Change the meaning of the words or the whole design? Certainly!
A font can add a new level to the text and meaning of your message.
This can help you connect with the user, build a brand, and set the tone for the entire project. The wrong font can make your design look flat, disjointed, or even give users the wrong impression of your brand. Now, with that knowledge, let's look at some beautiful typography from Design Shack.
The mood and the message you want to convey must match each other
It may sound strange, but it's true: every typeface has its own mood. And just like your mood, it can change depending on the environment.
This mood helps set the features of the project. This is driven by what people think about the content. It creates a connection between what you do and who you are and how people react to you. (Too much pressure to sign, right?).
Making the right connection starts with understanding what you want your design to convey, as well as a little knowledge about the different styles and history of type.
Compare messages
Did you mean this? 
Or tried to say it? 
The only difference here is in the fonts. See how different these messages are?
Font Mood for Beginners
There is no definite science to font matching by mood. In fact, it's mostly intuitive, and you just need to look at the font and the word together to understand what they mean (If you don't believe this, look at the previous example).
Here are some examples to get you started with different typography styles:
- Serif font (Serif): eternity, formality
- Novosti serif (Modern serif): gloss, high fashion
- Slab serif: importance, attention
- Sans serif font: neutral, simple
- Compressed (Condensed): authoritative, intense
- Bold (Black or bold): importance, stop
- Handwritten (Script): elegant, characteristic
- Geometric: retro, children
- Monospaced: code-based, sharp
- Rounded (Bubble or rounded): friendly, lively
- Vintage (Vintage): trendy, cool
- Grunge: rough, mystical
Avoid cliches
Here comes the tricky part: don't fall into the trap of using cliched fonts because of their general association or because you're not sure what to do. You can find lists all over the internet telling you which font to use for any type of project. You won't get it here.
Maybe you want to mix serifs with lighter content, or make handwriting more masculine. As with any combination of fonts, choose one for the title and big words, and something simpler for the rest of the text. This combination can be more traditional with serif fonts, or more modern with vintage and new serif fonts.
Consider your surroundings
An important part of how type is perceived is what elements surround it. It can be anything from images to other fonts. Different combinations can make the user perceive what they see differently.
Think of some simple sans-serif typeface. For the most part, these fonts are fairly neutral, and will adjust to the meaning of their surroundings. Look at the two images above for example. Are they perceived differently? The font is the same in both images, but the output is quite different. In the picture of the airport, you can feel the hustle and bustle, but the picture of the beach exudes calmness.
Who is your audience?
There is another element that you cannot control when it comes to typography and mood. This is how your audience perceives your content and font variations.
Let's take Comic Sans, which has been joked about more than once. Most designers won't use it. They will grin and laugh if one of the colleagues creates a project with him. On the other hand, Comic Sans is a popular font. You will find it everywhere - from church bulletins, to amateur newspapers and simple signs.
Where you think there is a real design problem, there will always be people who don't. The same can happen with any font.
Users will approach the design with different points vision. We will take into account your audience in advance and try to predict how they will perceive the design. What do they think of your choice of typography? Can you make decisions that align with what they want or expect from the project?
5 Fonts No Self Respecting Designer Would Use
Choosing or not choosing a font doesn't have to be a sad decision. We have all been hurt in our lives when a wonderful design was destroyed by a stupid or simply overuse wrong font. Just for fun, here are five fonts we're sure you'll never use:
● Papyrus: It is difficult to fit into any design and at the same time it has serious problems with readability.
● Jokerman: Any typeface that has polka dots, spikes, or swirls is downright funny.
● Times New Roman: The default font from text editors and exam tests for grade 10. This is a normal typeface, but may have a slight laziness to it.
● Impact: If you want to shout to your users, "This is very important, you need to read this now!" then choose it. (It was a very good typeface...until the memes ruined it).
● Comic Sans: Too much has already been said about him.
Conclusion
Your mood, the mood of your audience, and the mood of the typography come together to create the overall feel of the project.
When planning a project and working on its creation, do not forget to take into account the mood of your audience. And if you stumble along the way - don't worry, it happens. Learn from these mistakes and rethink the process with your next project.
Vladimir Favorsky
Our Russian type system, one of the European systems, partly derived from the Greek one, makes great use of vertical and horizontal lines with all their properties in the expression and design of its functions. Moreover, it can be said that both the horizontal as a line of uniform movement, and the vertical as a limited, stopped line, which can have its own specific internal structure and hence its own specific scale, reveal all the basic properties in our font.
The horizontal is the basis of the line, the function of moving through the text, in particular along the line, uses the properties of the horizontal, its uniform movement, and naturally and excitingly along with the letters goes along it. On the other hand, the vertical column gives us the integrity of this column when we perceive it statically, and, reading line after line, we go down it lower and lower, and, by the way, this movement down the vertical, going as if against the current coming from below, and thus having a stop all the time, can always be stopped. (This is similar to how a steamboat, let us say, on the Oka River, going against the current, easily stops and delays the course and puts the passenger on, and going with the current, often refuses to do so.)
But the vertical, with all its properties as a limited and scaled line, works in typeface mainly as a stop. Both in the book, the title vertical and the column vertical, and in the letter, the letter stem vertical works as a stop.
The design of these two main points in the font is the main thing, and in this the vertical and horizontal play a primary role.
V. Favorsky. "Font, its types and connection of illustration with type". Cover. 1925. Woodcut.
If we take the words of our language, it is clear to everyone that they are not indifferent to their content and are for the most part living verbal representations of the things they designate.
