http://www.freddesign.co.uk/2009/12/...od-typography/
I came across this and thought that this fellow makes some good points Agree? Disagree? Does anyone else have any good rules to share?
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http://www.freddesign.co.uk/2009/12/...od-typography/
I came across this and thought that this fellow makes some good points Agree? Disagree? Does anyone else have any good rules to share?
Good spot Frances!
Thanks for posting it.
The bullet points advice seems a bit unnatural (but maybe I've just been conditioned by Microsoft software).
I think Fred there is waxing way over the average person's head by mentioning the fibonnaci sequence! Last I heard that was on an episode of "Fringe", the almost popular sci-fi show.
Rules aremeant to be broke, but breaking them is usually the privilege of only those who understand the rules thoroughly to begin with. I disagree with text along a path (that it's not good), point size for body copy is relative to the font you use, and I agree with eliminating rivers, but Fred doesn't tell how, so I will.
In Xara, you highlight a line of text within paragraph text that has too much air, and then click the Tracking button, the right one, a few times, as long as you have force justification going on.
My own submissions:
1. Use two spaces before a paragraph to indent, or put a space between paragraphs, but not both.
2. Learn when to use its and not it's.
3. Learn the difference between their, they're and there. These are called homonyms, words that sound alike, and even college grads appear foolish in print when they don't catch basic grammar and spelling errors.
4. Run a spell checker. And then proof read how the spell checker corrected, and on occasion messed up your copy.
-g-
Good find Frances. Gare thank you for your submission, I have to agree about the fibonnaci sequence I have never heard of it nor do I understand it in relation to the discussion.
The sequence, at least in theory, has to do with the relative size of page elements. If you accept 13 units as the size of a headline and work backwards in the sequence, a Heading 2 would be 8 unites, and then perhaps text would be 5.
But the relationship between math, nature, and a civilized person's perception aren't always in synch. IOW, nice theory, but it doesn't always play.
-g-
Another good rule, and this is something that is touched on in the comments section of the article is consistency in headings or headlines. Whether you are doing a web page or a printed page this is important. If you start out capitalizing all words in your headings don't switch to just capitalizing the first word on a new section.
I can't think of many times one would run a headline in all caps, except for a garage sale sign.
:)
Initial Caps, Like I'm Typing Right Now, is accepted in desktop publishing as are small caps, which unfortunately I can't do using HTML.
-g-
I meant Initial caps just like your example :D Or a another acceptable form is to capitalize the main words only like this: The Fonts and Typography Group is Growing!
You have me curious now; I'm going to have to research what this capitalization form is called. I think, but am not sure it's called Proper Case.
-g-
I'll be interested to know what you find out :)
I don't recall what it is called but I've seen it in Book and Movie Titles for decades.
According the wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_...ication_titles :confused:
House Styles vary by publisher.
Sentence case, is what we use for Good Morning Sunshine. And you are right that it varies by publisher the main thing is that it needs to be consistent through out a publication whether printed or online.
It's all well and good having an article on good typography, but why spoil it by using white (and pink) text on a mid grey background. I must confess to giving up on it after a short while, my eyes were going blurry. But it was prior to my first coffee, which may have had something to do with it.
Bob.
That's a funny trend on the Web, I mean "strange" funny, not "ha-ha" funny.
Some design challenged folks are putting light grey text on white, and other really low contrast color combinations.
I want to smack them silly with a PANTONE swatch book.
Honestly,
Gary
Here's my Rule One for body text, in an ad, brochure, or book: I don't want the reader to ever be aware of it. If the font design is noticed, even slightly, it takes away from the selling message -- or from the author's story.
How not to be noticed? Go with familiarity, with what people are used to. On the web, Arial/Helvetica is AMAZINGLY enduring, what, 60 years now? And Times Roman, though not the most readable book face because of its narrow characters, sure fades into the background for readers, particularly with some extra line-spacing (leading).
Too restrictive for graphic designers? Sure. But in business, it's about sales -- so treat your viewers with maximum readability, and restrict your design side to headlines.
And here's Rule Two -- never, NEVER, reverse out body text in an ad or brochure or web page. Light body text on a dark background is horrible. Because when you make me work at reading, sorry, I'm off to somebody else's commercial.
Hi Jon, and thanks for your take on typography rules.
Can you qualify reverse text any better than "horrible"?
When I was in advertising, I actually interviewed with David Oglivy & Partners (finally landed at Saatchi instead, this was circa 1977), and they had a house rule against reverse text, and I asked why. And the best answer the Senior Art Directors could give me was because David said so.
"Font transparency" is a good goal. The other thing is: when you don't have anything to say, sing it...old adverting proverb—and that's the time to break out the weird fonts. :) Helvetica, yes, enduring. Times has also stuck around because of its eminent legibility, but dark text on a light background for the web and for print is a pair of handcuffs for a designer, and I don't even know the officer who is handcuffing me.
