Typography

In this post I will share with you some of what I learnt about typography through my graphic design course.

The word type comes from the Greek word typos which loosely translated means letter form. Today the word is used to refer the letters of the alphabet.

In a time before printing press, books were made by monks, they worked at the monasteries. This method of writing books by hand was a long, demanding process. This process was still in practice until the invention of movable type (1455-1960)

Baseline: the imaginary line on which all the characters sit

Meanline: the imaginary line that marks the top of the lowercase letters (excluding the ascenders)

Ascender: the part of the lowercase letter that rises above the meanline or x-height

Descender: the part of the lowercase letter that falls below the baseline

X-height: the height of the body or main element of the letterform. The x-height is actually the height of the lowercase x

Counter: the enclosed or hollow part of the letter

Serif: the short strokes that project from the ends of the main strokes. Not all type has serifs; type without serifs is called sans serif and sans is Latin for “without”

Measuring

Points are used to measure the type size, picas are used to measure the length of the line, there are 12 points in one pica, and 6 picas (or 72 points) in one inch.

The point size, or body size of a typeface is the measurement from the top of the ascender to the bottom of the descender plus a small amount of space above and below to prevent the lines from touching when set.

Traditional text or text type size are 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14.

Display sizes are 18, 20, 30, 36, 42, 48, 60, and 72

In a previous post I had a free typography poster that I created, to download it click here