Typography has a special place in the world of design and it could dramatically impact the way a design feels. It can make a design look busy or clean. It might even be the design itself. Through understanding the anatomy and structure of typography, it goes a long way in deepening your understanding of design.
If you were to draw a line that hugs the bottom of each letter not including the descenders, this line would be called baseline.You can also draw a line across the top of these characters which doesn't include ascenders and this line would be called as second baseline.What are between these two lines is the very core of a word or character and this can help you find balance in type.
The line that can be drawn at the top on the tip top of the ascenders is called the ascent tip. The line that could be drawn across the bottom of your descenders is called the descent line. With really good font you'll able to draw this ascending and descending lines across the top and the bottoms. But not all fonts typefaces works that way. Script fonts like sun valley don't always follow the nice line pattern.
Basic typography vocabulary
You can learn more as you grow as a designer. What's most important is studying how type feels looks and behaves with other characters words, colors and design to make our overall pieces cohesive and balanced.
- Kerning : It is the manual created space between each character. Each character has a natural kerning added to it. The default spacing on fonts isn't always perfect. Also kerning can help balance the logo by increasing or decreasing the space created between characters. Tucking that letter in to reduce that extra whitespace can elevate your type in the design.
- Leading : It is the spacing between sentences or phrases. The amount of leading between sentences in a larger paragraph can really change the look and feel of a block of type. Larger spacing between sentences can look very clean. Tighter spacing can feel pretty cramped.
- Serif : They have the little tails at the end that helped to accentuate the letter of character. They are helpful when there's a large amount of text that smaller. Serif acts as accents on the character and helps the reader distinguish the letters much easier.
- San-serif : They lack the little tails accents. Because they lack those accents, huge amount of detail can look pretty solid clean and help headlines really stand out.
- Script : They are everywhere. They have their own special use and design and they can help add a more natural look with their smooth and lack of strict angles. You gotta be careful of script fonts because they can easily overwhelm a design piece if you use too many.
Font pairing
- San-serif and serif fonts
- Rarely two different serif fonts look good together.
- Same thing goes with san-serif fonts. If you have two very similar styles they tend to compete with each other quite a bit.
Font mixing
A script font can work really well with a serif font but also it can work really well with the san-serif fonts.
Fonts weight
- Light
- Bold
For example, Raleway Thin Light Medium Bold Heavy
Helvetica Thin Regular Bold
Gill Sans Light Regular Bold UltraBold
* When you use two different weights in the same font family, you notice they pair very well together and provide a balance to your typography.
*Spacing make all the difference. Wide spacing presents elegant look and tight spacing looks loud and bold. But some fonts don't work well with certain spacing. Lowercase letters don't handle dramatic spacing well. Wide spacing can make it a little bit tough to read and it feels a little disconnected. While it can work wonders for all caps. They're a little bit stronger so the wide spacing between the characters they remain strong and easy to read. Avoid using wide gaps between script fonts. They are meant to stay at the default spacing.
* Italics rule can be very useful and they can make wonderful accents. They work really well when you have multiple headlines and you want a highlight or a hyper focus on one particular word phrase. Lowercase letters have a softer more gentile feeling to them. All capital letters really good on headlines but they tend to have a more stronger feeling to them.
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
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