Hrudaya VeenaPGDP Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology

UNDERSTANDING TYPOGRAPHY

Dedicated to Aleph and Beth.

CONTENTSIntroduction

Chapter:1 The Past to the Present Evolution of Typography

Chapter:2 Aleph and Beth’s Anatomy Anatomy of Type

Chapter:3 The Family Tree Classification of Typography

Bibliography

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INTRODUCTION

Design is mainly about delivering a message. If your message is unclear, or gets lost in a clutter, then your design is not effective. Typography is one of the most essential skills for a Graphic Designer. Typography is an art form that has been around for hundreds of years. Words and text are all around us everyday in almost everything we do. In every piece of type you see, somebody has considered how the letters, sentences and paragraphs will look in order for it to be read by us, or make us feel in a certain way when we look at it. Sometimes it is done well, others not. This book is a guide to “understand” typography.

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The Past to the Present

EVOLUTION OF TYPOGRAPHYBefore proceeding with the more practical aspects of typography, it would be helpful to understand how we arrived at the twenty-six symbols we call our alphabet. We tend to forget that the alphabet is made up of sybols, each representing, more or less, the sounds made in speech. Many of the symbols used today are the same as those used thousands of years ago.

1Fig.1.The pictograph is a symbol representing an object.

PictographsAt some point in history, man began to communicate visually. He made simple drawings of everyday objects, such as people, animals, weapons, and so forth. These drawings are called pictographs.

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IdeographsAs man developed the need to communicate more abstract thoughts in writing, the symbols began to take on broader meanings: ox, for example, could also mean food. Abstract thoughts could also be communicated by combining different pictographs: a pictograph of a woman and that of a child could combine to mean happiness, for instance. Now, symbols no longer represent objects, but ideas. These symbols are called ideographs.

Fig.2. Ideograph of an Eye in Chinese

Fig.3. Phoenician Alphabet

Phoenician AlphabetAs a nation of traders and merchants, the Phoenicians needed a simplified writing form that would allow them to keep ledgers and write business messages with a minimum of fuss. Around 1600 B.C, a new concept written communication evolved: using symbols to represent the sounds made in speaking rather than using symbols to represent ideas or objects. Sounds evolved. As this system had fewer symbols than the older picto-ideograph system, it was easier to learn, and the simplified letter forms made rapid writing possible.

Roman Alphabet

Just as the Greeks had modified the Phoenician al-phabet, the Roman adopted and modified the Greek alphabet. Thirteen letters were accepted unchanged from the Greek: A, B, E, H, I , K, M, N, O, T, X, Y, Z. Eight letters were revised: C, D, G, L, P, R, S, V. Two letters were added: F and Q. This gave the Romans a total of twenty-three letters, all that were needed to write Latin.The Romans also dropped the Greek designation for the letters, such as alpha, beta, gamma, for the simpler A, B, C’S that we know today. The letters U and W were added to the alphabet about a thousand years ago, and J was added five hundred years after that.

Fig.3.Greek Alphabet

Greek AlphabetThe Greeks began to adopt the Phoenician alphabet around 1000 B.C. They saw something quite different in the potential of this new system: to them, it was a means of preserving knowledge.Along with the alphabet, the Greeks took the Phoenician names for the letters and made them Greek. For example, aleph became alpha, beth became beta. From these letters we derive our word alphabet. The alphabet the Greeks acquired had no vowels, only consonants.

Fig.4. Roman Alphabet

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Small LettersThe small (minuscule) letters, which were a natural outgrowth of writ-ing and rewriting capital letters with a pen, came later with the scribes of the Middle ages. Prior to Gutenberg’s invention of printing from movable type in the mid-fifteenth century, there were two popular schools of writing in western Europe: the round Humanistic hand in Italy and the pointed Gothic, or black letter in Germany. The Hu-manistic hand was a revival of the Carolingian minuscule of the ninth century and is the basis of our small letters.A flowing form of this same hand is the basis of our italic. The Gothic hand was the model for typeface designed by Gutenberg in 1455.

Fig.6.The Small letter

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Aleph & Beth’s Anatomy2 ANATOMY OF

TYPEHave you ever really looked at a letter? Let’s examine printed letters more closely. The alphabet, as you already know, has capital and small letters. In type terminology, we call the large letter caps, or

uppercase, and the small letters lowercase. These terms derive from the early days of printing when caps were kept in the uppercase, or drawer, and the small letters in the case below.

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Stem.The stem is the main, usually vertical stroke of a letterform ex-cluding serifs. In some fonts the stem is roughly the same thickness as other parts of the letter. In other fonts, the stem maybe a little thicker, perhaps tapering to meet the other parts.

Counter.Refers to the external space, the hollow part of the letter.

Shoulder.The curved stroke originating from a stem.

Bowl.In typography, the curved part of the character that encloses the circular or curved parts (counter) of some of the letters like d, b, o, D and B is the bowl. Some sources call any parts of a letter enclosing a space a bowl, including both parts of a double-storey g and the straight stem of D and B. The curved strokes of a C are sometimes also referred to as bowls although they aren’t closed

X-Height.The x-height refers to lowercase letters only. It is the height of the body, or main element of letterform, and is equivalent to the height of the lowercase x. The letter x is used because all terminals touch a line of measurement.

