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Lesson Info

Exploring Type Solutions

We're gonna talk a little bit about working with type on dh then I'm actually going to do a little bit of demo both and sketch form and on illustrator and just a napro tch to manipulating letter forms themselves and I'm going to do it just from basic letter forms but it's also something that you can apply to fonts that you're working with for the project probably the resource that I go to the most is my funds um so we want to find the right type face um, there are some considerations uh, to doing that um a little talk a little bit more about, like, different bold weights and lower case letters and some of the implications for working with type uh in my probably might go to site for fonts is my funds because it has a lot of different font foundries all in same place it's got good search features, you can click on individual tags, you know, like retro or some of the classic classifications of type, and it will narrow your search by that it lets you type in your own type so that as you're...

you know you're literally scrolling through, um all the fonts in a certain category it will show your type uh, in that font um just like some of the fun applications on with your software um and the others there are some free fonts and there's a lot of really reasonably priced fonts on here is well s o for, uh, fonts outside of the ones that are already all know it ones that are already on my system this is usually where I go this is where I go to first um if I think I need uh you know, I need more than what I've what I'm comfortable with which what I've looked at on my own machine a zay said you type in your own type um and you can even size it so that it makes his largest possible on then general I just screen capture those when I go through the editing process see if that's something I want to proceed with um if so either like redraw that type temporarily or purchase the thought um one thing about free phones because I know when I teach like students go for the free fall it's like you know, automatically go to the farm and some of those sites um the thing is is it when you download those? Usually when you open it the font folder there's usually like a text filing their or user agreement especially if you're using it for a client you need to know that it's you know that it's unrestricted most of them will say, you know it's free for any use but a lot of well say free per personal use but it for commercial use you must buy a license um so it's uh you know if you're going to use it for a client and and again most of the free ones if you do purchase them they're they're relatively inexpensive. The other thing that I would warn you about free fonz is that some of the fonts you know he had a saying that they are giving these away but they're kind of they're poorly drawn on dh not always something where you noticed sometimes you do notice that like there's a curve that's off or something if you zoom in really close andi look at the wire frame of it but the other way the other thing that happens is you know, it can look perfectly fine but when you go to um like I said, you can't really tell uh you know, if there's a curve that's offer something unless it's blatant unless you actually outlined the type first you know an ill assorted bloated and zoom it in look at it without a phil but uh here's ah ah free fun um but what happens when I had an outline to it is where there's either there's an extra a corner point instead of a curve point or extra anchor point of whatever you get these extra uh jagged edges that stick out so um that's something that you you know you wanna avoid font if if you're in one of those types of problems um there's some great historical reference online um, you know, if you want to look beyond just what's what's online as far as fallout from font sites and found foundries, this is actually something it started fairly recently, it's a designer who started collecting all these old, um, like letter press type foundry uh, manufacturers and shops there like their catalogues, books on type, old, really old books on type design and lettering and sign painting and things like that and usually there's a lot of these there's a lot of different alphabets and some really neat type that you don't see anywhere else and what's what's happening is you're starting to see people actually redraw these on introduced them, as you'll see when you, if you look through some of these, you'll see fonts that you recognize that were actually fonts that were taken from one of these old type library catalogs and, uh and redrawn um so as he acquires these, he offers like a new book every month I think you can subscribe for like ten dollars a month, and then you have, like, four free you could do for free downloads, so he basically just photographs these high resolution entire content and then you can download them as a pdf or you can just go on and browse online and I think they run like too two three dollars each um maybe find something like that it's a great resource for us for historical um type um also uh it's helpful to know you know the basics of typography um you need to know like letter spacing and turning and um some of the terminology for that as well as you know we're I'm going to do a demonstration with with basically components of letter forms so there's terms like saref and arm and stab and things like that that you just need to be familiar with if you're going to be a designer um the there's actually a book that I use when I teach typography it's called thinking with type on ellen lupton but she also has a companion site to this that I think has nearly all the content online. Um so it's it's worth uh like I said, I use it as a textbook to teach typography that's very weary and there's great examples it's actually it's a paperback and it's fairly small it's pretty expensive as well. All right, so some considerations um freezing all caps for using lower case in certain scenarios um bold typeface and italics um and also uh some implications off uh using two small stroke and then x excite and how that affects readability looking exide is one of those terms baseline x x height medline one of those typography terms all right, so all caps type um it uses approximately hundred fifty more percent more space just because the letters are, you know, three hundred fifty percent bigger than lower case letters. Um, so you one of things that you've run out of real estate pretty fast um, because they take up so much more space on it does it can take the eye a little bit longer to read um and it's not so much that we can't recognize the characters it's that were just so used to reading upper and lower case josie mentioned we kind of want to avoid having, like, a really strong horizontal sze um so mean, neither neto break copy and aligns to avoid that, but when using like long words or a lot of words, you have to take that into consideration, um using the lower case type um that x just represents like that if I space that I put that in a box and I space it evenly from like the tallest letters and then the ends of letters on the end you can see