Anatomy of Type

Individual letters have unique parts which have changed in visual form over the centuries. A nomenclature helps identify the major components of their construction. The evolution of letterform styles over time is a result of optical adjustments to these basic components by type designers over the ages.

Crossbar

Bowl

Serif

Link

Loop

Descender

Counter

Fillet

Sacreligious
Stem Hairline Jot Bowl Ear Stroke Eye

Ascender

Serif

Capline

Spine

Meanline x-height

Baseline

Overlap

Overlap to discover the remarkable range that exists between historic families of type even though they have the same point size. What does this mean for the designer? When it comes to mixing families of type what can be done and what cannot be done? What are the only 2 anatomical attributes that all families share?

Sacreligious Sacreligious Sacreligious

Legibility Word

Legibility Letter

This is a study in legibility of a word. The exercise teaches us that when the bottom half of the word is covered it is more legible that when the top is covered. More of the distinctive attributes of letters are in the top half since we write from top to bottom.

This is a study of how much of the letterform can be removed and still read the word. The exercise teaches us to recognize what is distinctive about each letter.

Sacreligious Sacreligious Sacreligious

Anatomy and Cropping

I discovered that I only needed part of the main curve of the S for it to be recognizable. It was interesting to see how little of some letters were needed and to push the boundaries of what constituted the letter forms.

Form and Counterform

When creating a visual hierarchy in typographic space, a designer balances the need for harmony, which unies a design, with the need for contrast, which lends vitality and emphasis. As in music, elements can have a counterpart or a counterpoint relationship. Typographic counterparts are elements with similar qualities that bring harmony to their spatial relationship. Elements have a counterpoint relationship when they have contrasting characteristics, such as size, weight, color, tone, or texture. Counterpoint relationships bring opposition and dissonance to the design.

Single Letter

Double Letter

Typographic Kinetics

Every letter has a personality you can identify. Fragmentation is not the goal in and of itself. Everything is adjustable and its a case-by case decision of how far to go. The form you seek is one where you are still able to read the word. So this determines the degree of fracture. Its the part(letterform) towhole (word). Both must be juggled to value. You cant use the same element over and over just because it worked in one place. Every example should change somewhat. Because range is a persistent goal of design, you want to invent in each example. Discovery, experimentation, success and failure are part of any assignment.

The Structure of Letters

While upper and lower case letters are distinct in structure, they all are built by combining 4 strokes; vertical, horizontal, slanted, and curvilinear. These elementary strokes form the foundation, a visual code that is recognizable through our long experience with reading and writing regardless of style. Therefore, letter forms derive their visual character from combinations of these basic strokes and not from being light or bold, wide or narrow, Roman or italic, sans serif or serif. An entire alphabet can be categorized using only six basic underlying visual combinations of strokes as the example illustrates.

stroke categories

UC

LC

E,F,H,T,I,L K,M,N,Y, X,V,W A,Z B,J,P,R,U,O C,G,Q,S

i,t,j,l,f, v,w,x,y,z

z a,b,c,d,f,h, j,k,m,n,p,q,r,s,u e

Typographic Page

Using the initials of your designer, impose the letterforms in a typographic study that interprets a relationship to the form of the chair they designed. The goal is to discover relationships via form and division of space. Then using the designers name, the name of the chair and the date of its manufacture or materials used to create the chair, impose the words in a typographic study that demonstrates relationships to the chair.

Multi-Page Typographic Layout & the Grid

Type generally falls into two primary categories; informational and or expressive. Its not uncommon to have a strategy for both present in layouts. Informational text is more common and the form responds to long traditions and conventions of size, spacing and established habits of organization on the page. The ratio is determined by the designer and the needs of the communication. An emphasis or hierarchy must be clear and decisive so the roles each plays in the communication are clear. In design things are not equal.

Wordplay

Wordplay refers to creating typographic equivalents for words. In this exercise, we used contrasting words and one typeface. Using simple changes in spacing, sizing and placement of letters on a page, the work not only conveys the words meaning but expresses it as well.

f loa

Poster Project: Type and Image

Using personal artwork and predetermined text, students were asked to create a poster for a gallery show of their work. By using their own work, students began to see how they might develop their own typographic style. Combining simple principles of hierachy and dynamic composition with color and type choices, sophisticated results were achieved.