Aren't the letters also a somewhat authentic representation of those vocal gestures with which we pronounce the sound we need with the help of the throat, palate, teeth and tongue?
In this regard, vowels and consonants can be regarded differently. The vowels are much simpler in muscular gesture; it is mainly the vocal trumpet that is involved here, which is either contracted, as in the sound "I", or taken open in its very depths, as in the sound "A", or lengthened by the mouth in the sound "O", or lengthened by the lips in the sound "U" . Therefore, it is natural that this is reflected in the letters.
V. Lazarev. "Nikodim Pavlovich Kondakov". Cover. 1925. Woodcut.
In the letters denoting vowel sounds, a kind of voice gesture is depicted - this is clear in "O", clear in "U", clear in "I", if it were depicted as one-stick; somewhat less clearly in the letter "A", and in the letter "E", especially if you draw it as a reverse "E", as if in profile, the entire vocal apparatus is depicted - both the mouth and the tongue.
With consonants, the situation is much more complicated, and it is more difficult to guess the pictorial moment there. But we can at least make use of the distinction between vowels and consonants. The first ones in our type are predominantly gaping, and the second ones are mainly built on stems, except for a few, like "З" and "С".
"Revolutionary Poetry of the Modern West". Anthology. Cover. 1928. Woodcut.
By the way, in ancient scripts there was a significant difference between vowels and consonants.
In the Latin script written on architectural monuments, the vowels were wider and more gaping than the consonants, while in the ancient Slavic vowels, on the contrary, were compressed, consonants were preferred, which introduced a kind of color into speech, and vowel modulations could be considered as quantitative changes. ; so the vowel signs were compressed, except perhaps for "U", and the consonants were often even very wide, like "M" and other letters.
"The Tale of Igor's Campaign". Title for binding. 1938. Woodcut.
Our language is characterized by the open sound of vowels, and therefore it is natural to pay attention to their difference from consonants in their graphic writing. If this is done, then it is possible to understand the outline of the syllable as something whole.
Here it should be noted that sometimes they tried to give letters of the same width in the font, but in ancient fonts they never tried to do this, and this would not be in favor of the case, since the expressiveness of the font with the general unity of scale, style and elements, as then: stems, arcs and branches - is based on the difference between letters, on their different expressiveness, and if we can not only distinguish each of them from each other, then it is all the more useful to distinguish graphically vowels from consonants.
Our consonants bring a lot of stems of vertical masts into the font. We have many letters with one mast, but there are also with two, there are even with three - like "Sh" and "Sh"; and even in vowels the mast occupies a certain place - as in "I" and in "Y" and "E"; and soft and firm sign, and in two-vowels - as in "Yu" and "I".
Moreover, to model a line, it is necessary to use the gaping of vowels in contrast to the verticalism of consonants.
I have already said that in the construction of a font, work on the graphic expressiveness of a syllable, and not just a single letter, would be of great importance. If this is done, then it is possible to respond to the rhythm of a given word with a graphic rhythm of letters, with their gestures, gaping, stops, striving further, forward, concentrating boles in the roots of words where several consonants meet, and rarefaction in places of vowel signs, more air in vowels and vowel endings.
N. Bromley. "Descendant of Gargantua". Cover. 1930. Woodcut.
If we take the letter "K", then we can very clearly see the use of the mast as a stop and the gestures of branches going up and down from it. The compositional significance of this construction is that we, having strengthened ourselves vertically, at the same time move on.
Gestures go in a diagonal direction up and down, the letter, as it were, steps and raises its hand. The gestures are like those of a tree or a person, and their diagonal direction preserves the integrity of the letter, while the horizontal movement is complex, not primitive. If we add the sign of the vowel "O" to this sign, and after - "U", then this, as it were, continues the gesture of the letter "K". The gesture will come as if from the same trunk and thereby make the syllable a single organism. The same can be imagined with other consonants. With some, the unity of the syllable will be successfully built, with some less successfully, but nevertheless, having achieved the syllabic expressiveness of the word's outline, one can also achieve a graphic rhythm corresponding to the verbal rhythm.
"The Fourth Exhibition of ORS Sculpture". 1931. Woodcut.
But let's move on to the design of the font. The font can be of various designs, and, in addition, the letter, constituting a black silhouette, receives, as it were, a color body, and one or another modeling of black, changing the design, at the same time puts the letter in a certain relation to white, moreover, since the letter models black, it thereby models both white and black, as if growing into white.
The letter sinks into white and emerges from white (the letter, as it were, looks like a fly in milk). Otherwise, the letter would lie dry on the sheet in terms of color and, as it were, could be thrown off the sheet of paper.
Mark of the Russian-German society "Culture and Technology". 1929. Woodcut.
Different eras and different styles created different fonts in terms of design and color.
Without going too far into the history of type, let's start with the 16th century. The book of illustration then had a longitudinal line engraving, or later a copper engraving, and the letter itself was often carved on wood or engraved on copper. The font was based on stems and arcs; the stems were made with undercuts, which is generally very important in the font, as it limits the vertical, makes it substantive, does not allow it to sink in white and turns the stem into a column, as it were. Moreover, the form of undercuts at that time ended quite sharply. The stem seemed to be pressed into some white color. Such thinly ending undercuts with a not very thick stem created some color contrast, however, it was hidden during printing, when the sharp edges were somewhat rounded when the letter was pressed into the paper.
