Design Essentials 2

Posted by: Zise in Zise Blog on Nov 25, 2009  

Sorry for the vast distances between posts... As promised here are some more handy tips for typography and some links to find out more!


Understanding The Basics

  • The Type Size, also called the Cap Height, is the overall height of capital letters in the formation of words.
  • The Ascender is the upward tail on letters like h, l, t, b, d, and k.
  • The Descender is the downward tail for letters like g, q, and y.
  • The Counter is the white space located inside letters like o and p.
  • The X Height is the height of the letter, and does not include ascenders or descenders.
  • Tracking (the horizontal space between each character)
  • Leading (the space vertically between lines of text - name comes from the physical piece of lead that used to be used in mechanical printing process to separate lines of text)   
  • Kerning (the amount a character's horizontal space encroaches into it's neighbour.)
  • Baselines are the boundary that the lowest part of the letter rests on.


Type Alignment

 

  • Default writing techniques will use left alignment to create easy to read text for the reader. Casual letters, unpublished manuscripts, and basic paragraph styles tend to fall into this category.
  • Center alignment is used to draw attention and is used a majority of the time for Headlines or Titles. Newspaper headers, book titles, and report titles are excellent examples of center alignment.
  • Right Alignment is a clean crisp professional look and is used quite a bit for corporate business letters, return address labels, business cards and a variety of other applications where a formal style of alignment is needed.
  • Justified alignment. This type of alignment creates perfect alignment on both the left and right margins without regard for the actual characters. This can lead to a condition called tracking, or the creation of “rivers” of white space throughout the text body. If this happens, reduce the tracking gradually to correct the illusion.

 

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