Ascender.The part of the lowercase letter that rises above the body (x-height) of the letter.

Descender.The part of the lower-case letter that falls be-low the body (x-height) of the letter.

Serif.The stroke that projects from the or bottom of the main stroke of the letter. Serifs originated with the Roman masons who terminated each stroke in a slab of stone with a serif to correct the uneven appearance made by their tools. Some printed letters have no serifs at all; these letterforms are called sans serif (without serif)

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Bar.The usually horizontal stroke across the middle of uppercase H and A is a bar. The horizontal or sloping stroke enclosing the bottom of the eye of an e is also a bar. Although often used interchangeably, the bar differs from an arm and a cross stroke because each end connects to a stem or a stroke and doesn’t usually intersect or cross over the stem or stroke. The varying positioning, thickness, and slope of the bar is an identifying feature of many type designs.

Capline A line marking the height of uppercase letters within a font.

Beardline.The bottom rung defines the limit of the length of the descenders of a letterform.

Baseline.The baseline is the imaginary line upon which a line of text rests. In most typefac-es, the descenders on characters such as g or p extend down below the baseline while curved letters such as c or o ev-er-so-slightly below the baseline. The baseline is the point from which other elements of type are measured including x-height and leading. The baseline is also sig-nificant in the alignment of drop caps and other page elements.

Meanline.It is the line that determines where non-ascending lowercase letters terminate in a typeface

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CLASSIFICATION OF TYPOGRAPHYA basic system for classifying typefaces was devised in the nineteenth century, when printers sought to identify a heritage for their own craft analogous to that of art history. Humanist letterforms are closely connected to calligraphy and the movement of the hand. Transitional and modern typefaces are more abstract and less organic. These three main groups

correspond roughly to the Renaissance, Baroque, and Enlightenment periods in art and literature. Historians and critics of typography have since proposed more finely grained schemes that attempt to better capture the diversity of letterforms. Designers in the twentieth and twenty¬ first centuries have continued to create new typefaces based on historic characteristics.

The Family Tree3

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Humanist or Old StyleThe roman typefaces of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries emulated classical calligraphy. Sabon was designed by Jan Tschichold in 1966, based on the sixteenth century typefaces of Claude Garamond.

Fig.7.Palatino Bold

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG30 POINT GARAMOND BOLD

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 40 POINT GARAMOND BOLD

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TransitionalThese typefaces have serifs and more vertical axis than humanist letters. When the typefaces of John Baskerville were introduced in the mid-eighteenth century, their sharp forms and high contrast were shocking.

Fig.8. Baskerville Bold

THE QUICK BROWN FOX

JUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W XY Z a b c d e f g h i j k l mn o p q r s t u v w x y z

30 POINT PERPETUA BOLD

40 POINT PERPETUA BOLD

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ModernThe typefaces designed by Giambattista Bodoni in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are radically abstract. Note the thin straight serifs; vertical axis; and sharp contrast from thick and thin strokes.

Fig.9.Didot Bold

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

30 POINT BODONI72 BOLD

40 POINT BODONI72 BOLD

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Egyptian or Slab SerifNumerous bold and decorative typefaces were introduced in the nineteenth century for use in advertising. Egyptian typefaces have heavy, slablike serifs.

Fig.10.SuperClarendon Bold

THE QUICK BROWN FOXJUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

30 POINT SUPERCLARENDON BOLD

40 POINT SUPERCLARENDON BOLD

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GEOMETRIC SANS SERIFSome sans-serif types are built around geometric forms. In Futura, designed by Paul Renner in 1927, the Os are perfect circles, and the peaks of the A and M are sharp triangles.

Fig.10.Futura Medium

THE QUICK BROWN FOXJUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z40 POINT FUTURA MEDIUM

30 POINT FUTURA MEDIUM

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Transitional Sans SerifHelvetica designed by Max Miedinger in 1957, is one of the world’s most widely used typefaces. Its uniform, upright character makes it similar to transitional sans serif letters. These letters are also referred to as “anonymous sans serif.”

Fig.11. Helvetica bold

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

30 POINT HELVETICA BOLD

40 POINT HELVETICA BOLD

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Humanist Sans SerifSans-serif typefaces became popular in the twentieth century. Gill Sans, designed by Eric Gill in 1928, has humanist characteristics. Note the small, lilting counter in the letter a, and the calligraphic variations in line weight.

Fig.12. GillSans Bold

THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER A LAZY DOG

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

30 POINT GILL SANS BOLD

40 POINT GILL SANS BOLD

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BIBLIOGRAPHYJames Craig, Designing with Type, NewYork, Watson-Guptill Publications, 1971.

Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type, Princeton Architectural Press; 2nd Revised Edition (6 October 2010)

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typeanatomy/g/stem.htmlhttp://typedia.com/learn/article/shoul-der/http://www.typographydeconstructed.com/category/anatomy-of-type/http://make-lemonade.co/2013/04/02/the-basics-of-typography/http://www.creativebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/good-ty-pography-hierarchy.jpghttps://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/af/1c/a0/af1ca0801ce479b-96c22d0e0d83295e8.jpg