Whitbread D. The Design Manual (анг.яз.)
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Kerning alters the space between any combination of
two characters, i.e. how the first letter relates to the second
letter. Place the cursor between the two letters and reduce
or enlarge the space with the kerning controls until it is
optically correct.
Most fonts include specified kerning pairs that are
automatically applied to particular character combinations,
according to the font designer’s wishes. These usually
include problem letters (T, L, A, V and any letterforms with
weird space distribution around their shape) and how they
will set with each other and any lower-case letters that
follow. For example, will the a sit under the crossbar of the
T in Table? In capitals setting, will the L sit neatly under the
T in ALTER? Will the A and the V overlap in AV?
You should bother with kerning only in display type,
because it is time-consuming and few clients can afford
the time it takes you to tweak it. But consider editing
your fonts so your kerning preferences are saved and
automatically applied.
Tracking
The mechanical method of letterspacing is called tracking,
which evenly distributes more or less space between each
letter. Some text designers have a preference for tightly
spaced characters; others prefer ‘open’ or ‘loose’ spacing.
As a general rule, the larger the type, the tighter you can
track. Many programs do this automatically. However,
tracking capabilities are occasionally handy for respacing a
headline, logotype or title.
Tracking alters the amount of space between each letter
in the whole word, heading or text block. Select the word or
line and go to tracking commands. Less space between the
characters makes the word narrower and is called ‘tight’;
more space between the characters makes the word wider
and is called ‘loose’.
Often, tracking decisions are aesthetic, but there are
readability issues here. As type gets smaller, there needs to
be more space between the individual letters—the spacing
cannot be mathematically reduced like the characters
themselves. There needs to be slightly wider tracking as the
word shrinks.
This problem is often highlighted in logos where they
are fine on cover designs but do not work in running heads,
or they may be fine on a letterhead but hard to read on the
Typography 191
DOING IT FASTER
Kerning preferences
If possible, edit the kerning pairs in
each of your fonts to suit your
personal preferences. Save them and
they will be applied automatically.
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192 Production
side of a building—the spacing may be at fault. Some
organisations have logo artwork for reproduction at
different sizes so those readability and reproduction
problems are resolved.
You will often need to use looser tracking when you set
a word or some text in small capitals. To approximate the
same grey as the text block, tracking of small capitals
usually needs to be looser than the surrounding text.
Very loose tracking is sometimes used in all-capitals
setting as a display technique. Rarely do we wide-track
lower-case letterforms, although it is becoming more
accepted through occasional use.
If there is very wide spacing in a heading and the
heading spills onto the following line, the ‘rule’ is to have
at least the same amount of space between each letter as
between the lines, so increase the leading.
If you loose-track bold type, you alter its weight on the
page. If loose tracking erodes that importance, the page
looks duller (because of the lack of contrast) and the relative
importance can be lost.
If you tight-track bold type, the letterforms will often
overlap, which can create legibility problems. Used in large
sizes, overlapped letterforms can create interesting hybrid
shapes, but you have to be sure your audience can be
bothered trying to decipher the message.
Street signage—or better still, highway signage—
contains some valuable lessons when it comes to
readability. You can apply them to shop signs, posters, or
even Saturday morning garage sale signs.
If you analyse a highway sign at close quarters, you’ll
find that there is a very significant amount of letterspacing
in road signage. This is for precisely the same reason that
you use very loose tracking on 4 point type—when type is
small, you need exponentially more space between the
letters, and at the distance from which you start reading a
highway sign, it is very small type.
If readers will be across the room or down the road,
extra letterspacing will help them read the message.
THE
DAY’S
END
THE
DAY’S
END
BEFORE
AFTER
Capitals tracked wide in 18/18 pt
Scala are changed to 18/28 pt Scala
to better shape the three-line title
and avoid vertical groupings. Also
note the kerning of the apostrophe.
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Using type variation
To show relative importance within text, there are a number
of standard type variations that can be used. Each decision
will have an impact on a reader’s comprehension of the text,
as type variations imply a particular level of importance due
to their traditional role in typography.
Bold type
Bold type is ‘heavier’ in weight than text fonts. This is
achieved by thickening the strokes of the original font’s
letterforms. Thickening makes bold fonts appear darker.
