Typography, was once an important function in the graphic arts and advertising industry and a service in high demand.
Typesetting was considered an art. Attention was give to kerning, leading, line spacing, character weight, all the details that made type a design element that enhanced an ad or brochure and more important, helped to communicate an idea or service.
There are still professionals who remain true to the fundamentals, yet have total command over traditional and new media.
Typography
Helpful Hints
Are you preparing
to create your own masterpiece? If so, we'd like to help. Here are a few
ideas to help make your creation look the best it can.
Hopefully, these
tips will help you design your masterpiece. If you decide it should be
created by professionals, we will be happy to send you information explaining
how we can give you the best possible results at competitive prices.
Measurements
Other than inches, the point and pica are the most used measurements in
typesetting. The point is equal to 1/72 of an inch; there are 12 points
in a pica; 6 picas in an inch. Most often the type size and leading are
designated in points, whereas the width and depth of text areas and photo
boxes are defined in picas and points.
Spacing measurements other
than spacebands and tabs are em spaces and en spaces. An em space is equal
to the square of the type size (i.e., an em space in
10-point type is 10 points wide and 10 points high. An en space is half of an em space.
The most common use for em spaces is for paragraph indents.
Type size, leading and font styles
Type should be set to be read with little or no eyestrain. Choose sizes
and styles that appeal to your target audience. For example, when designing
a piece for the elderly, use a larger type size (for easier reading);
when creating material targeted toward men, avoid using frilly typestyles.
Use specialty fonts for emphasis, but avoid overuse of fonts that are
"cute" but difficult to read (i.e., use specialty fonts for
heads or callouts, but a more legible font for body text).
Leading is the amount of space from the base of one line to the base of the next line. In most cases it is easier to read body copy if the leading is a little more than the point size of your text. As the point size gets larger, so does the amount of space in leading, therefore, depending on the font, you don't need to add as much lead for larger sizes.
Using kerning to improve the appearance of your project
Kerning is adjusting the amount of space between characters to create an easy text flow for the eye to follow. Have you ever seen big gaps between words or letters? If these gaps happen in more than two or three lines of type, it is called a river, which makes the reader's eye follow the white space instead of the copy, causing the reader to lose track of the message. The most common pairs of letters that need space removed (kerning) between characters are pairs that have parallel lines.
On the other side of the coin, characters that have protruding parts, will appear to be too close together, making the words difficult to read.
The amount of kerning that needs to be done will also depend on the font. Your goal is to have all characters close to each other but not touching.
Widows and bad breaks
A widow is a single or partial word alone on the last line of a paragraph, or a single or partial line alone at the top or bottom of a column or page. A bad break is when a line of text breaks leaving a widow, or a bad hyphenation. One example of bad breaks is having three or more lines in a row end in hyphens. Another is when a word is hyphenated leaving only 1 or 2 characters of a word on a line by itself. Other types of bad breaks occur when working with flush left ragged right copy or flush right ragged left copy, such as leaving a one- to three-letter word hanging out by itself, or leaving large gaps of white space at the end of a line in the middle of a paragraph. Some examples of bad breaks are shown below.
One dark night the black
cat jumped in front of the
girl.
The black cat was jump-
ing down from a weep-
ing willow tree and grace-
fully landed in front of the girl.
One dark night the black cat jump-
ed in front of the girl.
Bad breaks and widows can make even the best designs look unprofessional!
Using art to capture the reader's attention
Captivating pictures or funny cartoons are a great way to get a reader to pick up your brochure, but if the art you choose has no relation to the information you are trying to share, you could lose the attention of the reader as fast as you captured it. Other forms of art, such as technical pictures or diagrams, can be used to help the reader understand the message you're trying to convey.
Using colors for emphasis and appeal
Choosing colors for your project is an important process. You can use background color to enhance the appeal of your piece or spot colors to emphasize important details. Colors have a direct impact on the human mind, they evoke emotion and trigger memories. You need to choose colors based on the product or message, the target group and the desired reaction of your readers. For example, if you are designing a brochure for bedroom furniture, for instance, you most likely will want to use colors that will make your readers feel relaxed and comfortable.
Grouping related items
In most advertising, the information is not set in straight text, it is usually grouped so that related items are in close proximity to each other. Grouping the title, description and price of one product together, while separating it from the same information group for another product. Using boxes, rules, and colors are all good ways to separate groups of information (i.e., boxing the items or putting a color background behind one item group and not behind the other item groups).
Directing the reader's eye
One of the most important concepts behind any design is to steer the reader's eye to the information that will achieve the results you are striving for, whether it is to provide the reader with new information or to sell a product. For most languages, the eye naturally goes from left to right, top to bottom. There are many ways to direct the reader away from the normal flow, such as special characters, the most obvious being arrows. Other possible guides include using such elements as gradational screens that draw the reader's eye away from the center, or double ruled boxes with the lighter rule on the inside (this pulls the reader's eye into the middle of the box). All of these elements have a major influence on where your reader's eye travels.
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info@margiestypesetting.com
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