A font based on such a stem can be called voluminous, since it does not give a particularly deepening black color, and if the undercuts are slightly rounded, it completely objectifies the stem and gives the stem, although a modeled, but, as it were, a single local color (in the figure - BUT).
I personally often, when combining a similar typeface with a 3D drawing, due to different solutions in the illustration, had to either round off the undercut in the typeface more or less and thus make the letter heavier or lighter in color.
Such a font and arcs are built more or less correctly, just as a steel spring would be bent, and therefore small arcs, as, for example, in "C" and "B", etc., will take up much less space than a large arc "C" or "O".
The modeling of the arcs should also not be very contrasting, since then, of course, the unity of the local color of the letter will be violated.
It is essential, of course, where we attach the arcs or branches to the trunk. Attaching above or below, we give the letter a certain scale.
An example of a "volumetric" font according to Favorsky's classification is the Akademicheskaya typeface. Catalog of manual and machine fonts. Ed. "Book". Moscow. 1966.
Where should the waist be at the letter "B", etc.?
Apparently, only not on the geometric middle, since such a vertical does not visually exist. The waist of the "B" should be higher than the middle, and therefore the upper arc will be smaller than the lower one. The moment how much higher than the middle of the trunk gives, so to speak, the waist of the letter, decides the scale of the letter, its harmony or squatness. And if it is defined, then in all letters where the waist is, it should be given at the same height. So, in "C", "B", "Z", "I", "b", "b", "X" and, possibly, in the jumper of the letters "H" and "Y", but in "E" , "P" and "H" it can be below the middle, since otherwise the arcs will be very small, and the tongue in the letter "E", if it is lower, then it sounds more expressive in the design of the letter.
Magazine "Art". Cover. 1928. Woodcut.
All this single division of the vertical should not be carried out mechanically, some variations are permissible and even necessary. True, I lift up my waist at the letter “K” and thereby, perhaps, make it too slender, but this is for the sake of the lower branch, which is then very expressive, and Dürer’s letter “K” in the font is already very big-headed.
Albrecht Durer. Scheme for constructing the Latin capital letter K. . 1525.
It should be noted that in such a font, that is, a three-dimensional font, it is possible to highlight horizontal lines, as, for example, in the letters "H", "U", "A"; they can form, as it were, the middle between the thickness of the stem and the thin line.
The ascending diagonal and the falling diagonal are well distinguished in color, and it is natural that lightness corresponds to the ascending diagonal, while the falling diagonal is loaded with color.
Therefore, the letter “I”, depicted as an inverted Latin letter “N”, sounds very unpleasant in our font.
In a three-dimensional font, which can also be called a classic, vertical and horizontal are commensurate. This emphasizes especially the structure of the arcs in such letters as "O" or "C". It must also be said that "O", striving for a circle, is nevertheless built only as a wide oval, and not as a circle. And, in addition, "O" and "C" are made a little higher than other letters, as well as "A", if it ends sharply at the top.
G. Storm. Works and days of Mikhail Lomonosov. Title page. 1932. Woodcut.
There are pictorial surfaces created vertically and horizontally, in which both vertical and horizontal are commensurate; the horizontal is, as it were, the same fallen vertical, but there are surfaces in which there is no such commensurability. We can, as it were, create a pictorial plane, contouring it with horizontal and vertical lines, sewing it all over with a lattice of these lines, thus obtaining, as it were, graph paper. But one can imagine a plane created by moving a vertical of a certain scale to the right and left, and stopping the vertical on the right and left creates vertical boundaries, and horizontal ones are created by moving the ends of the vertical. On such a pictorial surface there will be no commensurability of verticals and horizontals, it will be, as it were, a continuous series of verticals. We have such a pictorial surface in Byzantine and Old Russian art and, for example, in Greco and some others. (A plane constructed in the same way by a horizontal is possible.)
Let's move on to the font, which is built on a similar vertical surface. This is a 19th-century typeface, sometimes referred to as Romantic type.
The font is the most colorful, its stem is quite wide, sometimes even very wide, has thin sharp undercuts, sometimes going straight to the stem, sometimes rounded.
The color of the stem and arches contrasts very strongly with the undercuts and hairlines, and therefore black, especially in the stem, deepens into the paper, into white, and the tendrils of the undercuts hold the black on the surface (in the figure - B). Comparison of a letter with a fly that has fallen into milk is especially suitable for this type of font. It must be said that the pressure of black on white in this font causes a great activity of white, which either turns out to be light and abstract, or seems very massive and all the time has a relationship with the letter, changing itself under the influence of black and changing black in turn.
We see a similar meeting and relationship of black and white in the woodcut illustrations in romantic books, in the illustrations of Gavarni, Daumier, Granville. And there the foreground is often black, which lightens, becomes gray and experiences the onset of white coming from the background to her.
Illustrations by Isidore Gerard Grandville (Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville, 1803–1847) for Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1838).
Illustrations by Isidore Gerard Grandville (Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard Grandville, 1803-1847).
Volumetric letter ( BUT) is very subjective. Not so with a romantic letter ( B): it is spatial, it is often very compressed; its verticality in the structure of its arcs makes it, as it were, an element of a spatial series, and not an independent object.
The arcs and branches in this typeface are not built according to the natural bending of the spring, but, as it were, are compressed and by themselves, next to the vertical stem, create a certain vertical pattern, like “O” and “C”. And here the letters can be wider and narrower, higher and lower in different headsets, but in one headset they obey the same spatial order.
Of course, in this type of font, too, it is possible to deviate towards a more objective type, which we meet in the typeface of the Empire era.
