of typography. This part continues from part I that we saw previously, so if you have missed out on that, make sure you head over to part I and familiarise yourself with all the jargon and basics of typography before continuing with this; you are bound to benefit best that way.
If you have already come through that route, keep going right on! In this part we will discuss several more interesting — and, more importantly, fun — things like I had promised last time. Here is a quick look at the highlights of this article:
[hr_padding]- Considerations when selecting typefaces
- Web-safe typefaces
- Standard print typefaces in the publishing industry, and
- Some good, important rules and practices when handling typefaces
In this article I am going to make fairly open use of some of the terminology you have learnt in the preceding article, so try to keep up. Any time you cannot, just keep the first article open in a alternate tab on your browser!
[hr_padding] [notice type="green"] After Part 1 of this series, I got several requests to deal with the problem of the near-infinite scrolling, since these are considerably long posts. (This part, for instance, is around 3,000 words long.)So I sat down, and, with a handful of code and a slightly altered design around that region, managed to break down this post into three pages.
Once you reach the bottom of this page, you have a direction-link to the following pages. Use that to navigate and reduce any stress of scrolling!
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The A, B, C of type selection
You are faced with the dilemma of choosing the right typeface for your work more often than you think. Over 65% of the working population out there does not really bother about the type they set their work in (but they do later spend a lot of time wondering why it does not look as good — I’m particularly talking to Richard Campbell, one of my readers who mailed me regarding this and requested me for a series on Typography.) 25% — which includes you — actually take interest in the field and try to learn from the rest of us who know. That said, the next time you start typing something, start paying more attention to the typeface of your document or book or webpage and you will find it helps immensely.

When you are considering a typeface, you will naturally have to keep three key points in mind: readability, complementary behaviour, and consistency. Now these are terms you can easily understand: readability refers to how easy the typeface is on the eyes; complementary behaviour is how well one typeface works with another (or several others) in the document/webpage; and consistency is how the typeface works over several weights, styles, sizes and so on.
[hr_padding] [notice type="yellow"] Remember! Do not confuse readability with legibility.Readability refers to how easy the font is on the readers’ eyes, and in turn how well suited it is especially for long periods of reading; this is especially in the case of books or articles.
On the other hand, legibility is how high the chances are of every single reader being able to read the typeface with ease. For instance a curvy, flourishing font — while obviously disturbing as part of a large block of text — wold be perfectly fine to use fleetingly as a heading text so long as an O does not look like Q. You get the point.
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Of course this would entirely depend on what you are going to use it for: if it is a book title or webpage heading, you do not have to bother as much about readability as you do about legibility. The same goes for consistency, as the rate of variation of such choice of fonts is narrow at best.
[hr_top] [hr_padding]A CaSe LiKe LeX in typography
There are 6 factors to remember when choosing a typeface, and — since we can afford to rush through this list quickly — I have created a simple mnemonic to help you remember it. If you are a fan of Superman (comics of film) you can definitely not forget an iconic villain, a nutcase like Lex Luthor! So let us take Lex’s help in remembering this list: CaSe LiKe LeX
Needless to say, pay attention to my weird spelling. This is what the six capital letters stand for: Cap-height, Serif, Ligature, Kerning, Leading and X-height. Five of these you have already learnt, but since we have not seen what a ligature is previously, I created a simple equation to help you remember. (And if you are not a fan of equations, just think of this as a typographical diagram!)

Some font have — and many a time typographers make sure that — the kerning between two letters gets so fearfully close that the set-up looks clumsy as two letters, but much more beautiful as a single entity.
The finest example in type-history is the ligature between an f and an i. In some fonts (the one you see above is Robert Silmbach‘s beautiful Minion from the 90s — an entirely digital font) typing f and i in a word, in sequence, creates a ligature that looks very similar — but should not be confused with — an h.
In particular, the term ligature refers to the crossbar-like horizontal stroke joining the two letters.
The thing about CaSe LiKe LeX is that you need to make sure, for an idea you previously had in mind, that a given typeface satisfies all these six needs just right. It is as simple as having an idea, picking possible typefaces, and making sure the six properties of a typeface matches with your idea.
[hr_top] [hr_padding]Web safe typefaces: what are they and why do we need them?
Whenever we talk about typography in the twenty-first century, a standard assumption is that we create a distinction between print typefaces and websafe typefaces.
The distinction is mainly based on availability. If we reeled back to the 1800s or even the early 1900s, and you were thinking of publishing a pamphlet (which was all the rage then) you could only choose between select typefaces — the ones whose slugs the type-caster or publisher had. If you did not find what you were hoping for, he would probably tell you, ‘Head over to Gustaveson’s press, he’s got the typeface you’re looking for,’ or something to that effect.
Fast forward to the 21st century and that problem is solved. With digital printing for books, if you want a font, you will, of course, get it. But a new problem has cropped: this is not true for the web. Much like in the 1800s, if I want my webpage in a certain typeface and you do not have its font installed on your computer, you can never see my webpage! History repeating itself? Not quite, as we have a work around this — meaning we can now build webpages with almost any font and have in shown in almost any computer regardless of whether a font is installed in it or not; but we will see more about this technique in the final installment of this series.
For now, what you need to understand is that some fonts (mostly the ones that come pre-installed with your computers, be it a mac or a PC) are available in all computers all over the world. These are called web safe fonts and are just as safe as their name suggests. If you are familiar with codes, you will know how we often set a fallback font — or several fallback fonts — to make sure the webpage is delivered as close to what we envisioned as possible.
The post Everything you need to know about typography: Part II appeared first on VHBelvadi.com.