The level of relative darkness of a font is referred to as its
weight and how it is set on a page determines its typecolour
or tonal variance to the other type around it.
Weight variation is often used to add life to a page layout
or to help define levels of information contained within text.
Darker text tends to jump out of a page of ordinary text and
grab the reader’s attention (which makes it perfect for
indicating the location of specific information, as a heading
does, or for warnings). The choice of a bold font is all to do
with the resulting patterns of tone that are created on a
page by the areas of type.
In a heading hierarchy, bold type is the strongest (with
the exception of a reversed block of text)—and is therefore
reserved for the most important information. Bold headings
within a text area will stand out because of the contrast
between bold type at its heavier weight and the lighter
text type. It is easier for readers to find the section they
want to read.
Because bold type is a thickened version of the typeface,
the counters (i.e. the enclosed spaces within letters such as
the loop of the e) are correspondingly smaller. This can
make the letters a bit difficult to distinguish, so it is wise to
track bold type a little looser—but only fractionally, because
the more space you put between the letters, the lighter the
typecolour will appear to be, and you must not lose the
benefit of the weight change.
Typefaces like Helvetica, Frutiger, Gill and Univers
(notice they are all sans serif) mostly come with an
extrabold or black weight. This weight is particularly
handy—its contrast is very sudden when compared with the
text weights and can be impressive.
However, if overused, bold type can be too distracting
and can inhibit reading, but, judiciously used, it can
Typography 193
DOING IT SMARTER
Typeface associations
Create 12 layouts that show type
contrasts for the pairs of words listed
below. Each layout should be in a
60 mm square (but can be any size
you want). Select a typeface for each
word and choose the way you set it:
In capitals? What spacing? In bold or
italic? On an angle or upside down?
Reversed out of black to white?
Tracked? What size? Not only should
these design decisions help to convey
the meaning of each word, they
should also depict the difference
between the two words.
This is not just a type selection
exercise. Use layout to help
communicate the difference in
meaning as well. Use repetition,
reversing, centring and other
formatting options. Run one word
through the other or explore other
forms of dynamic placement in an
asymmetrical layout.
To increase the complexity of
this exercise, use a typeface only
once. This means that for the
12 examples, 24 typefaces must be
chosen. If you have used Helvetica
extrabold, don’t use Helvetica
again—find another sans serif type
that will work as you want.
This is a great exercise if you
are working on book titles and
advertising headlines, or feature
articles in newsletters, magazines,
Web sites or e-zines.
The words to be contrasted are:
q big/little
q fat/thin
q dark/light
q happy/sad
q out/in
q old/young
q rich/poor
q up/down
q fast/slow
q east/west
q beautiful/ugly
q powerful/meek.
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enhance meaning by giving appropriate importance and it
can add the dark tones to a page that help the page to live.
Reversed type
When you change the colour of type to white on a black
background, it is called a reverse. It is like a text negative.
It is better to reverse a bold font. This helps the type
when it is printed. You may have noticed that black type
tends to thicken slightly when it is printed; when it is
reversed, the black background is thickened, making the
white type spindly and more difficult to read. If you use
reversed bolder type, it will often look like the same weight
as the text because of this optical illusion.
It is also better to reverse a sans serif typeface. The same
slight thickening of the background of a reversed area tends
to make the narrow strokes of serif type and the serifs
themselves thinner—and, in some cases, they disappear
altogether—which makes the type more difficult to read. To
avoid this problem, type that is reversed out of black, a solid
colour or a photograph should be sans serif.
It is better to track reversed type a little wider (or
‘looser’) than if it were not reversed. This helps the
definition of the individual letters and aids readability.
Italics
Aldus Manutius, a Venetian printer and publisher of the
Renaissance, first used italics in 1501. He developed them to
fit more words into the small page of his pocket editions of
classical literature—and you can still usually fit more words
to a line if you set italics, because the characters are often
narrower than the roman font. Francesco Griffo, the
typeface designer in Aldus’s studio, based his italic design
on a popular slanted handwriting style of the day.
Physically, italics lean to the right and are a redraw of
the roman font to which their name corresponds. When
comparing a roman serif typeface with its italic version, you
will notice that some letterforms are different, particularly
the lower case g/g and a/a. The italics are often more
calligraphic in appearance which makes them a logical
choice for headings with a difference.