An example of a "romantic" font according to Favorsky's classification is the Elizavetinskaya typeface. Catalog of manual and machine fonts. Ed. "Book". Moscow. 1966.
There is another type of font, which was often used in the 20th century, but also existed earlier along with spatial. This type is associated with posters, advertisements, photographic illustrations and textured illustrations, characteristic of flat cubism that developed in the 20th century, and in photomontage and color children's books.
This font is very colorful, without any undercuts, almost does not simulate black, and therefore white, and gives only a design element ( AT).
Such a letter also loses its objectivity, it lacks a face, individuality, and it is, as it were, only a piece of material that fits the optical modeling of gray in photography or the textures of a color illustration.
A skeletal letter is possible and, as it were, opposite to it, where there is no longer any modeling of black and white, but there are even lines that draw the outline of the letter ( G).
In these two typefaces, the arcs often lose all recollection of the spring and are often squared off.
Magazine "USSR at a construction site", No. 10, 1935. Artist - V.A. Favorsky
Display case Tagirova. An experimental typeface developed on the basis of Favorsky's theory. “The font design takes into account the statements of V.A. Favorsky about the possibility of the existence of type-setting strips with uneven color saturation of signs. Faik Tagirov. "The Art of Type. Works of Moscow Book Artists. 1959–1974 M .: "Books", 1977.
Boris Grozevsky, Vladimir Favorsky's assistant at VKHUTEIN (1922–1930). Cover design of the publication of the International Agrarian Institute, M., 1928
“By typing one word in different fonts, Comrade. Grozevsky believes that he managed to get rid of decorativeness and introduce such a very important rationalistic moment as the semantic division of the word. In our example, the words “people”, “agrarian”, etc. stand out.” L.E. Kaplan, Modern typesetting cover, 1930
Here are the main font types. There may be some intermediate between them, as it were, hybrid types.
Both in architecture and in font, the architectonic and structural moment is so strong that any search for a completely new, as it were, unconventional, leads to the appearance of such styles as Art Nouveau in architecture and in font. In a typeface, this leads to the fact that the letter is distorted, its waist is pulled up either incredibly high or incredibly low, and the letter is deformed. In type, as in architecture, it is possible to look for something new only by developing the classical basis that determines the structure of the type, and to look for greater functional expressiveness in the same basic qualities of the type system. It is more difficult to get away from the trunk, from the arcs, from the vertical and horizontal in type than in architecture from a column, or a pilaster, or a pillar, so that peculiar orders live in the type, repeating and varying.
Samples of fonts of the printing house of the Mozhaisk PEC. Mozhaisk. 1926.
This may raise the question: is it possible to connect different typefaces, as in architecture different orders? Apparently, perhaps, but related.
In this regard, it seems to me wrong when in the typeface of the classic font we have bold and semi-bold variants. A three-dimensional or classic font is extremely subjective, has its own horizontal and vertical lines and its own scale, and when a letter is compressed in a bold version or in a larger size, the scale is thereby violated. Therefore, the combination of a three-dimensional font with a spatial one is impossible, but a combination, for example, of a three-dimensional font with a skeletal font that repeats the same proportions, is quite possible, and it is also possible and often found in a spatial font of fonts of different scales, different proportions and the introduction into the composition along with the spatial textured poster font. This can often be seen in the title compositions of a romantic book.
B. Bernson. "Florentine Renaissance Painters". Cover. 1923. Woodcut.
I have already talked about the relationship between font and illustration. You can dwell on this issue in more detail.
When you have a letter of the classical type in your composition, which lives on the sheet like a creature, gesticulates, moves, then, by drawing an illustration, you allow the figures to live on the same surface of the sheet, in this space, together with the letter. The figures do not have a direct background - the whole illustration consists of objects, the same properties unite both letters and figures. Figures are modeled by light and shadow, and so is font; the classic three-dimensional font itself gives a general impression of light and shade in relation to black and white.
Otherwise with a spatial font. There it is very difficult to enter a figure directly into the white field; usually a figure or figures with a background is introduced into a romantic book, and the whole image does not end with the actual frame, but the landscape is gradually reduced to nothing and outwards gives a thin edge and lying directly at the level of the paper sheet, so that the illustration is built, as it were, lenticular: in the middle is depth, and towards the end it fades away.
A. Pushkin. Collected works. Shmuttitul. 1949. Woodcut.
But it is also possible to connect the illustration with the font and through the frame in the proper sense. Pairing a poster font with a silhouette image is, of course, also legal. And always in illustrations it is important to maintain the style of the font and image.
Initials to Anatole France's "The Judgments of Abbé Jérôme Coignard". 1918. Woodcut.
First of all, how to build a single word? The word often in the title makes up the entire line, and sometimes the entire content of the title. This leads to a special approach to it. We, drawing a word, can take into account in it the root, the lifting vowel or the preposition and the ending. And, considering all this, we can partly increase the load of color and more closely build the letters that give the root of the word, and defuse the beginning and especially the end and lighten it in color, and sometimes develop it so that the word will no longer hold only the line, but live on everything sheet, as a monogram or something like that would live.
The same attitude can be to the word and in the line, where it is included in the whole phrase, but more cautious.
In a title, this can help emphasize the main axis around which the title is usually built. The title can be simple, single-axis, but it can be complicated by the introduction of new font groups and new axes subordinate to the main axis. The main axis can, as it were, double and even triple.