My Best,
Gary
I disagree about reverse text in advertisements, if it is done right it will catch the readers attention which is what an ad needs to do. One line of bold text on a reverse bar will be an attention grabber, the rest of the text then needs to be able to convey the message and important items in the message should stand out
<rant>
I had the 'reverse-text' rule pounded into me by a very nasty Art Director, Helmut Krone, when I started doing commercial art at DDB in the 'sixties. Worked on VW brochures, Avis collateral. He, and then I, were true believers in Bill Bernbach's advertising philosophy, which went along the lines of “The purpose of advertising is to sell. That is what the client is paying for and if that goal does not permeate every idea you get, every word you write, every picture you take, you are a phony and you ought to get out of the business.” And from that, if the body text is hard to read, they are off your ad and onto the next page.
We went, back then, on what seemed to make common sense. Not on research, not on focus groups. It is quite possible that research could show that reversed-body-text is as readable as not. But it isn't for me, and I doubt that it is for you.
Headlines are different, of course. But what I'm trying to get across here is that the ad isn't about the graphics; it is about the product and getting the reader to actually show up at the point of sale. Two more Bernbach quotes for you --
“Is creativity some obscure, esoteric art form? Not on your life. It’s the most practical thing a businessman can employ.”
But --
“Merely to let your imagination run riot, to dream unrelated dreams, to indulge in graphic acrobatics and verbal gymnastics in NOT being creative. The creative person had harnessed his imagination. He has disciplined it so that every thought, every idea, every word he puts down, every line he draws, every light and shadow in every photograph he takes, makes more vivid, more believable, more persuasive the original theme or product advantage he has decided he must convey.”
Much later, ran my own business for 15 years. Ads, brochures, web, PR. I believed (and still do) that sales are the lifeblood of any business, and everything else, like finance, marketing, or HR, is just the icing on the cake. Back then, if I made an ad, a brochure, or a webpage for you, it helped increase your sales. It helped you get more qualified customers. The results were measurable, and our transaction was simple: you remained my customer as long as your increased sales justified my expense. And there was no way I going to screw that up with reversed-body-text in your next ad!
</end rant>
Hi Jon—
I don’t know why I skipped over a passage in your original post, but I must apologize: for body text, it’s folly to try reversing it out and maintaining legibility (so the potential customer can read it). For both human and Production reasons, you just can’t cast 12pt. Times in white against a dark background and read the thing, or maintain the serifs that make the font what it is (because of the trapping, or if no trapping, the bleed). Headline text, yeah. Body copy=nope.
I’d like to keep Frances’ thread open to non-advertising people, too (:)), so I submit that 10pt. and up sans serif text, white against a dark background on web pages is readable, whether it’s a blog or an advertisement. Sans serif fonts can be read more quickly onscreen than serifs (studies support this), and if everyone ran a black website with light or white text, we’re reduce power consumption to a significant extent, lighting up far fewer areas on users’ screens.
My Best,
Gary
Yes -- I'd go with some (but not too much) bold or demi-bold light text on a dark background -- for, as Frances said, to catch attention. And, as you mention, to reduce power consumption. Seriously! Last September, the lights went out bigtime here in San Diego one evening. We drove up the coast, town after town, and finally found a bar in San Clemente that had a generator, about 500 thirsty Marines, and my wife and I. This shocking situation, 'retired couple drives 50 miles to get a drink', would NEVER have happened had our area's graphic artists used white or lime-green bold sans-serif fonts on power-saving black backgrounds...
...and we'd all be wearing spectacles with lenses the thickness of Coke bottles. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by jon404
Bob.
I'd advise both of you to leave your joking about power consumption at that.
Yeah, it might sound funny to design a website with a black background and light text to save energy.
What about ten million websites? You think that might make a difference?
Did we have data centers and render farms of the size and power footprint we did even ten years ago?
Fortunately, I guess, none of us will be alive when something goes critical with our Earth, because we scoffed at the act of one individual decades before.
It's the cumulative effect of everyone doing something, guys, like littering.
-g-
Lighten up, Gare. Not that I disagree with the thrust of your argument at all, but light text on black is bad for one's eyes, that's the point I'm making, rather than scoffing at energy-saving ideas. I like to think that my family have a lower carbon footprint than most. Sorry to take the thread even further off topic.
Bob. (edit): Your double line spacing above adds more white space to the page, by the way. :)
B.
Getting back on topic I have another rule I'd like to discuss. Don't use underlines to emphasize. IMO it is much cleaner and legible to use italics and/or bold to emphasize something.
thoughts?
Yes, underlining belongs to typewriters. It has always been preferred to use italics or bold (or bold-italics) for emphasis or italics in reference to say a publication's title.
