Design Practice: Design Principles: Readability and Legibility

'Type is speech made visible"

Vocabulary:

-font

-typeface

-font family

-weight

-stroke

-uppercase/lowercase

-tracking

-kerning

-serif

-sans serf

-script

-blackletter

-display

-monotype

-glyph

-symbol

Typeface:

A collection of characters, numbers, symbols, letters, punctuation etc. which have the same distinct design.

Font:

Physical means used to create a typeface, be it computer code, method, lithographic, film or woodcut.

The differences between Helvetica and Arial:

-The full stop is rounded for Arial and squared for Helvetica.

A Cambridge university study states: 'It doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is is that the first and last letters are in the right place."

Typeface Anatomy key terms:

Counter: The negative space within a letterform. It can't be seen.
Legibility: The degree to which glyphs (individual characters) in text are understandable or recognisable based on appearance.
Readaility: The ease in which text can be read and understood. Influenced by line length, primary and secondary leading and justification.
Tracking: Pulls letters and characters apart and generates wider spacing between lettering.
Kerning: Opposite to tracking - pulls letters and characters together.

No more than 3 fonts should be used in general.

Task For Next Week:

Explore how readable your 5 chosen fonts are. Investigate and identify the full typeface for each font.

Bring in the most readable version of the typeface when presented in A4 landscape format (the most readable font within the most readable typeface, including point size).

Experiment with the point sizes 12pt, 32pt and 72pt using the quote "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

Also identify a bold, script, roman and gothic typeface. Using all four of these create examples of each using upper and lower-case in a 10x10 format.

Baskerville