The point size can be used both as a unit of measuring type and the space between it. For regular newspaper and book text, 8pt to 12pt usually satisfies. There are 72pts to an inch. 1pt is 0.013833 inches. Typographers group them together in picas: 12pt to a pica and 6 picas to an inch. There have been many historical and national variations, and metal and digital measures differ slightly, but today we almost have an international standard: in the US, 1pt=0.351mm; in Europe 1pt = 0.376mm.
But the maths, geography and vocabulary of type should never obscure the most basic fact of all: regular or italics, light or bold, upper or lower case - the fonts that work best are the ones that allow us to read without running our eyes.
Pixels (px): Pixels are fixed-size units that are used in screen media (i.e. to be read on the computer screen). One pixel is equal to one dot on the computer screen (the smallest division of your screen’s resolution). Many web designers use pixel units in web documents in order to produce a pixel-perfect representation of their site as it is rendered in the browser. One problem with the pixel unit is that it does not scale upward for visually-impaired readers or downward to fit mobile devices.
Points (pt): Points are traditionally used in print media (anything that is to be printed on paper, etc.). One point is equal to 1/72 of an inch. Points are much like pixels, in that they are fixed-size units and cannot scale in size.
France
Sébastien Truchet (1657–1729) - Created his point system where there were a dozen-dozen points per French inch—or 1728 or 123 points to a French-Foot.
François-Ambroise Didot (1730–1801) returned to Truchet’s idea, but chose a size twice as large. Thus 864 of his points made one Pied du Roi—that is, 15,625⁄41,559 mm ≈ 0.37597151 mm.
America
traditional American printer’s foot measure 11.952 inches (303.6 mm), or 303.5808 mm exactly, giving a point size of approximately 1⁄72.27 of an inch, or 0.3515 mm.
This is the size of the point in the TeX computer typesetting system by Donald Knuth, which predates PostScript slightly. Thus the latter unit is sometimes called the TeX point.
Like the French Didot point, the traditional American printer’s point was replaced in the 1980s by the current computer-based DTP point system.
The desktop publishing point (DTP point) is defined as 1⁄72 of the Anglo-Saxon compromise inch of 1959 (25.4 mm) which makes it 0.0138 inch or 0.3527 mm. Twelve points make up a pica, and six picas make an inch.
Legibility
In a wood, somewhere in England, rifles in hand, you have been watching
Arthur Lowe (proud, pompous walk)
John Le Mesurier (leafy camouflaged helmet, looking nervous)
Clive Dunn (brave gaze, cold steel)
John Laurie (anxious, doomed)
James Beck (crafty draw on cheeky fag)
Arnold Ridley (may need to be excused)
Ian Lavender (blue scarf, mum’s insistence)
This is the closing sequence to Dad’s Army, Britain’s much-loved TV comedy about the Second World War, produced in the late 1960’s early 1970’s and repeated ever since. The actor’s credits are in Cooper Black, which sells not only things we now consider to be retro and classic, such as Kickers or Spacehoppers, but also anything intended to be warm, fuzzy, homely, reliable and reassuring like easyJet.
The lettering on the side of planes had rarely implied fun before easyJet tried it, and so strong it this typographic branding that no one has successfully imitated it.
it is rare for a new company to select a pre-digital unmodernised classic face from the shelf and not receive or tweak it in some way, but here was an exception. Like so many fonts that have stuck, it was designed in the 1920’s and became instantly popular. Oswald Bruce Cooper, a former Chicago advertising man, was commissioned by the foundry Barnhart Brother & Spindler to make something that they could sell to advertisers. Cooper had achieved something spectacular, a serif face that looked like a sans serif. Cooper Black is the sort of font the oils in a lava lamp would form if smashed on the floor. For a font with such a thickset look, it retains a remarkably unthreatening demeanour. Partly this is due to its stout and puddly descenders its large lower-case letters in relation to its capitals and the limited white peering through the counters of the a,b,c,d,e and g.
This is one difference between legibly and readability; at small sizes, cooper black is legible but not readable. But some type is meant to be seen rather than read.
Just My Type - Reference
Readability
In the 1940’s the most popular test for a font’s legibility was the ‘blink test’. Blinking relieves tired yes in the same way as putting down heavy shopping relives pressure on our palms; our eyes blink more when tired or under strain, and a familiar typeface will cause less fatigue. Under laboratory conditions - where light and type size are regulated, and the the ‘patient’ (reader) is presented with the same text in many faces (the optician’s sight chart yielding to the pursuit of both art and universal clarity) - the number of involuntary blinks were monitored on a handheld clicker.