W. Shakespeare. "Hamlet". 1940. Title page. Woodcut.
That's all, apparently, that I can say briefly about the font, about how I understand it and how I practically implemented it.
In the end, I would like to touch on the ancient Russian script, charter and half charter.
Our font today is built in many ways similar to Western classical type. But a western font like antiqua with gaping vowels, with round arcs, with protruding elements in a line text, very often gives a beautiful light and shade impression with variously shining white in the lines of words. Our font, however, largely comes from the ancient Russian script and therefore has almost no extensions and retains a lot of boles for letters that do not have boles in the Western font. From here, the color principle inherent in the Old Russian charter enters into our typeface, and the color trend is mixed with the chiaroscuro.
V. Favorsky. Invitation to the evening in memory of P. M. Tretyakov. Moscow. 1923.
Sometimes the idea arises to return the font to the color principle, taking something from the ancient font, or, conversely, to strengthen the chiaroscuro principle in it. But this is such a complicated and special question that, continuing to think about it, I do not dare to dwell on it now.
Published-whether-to-va-but with co-beautiful-ni-em from-da-tion: Fa-vorsky V. A. About art, about the book, about the gra- vu-re. M., 1986. First pub-li-ka-tion: About gra-fi-ke as the basis of book art. 1954–1960 // Art of the book. M., 1961. Issue. 2. Re-dak-tion b-go-da-rit for help in under-go-to-ke pub-li-ka-tion of Iva-on Sha-hov-sko-go and Mi-shu Be-letz -whom. Ini-tsi-al - An-drey Be-lo-no-gov, Yana Kut'i-na.
The same as the main stroke - the dominant vertical or oblique stroke at the base of the sign. In rounded signs, the main stroke is called the influx (the maximum thickening of the stroke). - Approx. ed.
V. A. Favorsky so calls serifs. - Approx. ed.
Under font refers to the method of representing textual information used when it is transmitted in the form of an image. The font defines the uniform appearance of the characters of some alphabet. Consider the main characteristics and types of fonts.
A typeface defines a font pattern that distinguishes a given font from another. Each headset has a specific name, such as Courier. Here are fragments of texts of various types. This piece of text is typed in Arial Sug. This one is a Courier New Cyr headset. The word Cyr in the name of the typeface indicates that the font includes characters from the Russian alphabet.
Skittle specifies the font size in points equal to 1/72 of an inch, for example:
18 pin, 16 pin, 14 pin, 12 pin, 10 pin, 8 pin. The fonts of the same typeface are different by outline: straight line, cursive, bold, bold italic the same headset Times New Roman Cyr. According to the way the characters are described, the following are distinguished font types:
1. Bitmap fonts, based on the use of character representation bitmaps.
2. Line art (vector) fonts that encode the image of a character as a set of vectors to fill its space.
3. Outline fonts, which use the coding of character contours in the form of combinations of straight and curved line segments.
Vector and outline fonts are also called scalable.
The most popular outline fonts. Their advantage is the ease of scaling without loss of image quality. To work with them, you do not need a large amount of disk space, since it is enough to store one base font.
Main outline font formats(actually - standards) are PostScript and TrueType fonts.
PostScript (or Type 1) fonts are Adobe's development, focused on obtaining high-quality printing using specialized printing devices - PostScript devices. Associated with the Type 1 format is the Post-Script page description language, which is recognized as the international technical standard for describing the appearance of documents.
In the Windows environment, TrueType fonts are the main fonts, which are a joint development of Apple and Microsoft. The name of the fonts (“True Print”) is due to the fact that on the screen the characters are visible in the form in which they will be printed. In the selection lists, they are marked with the sign Tm. TrueType fonts are preferred when printing documents using laser and inkjet printers. In addition, documents with TrueType fonts can also be used in PostScript printers, some of which allow direct work with such fonts, while the rest are pre-converted to Type 1 format.
Our “marshmallow campaign” was worth starting at least for the sake of getting to know Olga Tsymbal, a copywriter from G2 Gray Ukraine. She praised the marshmallows but scolded the fonts we used on the marshmallow stand. We asked Olya to give us a master class on the basics of typography, and this post turned out as a result. We are sure it will be interesting and useful to many.
Let's start with a joke: Designers' children are not given toys, they play with fonts.
- Tell me about yourself? How serious are you about fonts?
I work as a copywriter-editor, so every day I deal with a certain amount of textual information, often combined with graphics. Paying tribute to the content of the written, style, grammar, spelling, I cannot but pay attention to the visual design of the text. I am seriously interested in design and fonts - this is my hobby, which probably comes from 2001, when the first computer appeared in our family and for days on end, forgetting about everything else, I learned the possibilities of Paint and Microsoft Word, as well as PowerPoint. Much later, Corel Draw (for a short time), Photoshop, Illustrator came into my life. Next up is InDesign. That is, specialized linguistic education does not at all mean neglect of visual culture, but rather the opposite.
Love for the word obliges to make sure that on the monitor screen, on paper or any other surface this word is comfortable, cozy, so that it “feels” in its place and the reader gives it the necessary dose of attention.
We all know about the importance of quality illustrations, design, text content, but few people in our country today pay attention to typography. The classic definition of typography is the graphic design of printed text through typing and layout using norms and rules specific to this language. The main aspect of typography is working with fonts.
Unfortunately, professional type designers in Ukraine today can be counted on one hand, but this cannot justify the chaos in our typography.
This is not an exaggeration - if our compatriots know how to draw well, they somehow learned how to design, then the attitude to fonts is almost indifferent.
