OUGD504- Typesetting: Rules, theories and practical uses

Definition
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical types or the digital equivalents.

The line- reading process
Often the 'i', jumps forward and then back, it fixates your brain to that part of the word.

Typography- 3X elements
The letter- design of the individual character/glyphs and anatomy
The word- how these glyphs fit together
The line- combination and arrangement of words in sequence

History of typesetting
(Helvetica film)

Desktop publishing and digitisation
Adobe type- pt size, metric or optical kerning, leading and tracking

Typography is not an art form or an exact science but more of a craft

Hierarchy
Type size, weight, colour and treatment can all add emphasis to any elements that require prominence.

Alignment
Left aligned- creates a ragged edge and usually the default
Justified text- no ragged edge
Centred and right aligned- not commonly used, makes it difficult to read
The rag/ragged edge
Paragraphs- indented text and full line break

Letter spacing
Leading- more lead you have the more space you have
Automatic leading
Leading needs to be higher than your point size

Tracking: -40 tracking/0 tracking/+40 tracking

Kerning and pairs- distance between the individual characters/letter forms in a proportional font

Hidden characters- these invisible characters such as returns, spaces, tabs etc only appear when you have 'show hidden characters on'. They show how the text is constructed, it will find double spaces and unintentional line breaks.

Line length- efficient reading depends on a comfortable line length. This is between 40 and 75 characters or 7-12 words. An overly short line length causes a more extreme and ugly rag in a body of text, whilst an overly long line length decreased legibility and the eye finds it difficult to track the next line easily.

Widows and orphans- lines or words left handing or separated from a complete block of text

Dashes and spaces- hyphen- /en dash – (alt and hyphen)/em dash — (shift/alt/hyphen)

-Hair space
-Thin space
-Regular space
-En dash space
-Em dash space


Reading:

www.thepunctuationguide.com

Grids Raster Systeme:
Josef Muller-Blockmann
Grids are considered by some, the most important and yet most invisible part of design and typography.
The Raster Systeme presents a grid in 8-32 grid fields, which can be adaptable

Rivers:
Gaps in typesetting which appear to run through a paragraph of text, due to a coincidental alignment of spaces

Baseline grid:
Technique used in modernist typesetting. Essentially it aligns all your text to a vertical grid where the bottom of each letter is positioned onto the grid, just like writing on lined paper.