According to a series of lectures given by John Biggs at the London College of Printing, the types that fared best in the blink test were those that had surveyed for centuries and were always being revived and slightly modified; Bembo, Bodoni, Garamond. It might have been easier to ask the patient which text they comprehend better or which gave them less eyestrain, but such methods would have been subjective and unscientific.
Fortunately we also have more recent investigations. Many of these occurred in the 1970s at the Royal College of Art’s Readability of Print Research Unit (in the computer age it became the slightly less ungainly Graphic Information Research Unit). among its conclusions: people found type with strong distinctive strokes easier to read than flattened styles; and a greater distinction between letters led to a cleaner (and faster) digest of information. The reattach confirmed that the key areas that make a letter most distinctive are its top half and right side, the eye using these flag posts to confirm what is
Other surveys suggested that most readers prefer bold faces over regular ones, although their legibility is about the same. Serif and sans serif face are also equally legible, so long as the serifs aren’t too heavy and thick. Typefaces with larger counters - the very opposite of Cooper Black - are also regarded as more legible, especially at a smaller sizes where these counters. and thick. Typefaces with larger counters - the very opposite of Cooper Black - are also regarded as more legible, especially at a smaller sizes where these counters
Just My Type - Reference
Typeface and Font
Fonts were once known as founts. Fonts and founts weren’t the same as typefaces, and typefaces weren’t the same as type. In Europe the transition from fount to font was essentially complete by the 1970’s, a grudging acceptance of the Americanisation of the word. The two were used interchangeably as early as the 1920’s, although some whiskered English traditionalists will still insist on ‘fount’ in an elitist way, in the hope that it will stretch their authenticity all the way back to Caxton, the great British printer of Chaucer. But most people have stopped caring. There are more important things to worry about, such as what the word actually means.
In the days when type was set by hand, a font was a complete set of letters of a typeface in one particular size and style - every different a, b and c in upper and lower case, each pound or dollar sign an puncheon mark. There would be many duplicates, the exact amount dependant on their common usage, but always more Es and Js. There is still debate as to the derivation of ‘font. Some believe the word stems from ‘fund’, the fund (amount) of the type from which the letters are selected. Others maintain that it comes from the French ‘fonte’, which translates as ‘cast’ -a letter cast in lead. These days a font refers usually to the digital, computerised form of a particular typeface. Each typeface may have a family of several fonts (fonts, italic, condensed, semi-bold italic etc), each weight and style on the page a little different. But in common parlance we use font and typeface interchangeably and there are worse sins.
Definitions should not cloud our appreciation of type, but some classifications can be useful in understanding the subject’s history and usage. It is entirely possible to have a pleasant afternoon in a gallery with no knowledge of art theory or an artists place in the firmament, one can wander around the streets admiring typefaces on signs and shoos with not a care for their history. But is may increase our love of them if we know who made them, and what they were admiring for. And for this we need to define a few words in the typographic language.
Origins of Type
By 3100 B.C., Egyptian hieroglyphics incorporated symbols representing thoughts or ideas, called ideograms, allowing for the expression of more abstract concepts than the more literal pictograms. A symbol for an ox could mean food, for example, or the symbol of a setting sun combined with the symbol for a man could communicate old age or death.
The Roman numerals we use today are considered to contain ideograms:
I, II, and III representing fingers of the hand, V the open hand, and IV the open hand minus one finger.
By 1600 B.C., the Phoenicians had developed symbols for spoken sounds, called phonograms. For example, their symbol for ox, which they called aleph, was used to represent the spoken sound “A” and beth, their symbol for house, represented the sound “B”. In addition to sounds, phonograms could also represent words.
The alphabet
It is the Phoenicians who are generally credited with developing the first true alphabet— a set of symbols representing spoken sounds, that could be combined to represent spoken language.
The word “alphabet” comes from the first two Greek letters alpha and beta.By A.D. 100, the Romans had developed a flourishing book industry and, as Roman handwriting continued to evolve, lower case letters and rough forms of punctuation were gradually added.