that since there's no, there are no d senders there no strokes like lower case two year whatever in that that would that would push that box down to be the same type so it's more really run into this like if you're putting type like in a banner or something or wrapping it around where you get like like a the top you have a whole lot of read negative space so that gets really like it's really awkward when you have, like only single a single de center a sender and you're trying to space around that the other, um thing is that sometimes it's nice to letter spaced open up the space saying to give it like a more airy feel or just it just feels it feels lighter it feels you know, sometimes a little class here but it's better to do that all caps lower case is just a lot harder lot harder to read one letter space um bold type um obviously it has more visual wait so that could be a benefit that also has you know it because it's bold it can have more masculine connotations we have to take that in consideration off. Obviously the color that you applied to and so forth has uh has effect as well um uh again like all caps uh when you have bold type and you have a lot of a lot of letters or a lot of words um it's it is hard to read another benefit which end point here is that uh it doesn't since it does have more visual wait it's more readable at a small size it could be more readable a small size than a lighter weight even a larger size um italics um particularly one used in sand saref so uh took a job of conveying action movement so you know for like espn or something it's very sports oriented you'll often see a sense air of type uh all caps to imply that um if it's captain lower case actually you know it's popular leases for invitations and things that are very formal so it does have a very formal, very classy look to it um can convey elegance but um again long words lot of type uh especially in a classic sara font that's harder to raid and then stroke wait and particularly thin strokes so this is uh but but doni believe eso in the sara ifs and some of them parts of the strokes or transitions from within really thin strokes that's not uh not a good idea for a logo because let's say that let's say that um let's say that was ten inches long and at this size um those thinness strokes are ten points but let's say I've got to reduce this down to an inch so I just produced that two zero basically on what's gonna happen is it was going to be it's you kind of look like there's gaps between the thick strokes um and then the other concern is when it's reversed out um that can become more difficult to read when reversed on one of the reasons is because um particularly when things are when things are printed um even you know to some degree and it's it's like the smaller the type the worst the worst the scenario but with printing especially like offset and then especially with like other processes like silkscreen and so forth um letter press where you have more spread of the ink when you're knocking something out of the ink um when you print something that ink spreads a little bit I mean on a really good press on the you know, on the highest grade paper it's almost negligible but it does spread a little bit but when you start talking about working on uncoated paper where the ink actually penetrates the paper and I was like if you took a colored beverage and put it on a paper towel it spreads so um it spreads a little bit so any spread that you get when you when you're trying to knock that out of a color and print is goingto make that you know make that fill in can really I've seen it completely erased those strokes another thing is if you are uh you know, if you're working with process colors and you're making a type in color but you're making it out of process builds select screen tents of science danielle black unless one of those values is one hundred percent you've got dots with spacing between him and you don't you know you don't have really a solid can't really get a solid line and so you're trying to put color into an eric you know, just so tiny area by combinations of dots that's because the same thing works if you're trying to like print that color's a background with screen ten so um I'm not not saying that you can't use like a fart like that but you'll have to intentionally um you know, give it a stroke or beef up the weight of some of the smaller strokes a little bit um on dh like on screen as well you know if you had to make that if you know what a larger size nothing is only to pick you know, those thin strokes only two pixels and you reduce it twenty five twenty five percent you know either has to make it one pixel or no pixel so it has to you know it has to um great pixels that are you know aren't gonna be there smaller size that's height is the term for the height of lower case letters and as you can see uh both of these are the same uh you can't see it, but they're both the same point size um and the difference is is the relationship between the height of the lower case letters in the height of capital letters um classic sarah fonts tend to have a smaller excite whereas a lot of san serif fonts have a larger x height so it basically fills up more of the space and it looks like it's a mean the lower case letters are larger cause they're taller so it actually you know it reads as a larger almost like a larger point size at least a ce faras when you compare it to sarah fonts in the same point size s o that's a consideration because that's going to be more readable for a logo on there are examples where you can intentionally like drop the size of capital letters a lot of it she thought a little bit just tow cut uh increase that effect so it increases re ability and then maximizes space all right um I'm gonna demonstrate just some basic ways to manipulate letter forms and you do that by manipulating the strokes which all the letters are made up of of strokes so um and then manipulating or creating unique sara ifs what sheriffs are the small perpendicular strokes that appear at the bottom of uh usually at the bottom of vertical strokes sometimes at the top and bottom with older my classic sarah faces um and then bye manipulating terminals terminals are just the end the ends of strokes that don't have us sarah manipulating letter forms that something that's also included in our bonus materials. There's. A pdf that goes into a little bit more detail manipulating the letter forms. And that was also something that we we did in the bonus video, that extra video that guy's little bit deeper into some of the manipulating letter forms that we just don't have time to do in this course. But if you want to learn more about that, you can check out the bonus video and you'll get even more information on that. And then lastly, um, what's called a counter or counter space so and letter forms where they have strokes that actually that curve around and connect, you know, like lower casey's and p's and q's. And you know where they form a negative negative space. Inside the stroke, that's called the counter space. So another way to cuss to medicate letter forms is to make adjustments or at things to our order, manipulate that space.