Sofie Beier
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Your personal guide to type design
Parts of letters
arm
crossbar
junction
axis ear
x-height cap height
Ttypog
contrast
tail
stem loop
teardrop
ascender
aperture
eye
raphsce descender 6
spine
counter
terminal
INTRODUCTION The famous jazz musician Charlie Parker is said to have explained improvisations as follows: ‘First you learn the instrument, then you learn the music, then you forget all that and just play.’ This book is a collection of the many rules that are helpful to know before taking on improvisation in type design. It shows you how to look at the positive and negative shapes, and it shows you how to adjust the shape perceptually to make them look proportionally as intended. As soon as you have learned all these little things, you can then forget about them, and go play with your designs.
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Structure
When you draw with a pen, never push the pen, but always draw from top to bottom and from left to right. You can use the pen to guide you in the design of letter proportions. Varying the angle of the broadnib pen results in varying distributions of thick and thin strokes.
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Letter skeleton The letter skeleton is the basic structure that all other features are added on to.
Same skeleton
a aaa aaaa Different skeleton
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Humanist uppercase proportions The humanist uppercase letters originated from ancient Roman inscriptions. The width of the round letters is dictated by the circle. This results in highly different letter widths. Trajan.
The 'B' is based on two 'Ds', which are scaled down in size in order to fit on top of one another. Letters that follow from the 'B', will consequently be narrow.
B BT E P BE 18
OD O H U O S H The letters of two vertical strokes, generally follows the width of the 'O'.
The 'S' is created out of two circles.
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Serifs and balance
Letters such as 'f' and 'r' sometimes appear to be leaning forward. This may be alleviated by extending the baseline serif to the right. Capsa and Mafra.
form form 54
Pointy acute angles Never create pointy digital-looking acute angles, as these are visually unappealing 1 . Your acute angles should always be slightly cut off 2 or rounded 3 .
1
2
3
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Diacritics For text typefaces, the diacritics should generally have the same optical weight as the letter. Stag Sans.
ÃÑÇÍ Ŗ Ŝ Ų åņē ĕ ħ à ű ur k yo l c e h ys c mal Alwa itics in s ey h r diac sizes – t be t t n t o poi n ou egible r u t may singly ill ri surp
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Vertical alignment To unify the vertical alignment, you may use the placement of the grave and acute accents as your guideline for centring the other diacritics. Swift Neue and Frutiger Next.
àáâãäåăā ÀÂÃÄÅĂ àáâãäåăā ÀÂÃÄÅĂ 75
Ogonek The horizontal placement of the ogonek should not exceed the width of the letter. In most cases it will be placed to the horizontal right, except when used with symmetrical letters such as 'Ų' and 'Į'. The ogonek should generally appear to be part of the letter and will therefore often have to be adjusted to fit the base glyph. Adobe Jenson.
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ĘĄ ˛˛ ˛˛ ˛ ęąų ŲĮį ˛ ˛˛
Tilde The tilde should be optically centred over the letter. The spine may be either horizontal or oblique. It is symmetrical in proportions, with the ends being narrower than the middle.
Ãñõã
Didot Display, Avenir Next and Sauna.
Ãñõã
Ãñõã 83
4. LETTERS INTO WORDS Type design equals word design. If your letters do not function when put together, your typeface will not work at all. You need your letters to harmonise and thrive in each other’s company. It has to be a joint venture, where each letter adjusts its skills and special qualities to meet the needs of the group. Adjustments to one letter will influence other letters, which in turn will also need adjustment. You should always be prepared to 'kill your darlings' for the sake of the overall goal.
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Starting letters When initiating the design of a new typefaces, you should begin with letters that are commonly used and have recurring shapes. Below are a few examples.
noab NOHE 91
Simplicity The fewer anchor points, the more dynamic the curves will appear. Always remember to work in PostScript curves 1 . Do not design in TrueType curves 2 .
1
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2
Harmony Anchor points on opposing sides should be placed as close together as possible. If the stroke refers to the broad-nib pen, the anchor points’ placement should relate to the edges of the pen when writing the letter.
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Weight and spacing
The golden rule of spacing is that the space around the letters should equal the space inside the letters.
When adding weight to the black, you change both the amount of black and the amount of white inside. Following this, bolder weights should be more narrowly spaced than lighter weights.
To maintain an even amount of space inside and around the letters, wide typefaces should be more widely spaced than narrow typefaces.
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Rhythm and spacing
Rhythm and regularity is essential for a functional typeface – bad spacing interrupts the rhythm.
For a steady rhythm, aim at creating a page with an even degree of greyness in the overall colour of the type.
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In his book Letters of Credit, typographer Walter Tracy proposed the following method of spacing upper- and lowercase letters. Ocre Serif.
Uppercase metrics
Straight vertical strokes:
Round strokes:
Triangular letters:
The odd ones:
Ste
p1
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Step
2
Start out with a row of the letter 'H'. You should aim for a distance from the stem to the outermost point of the side bearings that is a little less than half of the width between the two stems of the letter. The space between two adjoining 'Hs' will then be slightly less than the space between the stems.
Since bold weights normally have smaller counters, these weights will often be more narrowly fitted than lighter weights. 135
Type Tricks is a reference book and user manual on type design It is about typographical rules and the underlying structure of the working process in the design of new typefaces. In an illustrative format and an easily accessible style, the book presents the different stages of type design. Typographic guidelines are difficult to remember, but with this book you don’t have to remember every single one of them. The book takes its outset in the author’s experience as a teacher of type design, her practical experience with designing typefaces, and in her academic research. Sofie Beier is a type designer and associate professor. She has published numerous academic papers on typeface legibility and is also the author of the book ‘Reading Letters: designing for legibility’.