In sans serif typefaces, the italics are often just an
oblique version of the roman font, i.e. they are the same
character shapes slanted.
R
Comparing italic forms
a
Scala regular
a
Scala italic is an italic form
a
Helvetica
a
Helvetica italic is an oblique form
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Typography 195
Italics should have the same weight (or the same tone
on the page when you squint at them) as the roman font.
Because of this, the use of italics through text does not
interrupt the texture of the page, which means they are
perfect for stress within a text block.
Avoid setting italics in all capitals. In fact, when Aldus
used them in 1501, all the text was set in italics except the
headings which were set in roman capitals and the first
letter of each line which was a roman capital letter—there
were no italic capitals.
The readability of the text is not sacrificed when you use
italics. In testing, there has been no significant difference in
the speed and accuracy with which people read italics when
compared with the readability of roman letters.
Quoted material used to be cited in italics and still can
be if desired. Italics are regularly used for the captions to
photographs or diagrams and for cross-references. They are
also traditionally used for specific text functions:
r When you are quoting titles of magazines, newspapers,
books, films, plays, long poems, operas, musical works
(those with specific non-musical titles only), ballets,
shows, paintings and television programs, it is custom-
ary to use italics, thus: Australian MacWorld; the
Financial Review; Sally Morgan’s My Place; Priscilla:
Queen of the Desert; David Williamson’s Emerald City;
A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson’s The Man from Snowy River; Peggy
Glanville-Hicks’s Nausicaa; Peter Sculthorpe’s Kakadu
but Peter Sculthorpe’s Piano Concerto; Graeme
Murphy’s Nearly Beloved; David Atkins’s Hot Shoe Shuffle;
Margaret Preston’s Illawarra Lillies and Waratahs; and
Water Rats. However, when citing an article, episode of a
television program, short poem or song title, it is
customary to use quote marks, not italics, thus:
‘Makeover’ from Desktop; Bananas in Pyjamas ‘The Big
Parade’; Judith Wright’s ‘Bora Ring’; ‘Solid Rock’ from
Goanna’s Spirit of Place. Also note public service
preferences for citations: Hansard but Commonwealth of
Australia Gazette.
r On the occasions that you need to quote the name of a
vehicle, usually a ship or an aircraft, it is a convention to
use italics for the name of the vessel. For example,
HMAS Success or the Fairstar; Kingsford Smith’s
Southern Cross; or even the starship USS Enterprise
from Star Trek.
CHECK LIST
Titles or names
that are set in italics:
q Books
q Magazines
q Newspapers
q Plays
q Operas
q Films
q Television programs
q Long poems
q Musical works
q Paintings
q Sculptures
q Artworks
q Acts of parliament (when full
title, including date; shortened
forms are in roman)
q Legal documents
q Ships
q Trains
q Aircraft
q Genus
q Species
q Subspecies
q Varieties
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r Foreign words which are not regarded as anglicised are
set in italic, but use them sparingly. Many expressions
are considered to have entered English, such as cafe,
consomme, cliché or résumé (note the acutes so the
word ‘résumé’ is not confused with the word ‘resume’).
The Macquarie Dictionary will not italicise any foreign
words or phrases that it lists which means they can be
considered part of written English and need not be
italicised. If it doesn’t appear in the Macquarie,
use italics.
r Scientific names like Acacia flavescens (yellow wattle)
r In military histories, the enemy’s formations are cited
in italics.
Note the following details of plurals and punctuation for
italic usage:
r She handed me a few Sydney Morning Heralds.
(roman s for plural form)
r Have you read the Age’s book review yet?
(roman apostrophe, roman s)
r Have you seen Tom Roberts’s Bailed up?
(roman question mark)
In fact, use italics wherever you would have used
underlining in typewriting.
Italics can be used as a separate voice in text and are
sometimes used in fiction works for thoughts or a second
narrative. In the same way, they can be used for editorial
notes to the reader [like this one] because they separate the
voice of the information from the main voice of the text—
a sort of ancient hypertext.
Capitals/upper case
When the Romans conquered Greece, they took what they
liked and improved on it. And that’s exactly what they did
with the Greek alphabet. The Romans refined the letter-
forms to a point where the alphabet looked very much like
it does today. But all this development was only in that part
of the alphabet that we call ‘capital’ letters or ‘upper case’.