Nevertheless, everyone can master the basic rules of high-quality typography and a sense of font style, and on their own - there would be a desire. In my story, I will focus on several main aspects of font science, and the curious reader can easily find the rest on the Internet.
Imagine the situation: a young man, having learned about the existence of a fashionable profession "designer", masters the basics of a graphic computer program (most often it is "korel", "king of firewood" or as soon as they do not call Corel Draw) and creates his first layout. Creatives of this origin are easy to recognize. They are distinguished by an insane selection of fonts (the creator seems to be demonstrating their rich collection on his computer), ornate design of inscriptions, complete non-observance of layout rules, wild color combinations. We are not talking about technical issues, such as resolving images or preparing for printing.
The result of our hero can be fully explained by the desire of a beginner to try everything at once and by the peculiarity of the national mentality - like all southerners, most Ukrainians believe that a lot and bright means beautiful. All designers go through this stage - the main thing is not to get stuck in it for a long time.
But the streets of our cities and villages were unlucky - judging by the signs, amateurs rule in post-Soviet graphic design, at best - professionals who are hopelessly behind the times.
Without thinking twice, they use typefaces from the standard Microsoft set in the design of their work, and often far from the most worthy ones. For example, the popular font Arial is just a modified version of Helvetica, the face of global typography since 1957.
But Helvetica is “not on the computer”, so some may not even know about it, although this font is a real salvation for beginners.
Any text typed by him looks decent and is well perceived - sometimes, to completely transform the layout, it is enough to replace the dull Arial with the noble Helvetica. And Comic Sans, which has set the teeth on edge and enjoys completely undeserved popular love, was completely developed for technical needs - displaying the texts of the replicas of the assistant dog in the Microsoft Bob program!
From the construction point of view, this typeface has many shortcomings and it is simply unethical and unprofessional to use it in outdoor, print, and online advertising.
You know, I just want to ask - why? Why the hell do people choose Comic Sans? It's just amazing. After all, there are more than 200 fonts in Mac OS and Windows. I mean, there are a bunch of fonts out there that are way better for just about anything. But people still choose Comic Sans for the most backward, inappropriate purposes. I created Comic Sans to fill in the word box for Microsoft Bob's help dog. Then the marketing department took over and they included the font in the OEM version of Windows 95. That's when my problem started. I don't know if you can understand what it's like to have your life defined by the most misused typeface in history. I'm introduced as "the guy who made Comic Sans" and I think people have an instinctive negative reaction to that.
Vincent Connare, creator of Comic Sans
Where can I get a headset that is not in the standard set? You can simply download the font file and install it on your computer. But some fonts will have to be bought, and many customers (and even designers!) are not aware of this at all. While large companies and large-scale projects, as a rule, have their own corporate font, designed to order, and this should not be surprising, but should become the norm. Moreover, in our time of area branding boom, along with the logo, slogan and other external elements of the country or city brand, it has also become a good form to have a specially created font that reflects the spirit and values of the area.
Relevance to content is one of the main principles of typography. It should be completely subordinate to the text, its meaning and purpose, to facilitate rather than complicate perception.
Remember: not text for typography, but typography for text! Therefore, it is important to take into account the psychological perception of fonts, to know their basic classifications, the laws of use, combinations with other fonts, images, and, ultimately, with the type of paper if we are making a printed publication.
When choosing a headset, you should first of all pay attention to its purpose.
Text fonts have simple lines and shapes, are easy to read and therefore are used for typing the main body of text. Display fonts (decorative, artsy) - to highlight headings, subheadings, individual small inserts, so to speak, to decorate the layout. They need to be handled with care - a large text typed in such a typeface is simply unreadable, two different incidents are combined with each other in very rare cases, and the selection of a decorative typeface that matches the content of the text and the design style must be approached extremely thoughtfully. As for the combination of fonts, within the framework of one layout or project, it is allowed to use two, in extreme cases, three typefaces. But this does not apply to style (distinguish between straight, italic), saturation (light, bold, bold), width and point size (size), since these are variable characteristics of the same typeface.
In terms of design, there are three groups of fonts: Serif (antiqua), Sans Serif (chopped or sans serif) and Slab (slab).
Antiqua - typefaces ancient origin, with serifs - small elements at the ends of character strokes. The presence of serifs makes reading easier, so such typefaces are usually used in a set of books and voluminous articles in periodicals (for example, Baskerville, Garamond, Lazurski).
Serrated fonts appeared much later and do not have serifs. They are optimal for highlighting paragraphs and typing small texts, but are not suitable for books. These are such headsets as Calibri, Myriad, Verdana.
The group of slab fonts is distinguished by more noticeable serifs than those of antiquas - in thickness they approach the main strokes of letters. Such typefaces (Baltica, Courier, Rockwell) occupy a leading place in terms of readability and are often used in typing books, especially for children.
Apparently, not enough is written and said about the psychology of font perception. What about official announcements in the hallways of my alma mater, typed in my “favorite” Comic Sans typeface, or invitations to a club party, decorated by Impact! I will not delve into this topic - it is inexhaustible, I will only say that a playful font completely kills the seriousness of an official address, and a strict one does not convey all the emotions of an informal message.
Narrow typefaces with sharp corners negatively tune the reader to the text, while soft and rounded typefaces, on the contrary, speak of disposition and friendliness. The bolder the font and the richer its strokes, the stronger the persuasive power of the text, its "weightiness".