Moveable type and printing
In 1445, in Mainz, Germany, Johann Gutenberg changed the course of the written word. While Gutenberg is often credited with inventing both the printing press and metal type, he, in fact, did neither. Printing had been practiced for several hundred years in China and for at least several decades in Europe. Type had been cast successfully, albeit crudely, several years earlier in the Netherlands. What Johann Gutenberg did do was make these technologies practical.
He perfected a workable system of moveable type, developing an ingenious process employing a separate matrix, or mold, for each alphabet character, from which metal types could be hand-cast in great quantities. These types could then be assembled into a page of text, and imprinted to paper via special inks and a printing press of his own design. For the first time, a technical system of mass production was applied to publishing.
Arrangement of Type
Tracking refers to the space between each letter of a word, line, or block of text. It is also known as “letter-spacing.”
Kerning is the adjustment of space between two characters. Kerning is sometimes confused with tracking but whereas tracking deals with a whole word or sentence, kerning is adjusting the space between two letters to give a word a more visually pleasing result.
Leading is an easy one. Leading refers to the amount of space between the lines of text. It is also known as “line spacing” or “interline spacing.”
Colour Contrasts
1.THE CONTRAST OF HUE
Contrast of hue The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of different hues. The greater the distance between hues on a color wheel, the greater the contrast.
2.THE CONTRAST OF SATURATION
Contrast of saturation The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of light and dark values and their relative saturation.
3.THE CONTRAST OF COMPLEMENTS
Contrast of complements The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of color wheel or perceptual opposites.
4.THE CONTRAST OF TEMPERATURE
Contrast of warm and cool The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of hues considered ‘warm’ or ‘cool.’Continue tutorial, view: Proportion & Intensity
5.THE CONTRAST OF TONE
Contrast of light and dark The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of light and dark values. This could be a monochromatic composition.
6.THE CONTRAST OF EXTENSION
Contrast of Extension Also known as the Contrast of Proportion. The contrast is formed by assigning proportional field sizes in relation to the visual weight of a color.
7.SIMULTANEOUS CONTRAST
Simultaneous contrast The contrast is formed when the boundaries between colors perceptually vibrate. Some interesting illusions are accomplished with this contrast.
Subjective and Complimentary Colours
The primaries are not the only colours that can be mixed of course. We can use prisms or coloured filters to produce any wavelength of light and combine it with any other to give a particular colour. Equally, we can mix paint colours and see the results. The reason for using the primaries is that if the proportions are right, we can accurately produce any colour within the visible spectrum. Start with a different set of colours and this not guaranteed.
In mixing paints, or pigments, we are manipulating light indirectly. When light stokes the pigmented surface, some wavelengths are absorbed and others reflected. The reflected wavelengths determine the colour we see. So what we call red paint is paint that absorbs green and blue light, while green paint absorbs red and blue, Now, we know from trichromatic theory that mixing red and green should produce yellow.
It is not going to to work that way with our pigments. Each absorbs more light than it reflects, so mixing two together can only make a darker colour: the combination of red and green in fact produces a muddy brown. Mixing paint in all three primaries, rather than making white, as with light, will make something close to black.
The solution is subtractive mixing. Instead of pigments that absorb all but a certain primary, we use pigments that only absorbs a lll but a certain primary, we use pigments that only absorb a certain primary. Starting from white (the assumed colour of our canvas), we can reverse the additive process by applying more pigment, subtracting more of each primary, until we finally reach black.
Designer's Colour Manual Tom Fraser and Adam Banks - Reference
Difference between RGB and CMYK
RGB (Red, Green, Blue) is the typical color space used by electronic displays, monitors, pda screens, etc. In RGB, images are created by combining red, green, and blue light. Process of addition can create millions of different colors by using varying concentrations of the primaries. So when designing a website, web banner, buttons, e-newsletter, etc., your images and files should be set to this profile. Chances are any image you receive will be RGB by default, but it’s always a good practice to check.
CMYK is the primary color model used by color printers. So for flyers, brochures, advertising, newsletters, direct mail pieces, etc., a CMYK profile may provide better quality results or a better expectation of what your results will be. CMYK creates different colors in a subtractive process using four colors or inks: cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow, and black. Chances are your inkjet, bubblejet, or laser printer at home has a CMYK or CMYK variant setup. There are many RGB colors that CMYK printers cannot reproduce. Something that looks good on the monitor may not retain that quality in the printed piece.
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