Page layout #2

A font is a complete collection of printable characters, including letters, numbers, punctuation marks and other special characters, with a consistent style or typeface, weight (bold or otherwise), posture (italic or otherwise) and size. Examples of fonts are Arial (most of this print), Times New Roman and Brush scripts

A font family is a set  of fonts of different sizes, weights, and postures that all have the same typeface. A typeface is the distinctive design of a font family. Typefaces are grouped into two major categories: serif and sans serif. Sans serif is considered harder to read if the point size is less than 14.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Serif

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Sans serif

A pica is a unit of measurement equal to 1/6 of an inch or 4.233 mm. A point is 1/12 of a pica, 1/72 of an inch or 0.353mm. The point size of a font is the number of points from the bottom of the decenders to the top of the ascenders. That is, from the bottom of y's and p's to the top of f's and l's.

Sizes can also be measured in pitch. Pitch 10 means 10 cpi (characters per inch).

A good rule is to use a maximum of three typefaces in one publication. Choose one for the body text, one for the display type and a third for special effects such as the company logo.

Typography is the science and art of designing typefaces that are easy to read and aesthetically pleasing. The goals are legibility, invisibility and beauty. Legibility means that it is easy to read. Invisibility means that it does not draw attention to itself and distract from the message of the text.

A line on a single column page commonly has between 9 and 12 words. This will determine the size of the letters. The term leading(pronounced ledding) refers to the space between the lines of the text. Tracking adjusts letter and word spacing. Kerning adjusts the space between letters that don't fit together well. Kerning is often used for headlines and subheads. For example, in a headline you can make the first letter larger than the rest or the first letter different to the rest.

Justification refers to the alignment of the lines: left, right, full, centred, forced. The end of the line is the hyphenation zone  where DTP programs want to hyphenate a word that is too long.  These should be checked at draft stage for correctness as mi-nute and min-ute can have two different meanings.

In order that text is kept together you need to avoid widows(isolated first line of paragraph) and orphans(isolated last line of a paragraph), headings at  the bottom of a page, don't split graphics eg tables, keep complicated sentences on one page.

Terms

TYPOGRAPHY                      CONTRAST               READABILITY

KERNING                               CONDENSED                      CONSISTENCY

Theory Exercises	Practical Exercises
P229 4.3.2	P229
P231 4.3.3