So the right choice of typeface will help to evoke the required feelings and emotions in the reader. This should be taken into account even in the use of personal e-mail, and certainly in the design of your own business cards, resumes, letters of recommendation!
What about fonts for the web?
We all live online in one way or another. On the monitor, the laws of typography do not disappear, but there are some peculiarities here. If the best font for reading from paper is Baskerville or Times, then on a computer screen I would like to see more texts typed by Verdana (optimum size is 10-12 points).
Scientists have found that when reading from a monitor, this headset and size are most comfortable for the eyes. Other fonts suitable for computers and multimedia are Tahoma, Trebuchet. On paper and outdoors, it is better not to use them.
No less important for the comfortable perception of the text are the length of the line and the leading (interline space).
The recommended line length in Russian, Ukrainian is 45-75 characters with spaces, leading is 120% (for paper), 140% (for screen) of the font size.
Lines that are too long or too short, lines that are too tight or too wide make reading equally difficult. The spacing between the letters also matters - the text should not be either sparse or compacted. Discharge is allowed only for words or lines typed entirely in capital letters (but it must be remembered that such a set, as well as italics, in principle makes it difficult to read, so they should not be abused)!
In some cases (in the logo, heading) it is necessary to do manual kerning - to select the optimal distance between each pair of characters by eye. Every designer has one or more favorite fonts that he or she uses in almost every project.
There are also fans who work exclusively with two or three headsets, but in my opinion these are extremes. Among my favorite headsets are Myriad, Officina, FreeSet, Futuris. As befits, I'm getting high from Helvetica, although I'm still far from being a designer. In general, I sympathize with modern sans-serif fonts with clear lines and simple forms because in graphic design I appreciate minimalism and functionality.
My taste preferences are such that I don't like sequins (perhaps because I work in advertising and not publish books), but the Georgia typeface is a pleasant exception in this regard, pleasing to the eye both on paper and on a computer monitor.
This typeface has a piquant feature - visible numerals, which typographers drastically disagree about. Personally, I love this piece! I use Georgia quite often - it typed my CV and one of the sets of business cards. The second set is also typed in antiqua — Trajan Pro.
This is a strict but very pleasant typeface that imitates the Latin script of the era. ancient rome. Of the display headsets, I sometimes “play around” with the cheerful Maiandra.
My black list includes Century Gothic, Monotype Corsiva and some other fonts from the standard set of Microsoft and the arsenal of homegrown "creatives" - of course, Comic Sans too!
At the beginning of this article, one could write some kind of banality, like "Fonts are an integral part of design ..." and other introductory words. But we will reject such a concept as an outdated form of being.
The idea of writing this article (or even a summary) came after a conversation about fonts - I suddenly realized that I had nothing but some technical knowledge on this issue, and this feeling haunted me for a long time, because knowledge is power, not knowledge is weakness. And so the idea of creating a synopsis of fonts and everything connected with them was born. And we will start with a historical digression into the history of fonts.
In my opinion, it would be correct to call the drawings of ancient people ocher on stones as the first fonts. I'll explain why. Actually, what the font itself is is a graphic style of letters and symbols that make up a single stylistic and compositional system. Depending on the complexity of the language - and we will take it as an axiom that the ancient people had a very simple language - the font will be correspondingly simpler. There were few words, so each can be easily replaced with a drawing. It's funny that now they began to use more emoticons - we return to where we started. sad but true.
So, the ancient people had a primitive language, probably not very many words, which were successfully replaced by pictures, which, composing a composition with each other, formed sentences or messages that were understandable to the then person.
Ancient world and Europe
As time went on, the language became more complicated, and graphic designations of letters came to replace the pictures. First guessed before in Ancient Egypt, where signs and symbols were invented, which, although they conveyed some meaning / meaning / phenomenon, were not fully letters in today's understanding. However, they already had their own developed style, drawing and the like. The first alphabet was invented by the Phoenicians around the 11th century BC. e., which became the primary source for Greek, Latin, Cyrillic - this is where the alphabet appears in our story, and, consequently, fonts in our modern sense.
The Greeks creatively modified the Phoenician alphabet. It turned out well, simply and minimalistically - it is built using simple lines that form geometric shapes: a square, a circle, a triangle. Subsequently (but this is not certain) Greek became the prototype of Latin writing, which had already spread very widely.
The oldest version of the Latin script was called "capital letter", and already had two design options - square (beautiful, monumental) and rustic (popularly - "village"). In the first version, all letters fit into a square, in the second case, the simplicity of writing with decorative elements. Yes, and the letters were diamond-shaped.
Later, in order to speed up writing, there appeared cursive spelling (which is translated from Latin as "inclined"). The speed of writing was not entirely beneficial - the beauty of the letters was lost, and readability decreased.
Later, for correspondence, an uncial was formed - a calm, majestic letter with characteristic rounded shapes. His letters were connected to each other by smooth lines, and the roundness of the letters came in handy for quick writing.
At the end of the 11th - beginning of the 12th century, a new font with sharp strokes began to take shape under the name Gothic. It existed during the era of Gothic dominance in architecture and art. Gothic became widespread throughout Europe, and in general still exists. The German inventor Johannes Gutenberg, who invented typography, used the Gothic type in his books.
