Design Context: Anatomy of Typefaces 2

" Type is Speech made Visible "

A traditionally oral technique , town criers would walk around the town once a week and shout out all the local news.
Writing was only for the upper class.

The need for typography came when people learnt to read. This is a key thing.

As well as industrialisation of type ( Gutenberg Press ) and the need for mass production.

We can represent type through

Weights
Italics
Sans-serif/ Serifs

Its an illustration of character

Font- The physical means to create a typeface e.g. woodcut

Typeface- A collection of characters, numbers, symbols e.c.t which have the same distinct design.

4 Key Categorisations of Font

Block (headlines, big heavy stroke)

Gothic (Sans- serif)

Roman (mainly serif)

Script (brush strokes/ handwritten, not good for body copy)

Regular
Regular/ Italic
Light
Light/ Italic
Bold
Bold/ Italic
Ultrabold Condensed

Helvetica vs Arial

look at the e, s and r

the full stop in Helvetica is square and Arial it is circular.

Legibility/ Readability is maximised by font and layout

Spacial Quality

Key element

Counter helps us to read the letterform, and is key to what we are seeing

A defining factor in legibility/ readability is it recognisable

Serifs tend to be easier for people with dyslexia to read as there are more visual clues, definitions.

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

Readability- Is the ease with which text can be read and understood. Influenced by line length, primary and secondary leading, justification, typestyle, kerning, tracking and point size.

Secondary Leading wanted to space out more, added more leading.

Tracking increasing leading, adding more led, Extending.

Kerning decreasing the space between glyphs, it becomes less legible Condensing.

Never Kern a font.

Most Legible experiments...