Now, think of gods like Zeus and Jupiter, goddesses like
Athena and Minerva, think of ancient buildings like the
Parthenon and the Pantheon. ‘Capital’ is an architectural
term, which describes the decorative top of a column. Atop
the capitals is a strip of marble that is inscribed with the
name of the god or goddess to whom the building is
dedicated, and these are literally ‘capital’ letters.
196 Production
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Stonemasons cut them to precise specifications, so that
each letter would have its correct width in comparison to
the others.
The relative widths of capitals were defined as part of
their essential character for optimum shape recognition, so
the M and O were wide, the S and V were medium, and the
I was very narrow.
That is why typefaces with letterforms that do not follow
these width interrelationships are often less legible; correct
character relationships enable recognition.
Of course, we now use a ‘double alphabet’—capitals and
lower case, or if you prefer the correct Latin terminology,
majuscules and minuscules.
The concept of big and little letters really came from the
monks who were scribbling copies of the Bible and got
bored. They started embellishing the first word of a section
with large initial letters and similarly with the first letter in
important names. But, skipping a fairly long and involved
story that would take us from Greece and Rome to Ireland
(where a heap of monks toiled, developing an alphabet
called ‘semi-uncials’ which was like our little letters), France
(where the lower case we know today was developed at the
court of Charlemagne and, incidentally, named ‘Carolingian
minuscules’), and Germany (where two gentlemen put the
two alphabets together and put serifs on the little letters so
they’d match the capitals), we find that, at the end, we have
developed a code of use for capitals and lower case and a
fairly complicated code called ‘punctuation’. Both codes help
us to communicate in written form.
Capitals should be avoided in continuous text
because they slow the reader down. This is because
capital letters create words that have a rectangular
shape and we cannot recognise the shape of the
words as distinctly as we can with lower-case words,
which have a more quickly identified individual shape due
to their particular combination of ascenders and descen-
ders. This helps us to read lower-case words more quickly.
Capital letters are used to signify a proper noun—
‘naming’ words such as Australia, The Design Manual and
Whitbread.
You might also have noticed how capitals in a paragraph
jump out. Capitals appear to be more important so they can
be used for information that needs to be brought to the
reader’s attention urgently. But there are other techniques
Typography 197
Proper nouns
that take an initial capital letter:
q Names
– people
– organisations
– products
– places
q Titles
– publications
– stage shows
– films
– musical works
– visual arts works
q Public service preferences
– specific references
capitalised
– generic references in lower
case
For example: Note the capitals in
Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade, but no capitals when simply
referring to ‘the department’.
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that achieve the same result. Bold or italic fonts are often
better suited than capitals.
Capitals are usually reserved for short pieces of infor-
mation such as titles, headings and logotypes.
These days, although it is preferred to set headings in
lower case with an initial capital, titles on covers are often
set in capitals to make the title a solid block—a rectangle is
often an easier shape to use in a layout. That’s why we often
relegate capitals to what we call display setting, where the
shape of the letters and words is more important for its
design implications than its readability. After all, the
difference in the time it takes to read one word in capitals
and the time it takes to read the same word in lower case
is negligible.
Often, a heading in capitals can be reduced in size,
but sometimes this leaves the heading looking squashed.
To counter this, use looser tracking with headings set
in all capitals.
All-capitals headings also work well reversed to white in
black boxes. That still needs a bit of loose tracking and
normally a bolder typeface for easy printability. This creates
one of the strongest heading styles, because the black box
has such a powerful impact on the layout. Usually, as a
result of this, the reversed heading is not used for headings
that occur quickly after one another—that can chop up the
page too much.
Because of their clear shapes and defined widths,
capitals are more easily recognised forms and considered to
be more legible. Lower-case letters are often based on a
circular stroke that inhibits that recognition factor. Compare
A with a and a: the triangular capital letterform is more
distinct in a grouping. But lower-case letterforms are
considered more readable because the distinguishing
characteristic of ascender and descender combinations
enables us to recognise the word shape more quickly.
Minimal and maximal capitalisation
Minimal capitalisation is where only the first word and
proper nouns in a title take an initial capital. Maximal
capitalisation is where all major words in a title take an
initial capital. It is problematic because of the definition of
‘major words’ and the resulting uneven look to the text.
