type workshop pointers

Transcription

1 type workshop pointers Instructor: Angela Wyman

2 optical spacing By cutting and pasting modular elements it s common to make many characters the same width, but this creates widely different white spaces inside each character. Take the b and h for example the squared-off counter of the h makes it appear much larger than the b s.

3 The white spaces inside and in between letters are defining the rhythm, much more than the black shapes of the letters. When you manage to create a good rhythm in your line of text, your type gets more readable and gives a balanced end result. While creating the black shapes, you have to take the white spaces into consideration. Because the white spaces are more important than the black shapes. However, white cannot exist without black. Changing a white shape, inevitable will have an influence on the black shape. From that perspective, one colour cannot be more important than the other. For example, there has to be a relation between the space inside an 'n' and the space between the 'i' and the 'n' (see drawing). In the top row you can see the space inside the 'n' is much much bigger than the space in between the 'n' and the 'i'. In the bottom row they are much more equal, and in this way you'll get a much better rhythm and more harmony in your line of text.

4 Copy-paste? When you have created a few basic characters, you also want to create the rest of the alphabet. But how? Copy and paste? Once you created a 'd', this could work fine as a starting point for a 'b' and a 'p', by rotating the 'd' 180 degrees.

5 About making a lowercase 'r': it's not an 'n' with an amputated leg. Your 'r' can get very weak and soft in that way. You can make it much stronger if you let the ending of the 'r' follow the horizontal reading direction. In that way, the space on the right side of the 'r' will be more open, and more balanced. It will not disturb the rhythm of your type because the right sidebearing can be much smaller. The whole letter can be made more narrow as well. As a consequence the white space in the top of the 'r' could be has to be changed. In case you change that form, optically you'll not confuse the 'r' so quickly with the 'n' as well. Balance shapes. If you make both of the inner forms (counters) of the 'B' exactly the same, the top counter will optically look bigger. There must be a relationship between the amount of white space inside a 'B' and inside a 'P'

6 At the point where two strokes meet or cross each other, the join is liable to clog up. A typical example above, shows a circle attached to a vertical line to create a b. A heavy area appears where the curve tries to pull away from the straight. By trimming a little from the inside, it pushes the curve down in the right direction.

7 The S is a difficult character to get right, it relies on a careful balance of two open counters both horizontally and vertically. The classic cut and shut technique of pushing two semi-circles together leaves a tell-tale kink in the middle. This meeting point has to carefully smoothed out to give the impression of one long stroke.

8 Fluent shapes. Designing type is like driving a car. If you drive a car, you always take the curve in a natural way. If you draw a curve (of a character) on paper, this is exactly the same. The curve starts smoothly, never out of a sudden. While driving a car, you don't start turning the wheel when you are already in the beginning of the curve. A while before you arrive in the curve you anticipate by leading your car gently in the right direction. Think about driving a car when you are sketching type on a paper.

9 The horizontal and vertical strokes should not be the same thickness. If they are, the horizontal strokes will look heavier. An example above shows how a visually monolinear typeface such as Futura, has subtle adjustments to the horizontal strokes to make them appear even.

10 optical positioning Unfortunately, lining up straight and curved edges using guidelines does not work. In the above example, the circle is the same height as the two squares, but appears to be significantly smaller. To compensate for this optical illusion, the curve needs to increase in size so it seems level with the horizontal lines.

11 kerning the two squares appear much closer than the two rounded shapes. By adding extra space to the straight edges and less to the curved shapes a good balance can eventually be achieved.

12 To optically give them the same height, the small caps will have to be slightly bigger than lowercase characters of the same font (see drawing).

13 Same size for all! To optically align all characters on a line, they cannot not have exactly the same mathematical height. For example the triangle on this drawing has to be higher than the rectangle. If this is not the case, the triangle will for sure look smaller than the rectangle. While creating a typeface, you want all the letters to have the same height. Also round forms have to exceed the baseline to be optically the same. If the circle would have exactly the same mathematical height as the rectangle, it would look smaller than the square. This doesn't only count for basic forms like triangles, circles and squares. It's essential in type design, because they apply to every single character in a typeface. Then it even doesn't matter if you're designing a latin, cyrillic or greek font. It's a basic principle for any kind of shape.

14 type terminology Type terminology. Take note of individual charateristics. The counter of the 'e' can also be called an 'eye', but there are many more terms. If you want to know them all, review your type anatomy or browse-the-web.

15 Calligraphic origin. The characters on the top line have a different construction than the characters on the bottom line. They have a different calligraphic origin. It doesn't matter if a typeface has serifs (like Times New Roman) or not (like Arial). It's about the original way they where constructed. The characters in the top line are constructed with a pointed pen (calligraphic tool). The contrast is caused by changing the pressure on the pen, not because of the form of the pen. Bodoni is one example of this, but also sans serif faces like Helvetica have this origin. The thickest part will be (mostly) totally vertical. From this perspective there is no difference between Bodoni and Helvetica. They both have the same construction. Only the contrast varies.

16 t is impossible to create a very black character with a big (white) counter form, a black typeface will always have smaller counters than a light typeface. Hence it follows that there is less space in between the characters (see drawing). A light typeface has much bigger counters. The space in between two letters has to be in proportion. As a consequence there is more white space in between light letters than in between black letters.

17 The bowl of the 'e' is not only having a certain thickness, but the 'e' also has contrast. The 'i' on the left has no contrast at all. Therefore these two characters don't belong to each other. The 'i' on the right however has the same kind of contrast as the 'e', just because it has serifs. Just those tiny serifs make sure there are thick and thin parts, like the 'e' has. This means that the starting point, the 'e', already defined that the rest of the font cannot be a sans serif typeface

18 he characters on the top line (see drawing) have a much bigger contrast than the characters on the bottom line. The type on the top line will be more suitable for display use, the type the bottom the bottom line more for text use. Not only because of the difference in contrast, but also because the characters on the top line are much more condensed. This makes them less legible in small sizes, but more eye-catching and flexible for headlines.

19 Extremely short descenders will give a strange look to a text typeface. Even worse, they might not be visible at all anymore. But extremely short descenders can also be a smart decision, while creating a display or headline type. For a text typeface the ascender height should be as big or, even better, bigger than then cap height to give a optical pleasurable result (see drawing).

20 The first three are constructed from separate pen strokes. The last 'n' is constructed out of one pen stroke. This is the basic difference between roman and cursive fonts. Not the angle, but the construction.

21 take care while converting your scanned image manually with a Bezier based pen tool. Too many points on a character, or points at the wrong position can have a negative influence at your font. use shift In most software programs you can use shift key to keep the anchor points totally horizontal or vertical.