How essential is a bold weight? I’m toying with using
smallcaps for the “Bold,” with slanted smallcaps for the “Bold Italic” in a
face, and wanted to get some opinions.
I prefer the consistency of color that smallcaps give; I dislike bold weights.
Plenty of typographers have used smallcaps in place of bold, so there’s
certainly precedent. Italic caps are slanted romans, so slanted smallcaps are
in some way consistent. These are all arguments more or less in favor of
smallcaps (at least in general).
However, I see a few problems. First, the consistency of color can be a bad
thing. Some people like words to jump out. Sometimes such jumping out is even a
good thing, such as in a dictionary. Second, I’m proposing a rather nonstandard
usage. People just aren’t used to seeing smallcaps at all, and slanted
smallcaps probably look exotic even to font geeks. Also, people often use bold
in ALL CAPS, and since the caps won’t differ in roman and bold weights, this
distinction will be lost.
Comments
BTW plenty of people have made plenty of mistakes (including putting too much faith in precedent) so the best way to decide is relying on your own judgment.
Seconded.
Not too dissimilar to how the affectation of an "upright Italic" discards the main thing a user expects when choosing Italic: slant.
I concur with John—why not give typographers the option to use both kinds of hierarchical layout?
Glyphs is not the only type design application out there. There is nothing that prevents a Bold weight from having different OpenType features than a Regular weight in the same family.
(Although of course it also allows different fonts to share all or part of an OT feature file, regardless of family membership.)
People mostly use bold fonts precisely because they want certain words and blocks of type to be heavier and stand out from the regular weights. Your preference for maintaining color consistency with regular weights seems more akin to why italics are often used.
Like I mentioned, you can, of course, create a type family tailored to your personal preferences, but if you want other people to use it, that font needs to meet their expectations, not yours.
Why not create a family with the regular weights, bold weights, small caps and italics of each. Isn't it best to let the users of your typeface to decide for themselves.
To me bold italic or italic caps are rather redundant in this context. Double stress is rarely needed, so it’s more likely to be misused by someone who is not a typographer.
Section titles will often contain titles or foreign terms which might require italicization or acronyms where it might be desirable to use small caps. I agree bold italics or small caps will likely get far less use than italics, bold, or small caps, but I wouldn't call them redundant.
I’m with André in that I don't think they’re inherently redundant.
Information comes only from contrast. With the ideal (or at least idealized) level of contrast being as much as possible without triggering an errant fixation.
I consider consistent texture or 'colour' a byproduct of the actually beneficial design goal. What we're really talking about is restricting spatial frequency in text so that reading isn't slowed by requiring re-tuning to a different spatial frequency channel mid-text. This is why changing weight of type in the midst of continuous text isn't a good idea if your intention is to enable continuous reading. The roman/italic pairing is functionally superior in this regard to weight change: the styles are sufficiently distinct to be able to articulate content, while the spatial frequency is close enough to fall within a common channel.
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Addendum: Majaj, Pelli et al. 'The role of spatial frequency channels in letter identification.'
Still one of the most interesting and conceptually useful studies in the field.
Yes, Latin typographers should correct this poor standard at home.
But inflicted? European typography is not a person, hence does not make decisions. As you've pointed out yourself, most Latinization is done by natives; the flawed, largely one-dimensional modes of emphasis of Latin is the only thing natives can observe. Let's give them better things to observe. That could even be seen as a duty.
Also, non-Latin writing systems are not museum pieces that should remain unchanged; being inspired by a feature of Latin (or of any other writing system) is how culture works, and when done judiciously actually ends up helping minority cultures survive. The history of writing is replete with examples of fruitful cross-script migration. And guess what, it will never stop. Which means we should help guide it. Most of all, a ghetto is no place for a culture to flourish, especially in this connected age.
Cursiveness as emphasis (most apparent in the contrivance of the "upright Italic") is a denigration of how visual language works.
As you know, I disagree with you regarding italics, and I'm not inclined to go through it again.
Similarly, what does the research say about slanted vs. italic in contrast to roman? I know I tend to miss the extra information when slant is the only difference -- maybe because because I grew up with poor-quality printing. The extra differentiation of cursive forms helps make that distinction clear. But then, I'm a language guy, not a design guy, and I need clearer cues than the rest of you.
Anyway, it seems that if you grow up seeing the double distinction of slant + cursive, the single distinction of only slope will tend to be lost on you. I'd also imagine that if you grow up seeing other single distinctions, this double distinction will look overdone, maybe even distasteful.
Seriously, somebody (else) should do their dissertation on all this.
Hmm, so many options. Sloped romans, upright italics, even different styles of italic for different moods... it's a shame that the (text) publishing industry tends to be so actively hostile to such experimentation.
They only become apparent when text is being read, when the reader comes upon them, which is appropriate for the kind of meaning they represent, within the body of a sentence. In other words, they are capable of avoiding an unwanted function in layout navigation, by not catching the reader’s eye as the page is scanned, when camouflaged with the same tone as the plain roman.
Designers rarely consider typography in a vacuum. Instead, they regard the typography as an element in a layout. Typefaces are typically chosen to complement the personality of the layout. Sometimes that means an aggressive typeface that draws attention to itself. Other times it means a neutral typeface malleable enough to take on the personality of the layout without intruding upon it. I've recently been running into newly graduated copy editors who habitually use bold type for emphasis in text when, say, 20 years ago, they might have been more likely to italicize it. When I ask them about it, they often tell me they're trying to emphasize key phrases and that italics are not noticeable enough to do that. I usually consider this bad typography, but I can still see their point.
There are times when italics work and aren't meant to draw attention. Italicizing the name of a publication in a block of text is a good example. There are other times, when a key word or phrase needs to stand out, like a critical sentence in an instruction booklet. As important as aesthetics might be in typography, function should come first. And noticeable contrast between a regular and bold weight serves an important function that can often improve clarity, which leads to better comprehension.