Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), as well as adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device, unrelated to the communication of information.
Palatino is the name of an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.
Jan Tschichold was a German calligrapher, typographer and book designer. He played a significant role in the development of graphic design in the 20th century – first, by developing and promoting principles of typographic modernism, and subsequently idealizing conservative typographic structures. His direction of the visual identity of Penguin Books in the decade following World War II served as a model for the burgeoning design practice of planning corporate identity programs. He also designed the typeface Sabon.
A paragraph is a self-contained unit of discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea. Though not required by the orthographic conventions of any language with a writing system, paragraphs are a conventional means of organizing extended segments of prose.
An em is a unit in the field of typography, equal to the currently specified point size. For example, one em in a 16-point typeface is 16 points. Therefore, this unit is the same for all typefaces at a given point size.
Text figures are numerals designed with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the name. They are contrasted with lining figures, which are the same height as upper-case letters. Georgia is an example of a popular typeface that employs text figures by default.
Word spacing in typography is space between words, as contrasted with letter-spacing and sentence spacing. Typographers may modify the spacing of letters or words in a body of type to aid readability and copy fit, or for aesthetic effect. In web browsers and standardized digital typography, word spacing is controlled by the CSS1 word-spacing property.
The hyphen-minus- is the most commonly used type of hyphen, widely used in digital documents. In ASCII or on most keyboards it is the only character that resembles a minus sign or a dash so it is also used for these. The name "hyphen-minus" derives from the original ASCII standard, where it was called "hyphen (minus)". The character is referred to as a "hyphen", a "minus sign", or a "dash" according to the context where it is being used.
Type color, or colour, is an element of typography that describes how dense or heavy the text appears on the page. Finding the correct balance of type color and white space can make text more easily readable. The term type color should not be confused with the usual meaning of color, ; instead it has more to do with the blackness or boldness of the text on the page. A bold font weight creates more contrast on the page, therefore creates more emphasis. Using a bold font is therefore one way that type color can be adjusted.
Sentence spacing concerns how spaces are inserted between sentences in typeset text and is a matter of typographical convention. Since the introduction of movable-type printing in Europe, various sentence spacing conventions have been used in languages with a Latin alphabet. These include a normal word space, a single enlarged space, and two full spaces.
The canons of page construction are historical reconstructions, based on careful measurement of extant books and what is known of the mathematics and engineering methods of the time, of manuscript-framework methods that may have been used in Medieval- or Renaissance-era book design to divide a page into pleasing proportions. Since their popularization in the 20th century, these canons have influenced modern-day book design in the ways that page proportions, margins and type areas of books are constructed.
FF Scala is an old-style serif typeface designed by Dutch typeface designer Martin Majoor in 1991 for the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The FF Scala font family was named for the Teatro alla Scala (1776–78) in Milan, Italy. Like many contemporary Dutch serif faces, FF Scala is not an academic revival of a single historic typeface but shows influences of several historic models. Similarities can be seen with William Addison Dwiggins' 1935 design for the typeface Electra in its clarity of form, and rhythmic, highly calligraphic italics. Eric Gill's 1931 typeface Joanna, with its old style armature but nearly square serifs, is also similar in its nearly mono-weighted stroke width.
FF Scala Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Dutch designer Martin Majoor in 1993 for the Vredenburg Music Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It was designed as a companion to Majoor's earlier serif old style typeface FF Scala, designed in 1990.
Joanna is a serif typeface designed by Eric Gill (1882–1940) from 1930 to 1931 that was named for one of his daughters. Gill chose Joanna for setting An Essay on Typography, a book by Gill on his thoughts on typography, typesetting and page design. He described it as "a book face free from all fancy business".
Microtypography is a range of methods for improving the readability and appearance of text, especially justified text. The methods reduce the appearance of large interword spaces and create edges to the text that appear more even. Microtypography methods can also increase reading comprehension of text, reducing the cognitive load of reading.
Martin Majoor is a Dutch type designer and graphic designer. As of 2006, he had worked since 1997 in both Arnhem, Netherlands, and Warsaw, Poland.
A fleuron (;), also known as printers' flower, is a typographic element, or glyph, used either as a punctuation mark or as an ornament for typographic compositions. Fleurons are stylized forms of flowers or leaves; the term derives from the Old French: floron ("flower"). Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style calls the forms "horticultural dingbats". A commonly-encountered fleuron is the ❦, the floral heart or hedera. It is also known as an aldus leaf.
The history of sentence spacing is the evolution of sentence spacing conventions from the introduction of movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg to the present day.
Hartley & Marks Publishers is a Vancouver, British Columbia-based publishing company that began as a publisher of books on a diverse range of esoteric subjects. Many of the company's early books concerned health and medicine and an interest in Eastern culture. One of its more notable books is The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst, which has been highly praised by many luminaries in the typographic field, such as Hermann Zapf, who said "I wish to see this book become the Typographers’ Bible," and Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, who consider it "the finest book ever written about typography."
The Frederic W. Goudy Award & Lecture were established in 1969 by funds donated to Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust in memory of her late husband, Melbert B. Cary, Jr., a typographer, type importer, fine printer, book collector, and president of AIGA. The award was named after illustrious American type designer Frederic W. Goudy, a friend and business associate of Melbert Cary.
