Typography                                                                                                  

Typography

Typography refers to the art and technique of designing letterforms. It also refers broadly to the practice of graphic design where a variety of typefaces are employed to enhance communication.

Find it all in one place. Use this directory to find tools and information about typography.  This listings is updated frequently, so be sure to Bookmark this Page for future reference.

Articles

The Best Faces for the Screen
Provided by Typofile
It doesn't matter how many hours of video and megabytes of graphics can be stuffed on to...

Georgia & Verdana
Provided by Typofile
Typefaces designed for the screen (finally)...

Type Was Meant to be Read
Provided by Typofile
If you've found your way to this page, you're most likely a member of Generation X.

SVG and Typography
Provided by O'Reilly XML.com
Mixing the worlds of documents, programming, and visual design is a familiar experience for XML developers, especially when dealing with presentation technologies like SVG. Such mixtures can produce exciting new representations of information. They can also become ugly messes if one fails to learn the relevant aesthetic and design principles.

SVG and Typography: Characters 
Provided by O'Reilly XML.com
In the second part of our discussion of SVG and typography we explore some time-honored practices of typographic excellence; as we go along, each “type issue” will lead to the discussion of relevant technical aspects of SVG. The typography issues covered are listed below. Beside each one of them is the associated technical SVG issue discussed:

SVG and Typography: Bells and Whistles 
Provided by O'Reilly XML.com
In this installment of our discussion of SVG and typography, we make a departure from the sobriety of the typographic strategies we've been discussing so far and go for the other half of the fun: the bells and whistles of effects, distortions, coloring, and other unusual treatments of type.

SVG and Typography: Animation 
Provided by O'Reilly XML.com
In the last part of our exploration of SVG and Typography, we turn our attention to effects with animated type, exploiting SVG declarative animation features.

Typography & Fonts
Provided by Graphic Design About.com
Typography is an art form, no doubt about it. And people get very passionate about it...

Typeface Classifications
Provided by Desktop Publishing About.com
Study the basic classifications of type, what they look like and how they evolved.

Fonts

Fonts.com

Linotype Library

ITC International Typeface Corporation

MyFonts.com

Definitions

Ascender
An ascender is the portion of a letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the main body of the letter (that is, above the height of a lowercase x). The upright stroke of a letter e.g.  b, d, and h.

Baseline
In typography, the imaginary line on which characters sit. The x-height of a font is measured from the baseline to the top of a lowercase x. The descender, for those characters that have one, is defined as the portion of the character that falls below the baseline.

Descender
The portion of a lowercase letter that falls below the baseline. In the English alphabet, 5 letters have descenders:  g, j, p, q, and y.

Hyphens (-)
The shortest dash; should only be used between words or to break syllables at the end of a line of type.

en dash (–)
The width of an en dash is one half the point size of the type i.e. 10 point type would use a 5 point en dash. Used to indicated a range in numeric values. On a PC hold down the ALT key and type 0150. On a Mac hold down the OPTION key while typing a hyphen.

em dash (—)
The width of an em dash is the same point size of the type i.e. 10 point type would use a 10 point em dash. Used to set off phrases in place of parentheses. On a PC hold down the ALT key and type 0151. On a MAC hold down the SHIFT and OPTION keys while typing a hyphen.

Kerning
Kerning refers to adjusting the space between characters, usually by placing two characters closer together than normal. It improves the look of certain letters, such as WA, MW, TA, and VA.

Leading
Pronounced LED-ing. A typographical term that refers to the vertical space between lines of text. The word derives from the fact that typographers once used thin strips of lead to separate lines. Now, the leading value also includes the size of the font. For example, 10-point text with 2 points of spacing between lines would mean a leading of 12 points. Leading is also called line spacing.

OpenType Font
An electronic font format that allows either Postscript or TrueType outlines in the font file, and also enables complex and interesting behaviors of the glyphs: extended character sets of small caps, swash, ornamental variants, automatic ligatures, accenting, etc.

Pica
In typesetting, a pica is a unit of measurement equal to 1/6 of an inch, or 12 points.

PostScript Font
A typeface font format that uses cubic Bezier curves to describe the curves and lines of a glyph.

Sans Serif
Pronounced SAN-SERR-if. Popular sans serif fonts include Helvetica, Avant Garde, Arial, and Geneva.

Serif
A small decorative line added as embellishment to the basic form of a character. The most common serif typeface is Times Roman.  

TrueType Font
A typeface font format that uses quadratic Bezier curves to describe the curves and lines of a glyph.

x-height
The height of the lowercase letters such as x (hense the name) as well as a, c, e, m, n, etc.  Also called the body height, it represents the height of the lowercase character's body, excluding ascenders and descenders.

Article Index     Tutorial Index      Tools Index   
Top