102 Font review - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

102 Font review

Susan Clements-VivianSlide2

Illuminated manuscript

Psalter-Hours

English, 13th Century A.D.

Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.

Before the invention of the printing press,

handwritten documents were riddled with errors

.

Scribes

invented visual

, artistic ways to salvage these laboriously crafted objects.

Slide3

Gutenberg’s moveable Type

Gutenberg

’

s moveable Type in Europe

(1453-1455 A.D.)

metal typeSlide4

Letterpress

Letterpress technology

a classic typographic page

Typographic design is not only an act of mark making, but also of

spacing

.Slide5

Blackletter

Gutenberg

’

s moveable Type style “

Blackletter” Slide6

Basics of Type AnatomySlide7

Type Classification Systems

Essentially, classification describes typefaces; it does not define them. Slide8

Know

Your Families: Grouping Fonts

Reference:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/12/14/what-font-should-i-use-five-principles-for-choosing-and-using-typefaces/***see Smashing Mag. (link above) to review font groupingsSlide9

Humanist / Old Style

/ Venetian 15

th

– 16th century The Humanist types (sometimes referred to as Venetian) appeared during the 1460s and 1470s, and were modelled not on the dark gothic scripts like textura, but on the lighter, more open forms of the Italian humanist writers. **Note. In some classifications Humanist refers to Typefaces of the 15th century and Old Style of the 16th. Slide10

Humanist / Old Style / Venetian

Examples of Old Style: Jenson,

Bembo

, Palatino, and — especially — Garamond, Old style is also called Humanist. Humanist Sans and Humanist are two different classifications. Humanist Sans is a 20th century variation of Humanist. Slide11

characteristics

Sloping cross-bar on the lowercase “e”

;

Relatively small x-height;3 Low contrast between “thick” and “thin” strokes (basically that means that there is little variation in the stroke width);Slide12

At Best, At Worst

Old

Style faces at their best are classic, traditional, readable and at their worst are… well, classic and traditional.Slide13

Transitional

(mid 18th Century)

Examples of Transitional are Baskerville,

Bookman (Linotype), Cheltenham (ITC), Clearface (ITC), Fournier, Joanna, Slimbach (ITC)Slide14

Characteristics AxisSlide15

Characteristics ContrastSlide16

characteristics GeometricSlide17

Modern

(late 18th

century)

Examples Modern Bodoni and Didot. Slide18

Characteristics

Characteristics

1

. High and abrupt contrast between thick and thin strokes;2. Abrupt (unbracketed) hairline (thin) serifs3. Vertical axis4. Horizontal stress5. Small apertureSlide19

exampleSlide20

At Best, At Worst

At their best, transitional and modern faces seem strong, stylish, dynamic. At their worst, they seem neither here nor there — too conspicuous and baroque to be classic, too stodgy to be truly modern.Slide21

Geometric Sans

Examples of Geometric/Realist/

Grotesk

Sans: Helvetica, Univers, Futura, Avant Garde, Akzidenz Grotesk, Franklin Gothic, Gotham.Slide22

characteristics

Geometric sans serifs are exactly what their name

suggests;

they are built on geometric shapes. Slide23

AT Best, AT Worst

These sans serifs are constructed of straight,

monolinear

lines and circular or square shapes. This can make them very cold and clinical, but also quite simple. The starkness of most geometric sans serifs makes for great headings, but they are usually less than ideal for long paragraphs. https://typekit.com/lists/geometric-sans-serifsSlide24

Humanist and Transitional Sans (20

th

century)

Examples of Humanist Sans: Gill Sans, Frutiger, Myriad, Optima, Verdana.Slide25

Transitional Sans

These are Sans faces that are derived from

handwriting —

as clean and modern as some of them may look, they still retain something inescapably human at their root.Slide26

AT Best, At Worst

At

their best, Humanist Sans manage to have it both ways: modern yet human, clear yet empathetic. At their worst,

they seem boring and mundane. Slide27

Slab Serifs / Egyptian

Examples of Slab Serifs:

Clarendon, Rockwell, Courier,

Lubalin Graph, Archer.Slide28

In typography, a slab serif

typeface

is

characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular (Rockwell), or rounded (Courier). Slab serif typefaces generally have no bracket (feature connecting the strokes to the serifs).Slide29

AT Best, At Worst

Slab Serifs are hard to figure out. At their best they can seem very urban and at others invoke the American frontier (wild west). At worst they overpower and

become overly conspicuous in the wrong surroundings.Slide30

Selecting a fontSlide31

Selecting a font

A large type family like Helvetica

Neue

can be used to express a range of voices and emotions. Versatile and comfortable to work with, these faces are like a favorite pair of jeans for designers.Slide32

Selecting a mix Slide33

Do they work together?

T

wo

typefaces work well together if they have one thing in common but are otherwise greatly different. This shared common aspect can be visual (similar x-height or stroke weight) or it can be from the same time period.Slide34

ContrastSlide35

References

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/12/14/what-font-should-i-use-five-principles-for-choosing-and-using-typefaces

/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/11/comic-sans-history-examples-best-practices/http://ilovetypography.com/2007/11/06/type-terminology-humanist-2/https://typekit.com/lists/geometric-sans-serifshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_serif