Typography

Fonts vs. typefaces

This may seem picky, and but a font and a typeface are not the same thing.

A typeface is a particular design of letters, numbers & symbols. Helvetica is a typeface designed by Max Miedinger in 1957 (also a film) now so widely adopted that it appears everywhere.

Fonts allow us to print typefaces- they are the collections of a typeface computers use to display and print a typeface on a page. Google either term and you can spend the rest of the day reading about the particular differences and history behind their development.

Kerning, tracking and spacing

Just as we use our vocabulary to accurately convey our thoughts, our choice of typeface and the spacing we use convey a subtle meaning as well.

To correctly display type, pay attention to the kerning - the spacing between individual letters. Properly kerned, type should have visually consistent, not equal spacing, between letters. Adobe® refers to this as optical kerning, where the overall appearance is consistent spacing, an effect that requires some letters actually be closer to one another that others. A capital T, for example, would be moved closer to the next letter because otherwise it would appear to allow too much white space between them. If you think of each letter as being a single block. as it was when type was physically set by hand, you can get the idea. An “O” takes up the entire width of its block, whereas an A takes up the width only at the bottom and leaves more white space at the top; we kern some letter pairs to make the spacing appear visually equal. An i and a j might almost overlap at the bottom to achieve this effect.

Tracking, is the space between the letters of an entire word or block of text. Tracking is used to space out the overall length of a line for design and layout purposes. Justified type is tracked to force each line of type to align with its neighbors to form a rectangular block. How you use tracking affects the legibility and ease of reading for the viewer.

Spacing in typography subtly affects your message as well. Not only the spacing between individual letters or words, but between paragraphs and other blocks of type. Spacing indicates the importance or hierarchy that a block of text holds. Your headline should convey the broad topic and tone that your subsequent text will support. Separate thoughts into their own spaces and think of your layout almost as an outline- the flow from headline to supporting copy to details. Run-on blocks of text are hard to read and harder to understand. Copy should flow like your address- the planet, the country, the area/state/province, the town, the street, the house. This gives the reader structure so they don’t have to guess the importance that a particular part of your layout is trying to convey.

Using typography and space wisely gives your message more impact!

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