The
Design
Manual
The
Design
Manual
AFTER
BEFORE
Maximal capitalisation has been used
in the title of this book. Note how the
title has then been detailed: auto-
leading has been altered to negative
leading to better group the lines; and
the capitals have been optically
aligned, with the cross-bar of the T
allowed to ‘hang’ in the margin.
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Typography 199
All main words in a title or a heading used to be capitalised:
r The Namatjira Works on Paper
r For the Term of His Natural Life
r An Analysis of Sculthorpe’s Symphonic Works
But with minimal capitalisation, only the first word and
any proper nouns in a title or heading will be capitalised.
So the above examples would reduce to:
r The Namatjira works on paper
r For the term of his natural life
r An analysis of Sculthorpe’s symphonic works
Although it is optional how much capitalisation you use,
the trend towards less punctuation implies dropping
capitals to lower case where possible. This book uses
minimal punctuation in its further reading reference lists,
for example, but note that in text, titles take maximal
capitalisation. The Vancouver referencing system also uses
minimal capitalisation.
Typographically, capitals break up text passages by
disturbing the even texture of lower-case text. This is also
the reason for typing only one space after a full stop in a
paragraph—the capital that starts the next sentence is easy
to find so doesn’t need the extra space.
Small capitals
In a specialist set, small capitals are a redraw of the font
where the small capital height is slightly higher than the
x-height of the face and the small capitals are close to the
same width of the lower-case letters.
In packages where small capitals are drawn from the
font matrix for standard capital letters, you should set the
height or vertical scaling to about 66% and the width or
horizontal scaling to about 85%. This will create small
capitals that are scaled closer to the dimensions of a true
small capital font—where the small caps are a squat version
of the real caps.
In display type, where you might be using capitals
beside small capitals, it is often worth playing with the
weight of the fonts. A true small capital font will have a
comparatively thicker stroke that matches the standard font
stroke thickness. If you are scaling your small capitals, you
might try using the demibold font or bold font to match the
character width of the initial capital. Alternatively, use a
lighter font for the initial capitals.
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It is preferable to use small capitals in text setting where
you want to set a word or phrase in full capitals. This will
not interrupt the text flow or ‘jump out of the page’.
Small capitals may even be used for all-capital abbrevi-
ations such as personnel position references, post-nominals,
and state, department, organisation and company names
that appear in text: ceo, pa, mba, vc, act, nsw, wa, sa, nt,
tas, vic, qld, unsw, dss, nrma, racq.
Some fonts also now have ‘petite’ capitals which are the
same height as the x-height.
Raised and drop capitals
Sometimes in a layout the positioning of some graphic
elements requires that a text block go in a position that does
not follow a logical reading flow. A raised or dropped cap is
a graphic device where something is needed to drag the
reader’s attention back to the text, particularly if there is a
picture or heading to the right of the text block.
n order to redirect the reader’s attention to the text block,
we use a device of colouring and/or making a graphic
element of the initial letter of a text block. It is usually quite
low in the hierarchy on the page: we see pictures, headlines
and then drop or raised capitals. They are used to lead us
into the text.
aised capitals are certainly the easiest to use—they
have the same effect but you simply change the size
and font of the capital as desired. The text simply
flows on using the same baseline. The increased height
needs to be taken into account by adding more space
above the paragraph.
Drop capitals can have a 2- or 3-line drop. Their size is
determined by the size of text and its leading. Usually the
drop cap aligns with the x-height of the top line of text and
sits on the baseline of either the second or third line of the
paragraph.
Sometimes the rest of the first word of the paragraph is
set in capitals to ease the reader into the smaller size, in
which case the drop cap is set to align with the cap height.
You will probably need to track the first word a little looser
and kern it carefully into the initial drop cap so it runs
smoothly into the word.
Drop caps might also have text set to run around them
rather than leaving a white block of space for them to sit in.
Some designers overuse the technique and can come
200 Production
Raised and drop caps
A three-line drop capital aligned
with the x-height of the first line
and the baseline of the third line.
A two-line drop capital aligned
with the cap-height of the first
word and the baseline of the
second line.
A raised initial capital.
R
I
Care should be taken that
unintentional cross-readings do not
occur, as readers notice the featured
letters in order of their dominance:
in this case spelling ‘RIR’.
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