During the Renaissance (in the 14th-15th century), the learned minds of Italy and France revealed to the world something that was not at all like the Gothic font - Renaissance antiqua. The artists and scientists of the Renaissance tried to give this font a logical validity, playing with the shapes and proportions of the letters. For example, a student of Leonardo da Vinci, Luca Pacioli, in 1509 published the first rules for constructing a Latin font - it was proposed to build letters on the basis of a square, using its diagonals and a circle inscribed in it. True, it turned out monotonously and lacked drive. A more interesting version of the inscription was proposed by the German artist and geometer Albrecht Dürer - he did not reinvent the wheel and also inscribed letters in a square, but he divided the sides of the main square into 10 equal parts, and built a grid consisting of squares. For the thickness of the main stroke, I took the size of one cell wide, the thickness of the connecting strokes is thinner than the main ones by one third.
The transition to the era of classicism also gave rise to a new type of font, which is called Classic Antiqua. Many artists worked on its creation, but one can single out Giambatista Bodoni, Firmen Dido and Walbaum (the name was lost in the expanses of German lands). The font features high contrast (approximately 1/10), influxes of rounded elements, thin serifs. The fonts that appeared on the basis of the antiqua are widely used in design work.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a number of types of fonts appeared - Egyptian, grotesque or chopped, serif-grotesque, ribbon serif. Egyptian font differed by the same thickness of all lines and serifs. Grotesque(or still "chopped") has the same thickness of the line of letters, but without serifs. Based on it, a whole family of grotesque fonts was developed.
The 20th century brought to the world new grotesque and sans-serif fonts that emphasized a new style in architecture and art - constructivism. Popular new typefaces include Paul Renner's Futura, Kassandra's Peño, Jacob Erbar's Erbar Grotesque, and Eric Gill's Gill Grotesque.
Fonts of the Russian land
If you do not take various versions about the Great thousand-year history of Russia, in which the Magi flew to Sirius and taught all other peoples to write, but use the classical version of scientists (who, of course, hide everything), then the creators of the Slavic alphabet were the monk brothers Cyril and Methodius. It was based on Greek writing, and the letters themselves received fairly clear and distinct graphics. All this is called Cyrillic. The oldest Russian manuscripts of the 11th century were written according to special rules, called charter. Later, due to the need for faster writing, a semi-charter. But the speed for copying books or compiling correspondence was still not enough, and a new, faster option appeared with a speaking name - cursive.
From the 15th century, a special, decorative font began to appear - ligature. Headlines were designed for them, and the strongest flowering fell on the reign of Ivan the Terrible - the first books printed by Ivan Fedorov have a beautiful ligature engraved on wood. But starting from the 17th century, the art of designing a book with ligature gradually began to decline.
In 1708, Peter I introduced obligatory use a new Russian civil script, which is a synthesis of traditional Russian and related forms of the Latin script of that time. In terms of form, proportions and style, the civil font was apparently created on the basis of the Western European antiqua. Over time, the font improved, the extra elements disappeared, the style itself became uniform and strict.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, under the influence of the then fashionable Art Nouveau style, a lot of fonts appeared that did not represent a particular artistic value. However, individual samples deserve mention of themselves - Elizabethan, Latin and academic.
From the very beginning of its existence, the USSR undertook the reform of Russian spelling: the letters that made it difficult to learn the Russian language were removed, and the grammar became more simplified and accessible. At the same time, work was carried out on the development of typographic typefaces - all of them were brought into line with the State All-Union Standard (GOST), excluding only handwritten and drawn fonts, which acted as an element of design or decor.
Modern fonts
There will be very little information here, although you can write a whole book. Why? Because we live right in this very moment, and new fonts appear right now, before our eyes.
Modern type is inextricably linked to the concept of computer type (guess why). It is more austere than its predecessors and is characterized by straight serifs and sharp contrast. In sharp contrast lies its weakness - it is great for headings and large inscriptions, but it is not very convenient for writing long texts.
A modern font is a file that contains vector and bitmap styles of CAPITAL and lowercase letters, numbers (from 0 to 9), punctuation marks (periods, commas and their combined combinations, question marks and accents) and other characters. There is a special encoding standard for all these characters − Unicode, which currently has 136,690 characters for 123 types of writing on planet Earth - so that no one feels offended and deprived. But by default, a font usually has 1-2 languages (Latin + Cyrillic) and a set of punctuation marks and letters. True, it is worth noting that some fonts do not have letters, numbers and signs at all, but consist entirely of images.
The whole variety of modern computer fonts can be taken and divided into 3 groups:
- Mono(aka monospace font)
- Serif(serif font)
- Sans or sans serif(sans-serif font)
Monospaced fonts are different in that all characters are the same width regardless of the letters (your Captain). They are mainly used in development or terminals where the written code needs to be comfortably aligned.
Serif fonts(with serifs) are usually used in massive texts - in books, magazines, and in general everywhere where there is "a lot of bukaf". Serifs make it easier to link letters into a single line, thereby increasing the convenience when reading text, which, in general, is the main thing. Here is the most popular - and easy to read of course - font Times New Roman is a typical representative of the Serif font.
Sans fonts- the direct opposite of Serif and the indicated serifs on the signs do not have. Their main purpose is small text arrays, such as headings and captions. Rarely used for body text, but provided it's small, because Sans fonts have a lower readability when in a large array.
Since we mentioned Sans fonts, we can’t ignore one rogue font, whose name is Comic Sans. The basic rule of this font is never to use this font ☺. Actually a joke, since this font was used in The Sims and Undertale games, by Apple in advertising for iCards, and in the design of Canada's collectible 25-cent coins released in 2004. Checkmate, Comis Sans haters. However, the inept use of this font is often criticized. But the inept use of the font, even Helvetica will not save much - typography is an art.