Further, in this day and age, underlining can be confused with hyperlinks.
Take care, Mike
Manual typewritters were the only alternative to pen, ink and paper when I was in school and afterwards for many years. Back in those ancient days you had three alternatives: underline, single quote marks and double quote marks. I preferred to use the quote marks because you could do that without having to move the carriage back to do underlining. ;)
There are many alternatives using a computer. Italics and Bold are available and work well. There are typography rules about when to use them for what purpose. Is that what you want to discuss?
How to emphasize is sort of part and parcel to the message, which naturally has a certain font rendered to express the message.
Usually, and again, depending on the typeface, the bold member of the family is way too heavy, and usually ugly.
It's hard to make a general suggestion here, because I don't think there's a universal "Good Taste" rule to be applied here, because sign-making usually has a different set of aesthetics and a different target audience, then, say, a book or magazine article.
Is a swash considered the same, or close to an underline? I think a good swash, such as Letterhead Fonts offers with LHF Pilsner, is a good way to emphasize something on a cereal box or a poster.
Attachment 89439
I think typography, as with any art, depends a lot on composition. You can force a word to have more significance by use of size, color, font, position, and so on.
-g-
I was thinking more of body text, I dislike underlines in body text. Your example is a good example of using a swash to provide emphasis in an artistic way, which like you said is perfect on a cereal box or a display ad. But a plain underline would not have the same impact.
If you are reading a page of text whether printed or on screen underlines look messy.
Bill: we could certainly discuss the rules regarding bold and Italics :)
When talking about good typography today, we also need to think about good web typography and web standards.
On the web there are four html elements that are, by the browsers' default settings, rendered as bold or italic. The text that is marked with these html elements can be styled differently than the brower automatically does- you can change fonts or colors etc using CSS. But most folks never bother to style these elements and just go with what the browser provides.
Most browsers render <b> or <strong> as bold text and render <em> or <i> text as italic.
The good folks at the W3 have debated long and hard about what meaning is conveyed when using these tags. An interesting and understandable by mortals, article by the HTML5 Doctor, Oli Studholme , can be found here.
His article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 share alike license. So here is a small excerpt; but be sure to treat yourself to the whole article where he gives lots of examples.
- <i> — was italic, now for text in an “alternate voice”, such as transliterated foreign words, technical terms, and typographically italicized text (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
- <b> — was bold, now for “stylistically offset” text, such as keywords and typographically emboldened text (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
- <em> — was emphasis, now for stress emphasis, i.e., something you’d pronounce differently (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
- <strong> — was for stronger emphasis, now for strong importance, basically the same thing (stronger emphasis or importance is now indicated by nesting) (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
I guess you definitely don't want to underline something in HTML, or people will think it's a link ;)
-g-
Underlining has been used in handwriting and typewriting to convey emphasis for many years. Before typewriters Aldus Manutius of Alpine Press used italic in 1501 to convey emphasis using the printed word. Other typesetters have used Bold type to convey emphasis.
So our first instance of a rule for using Italic or Bold is to convey emphasis to the word or words within a different form of type. Before getting into more rules we must recognize that this forum font does not actually use a true Italic font. Simply slanting the letters does not make a true Italic, it does make an oblique, slanted, sloped, or inclined font form. Through repeated usage these font forms have become more commonly known as "Italic". Just remember that through repeated usage the words ain't and cowabunga have become commonly known in the English language. ;)
Bold text is pretty much relegated to be used for emphasis so we have run out of rules for it's use.
Italic - no that isn't a typo, in the beginning of the use of an italic font capitals at the beginning of a word were always a Roman character. Just a bit of trivia for you. :)
A few more rules for using Italic text.
Titles of works like books, albums, plays, and periodicals. Titles of short stories, songs, acts, or articles should not be italic, enclose them with quotes.
Names of Ships should be in italic.
Foreign words should be in italic. For example, hasta la vista.
Mentioning a word as an example rather than it's symantic content. "The word the is an article."
Mentioning a letter or a number as itself. "Jon noticed someone had added the letter h when spelling his name." "The name Albus was beside the 1 on the passenger list."
There a more but I'm not usually this verbose. See the wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italic_type.
Oh, and never, never, never use quotes for emphasis. It makes the person who created the sign look like a fool.
When you put quotes around a phrase, generally it means that the phrase within has a meaning other than the author's intention. Sarcasm usually involves quotes. Example:
Get that "antique" out of my driveway.
The person saying this sentence really doesn't believe the car is a valuable antique, but instead a piece of junk.
So when you see a sign that says:
"Free" ice cream today, the reader probably won't assume the ice cream is free, even though the sign creator used the quotes to emphasize FREE.
Use quotes to quote people!
:)
-g-