F

Magazine
Typography
ONTS
e art of printing from moveable type,
including the skilled planning of typeface & size,
composition, & layout, to make a balanced and
attractive whole.
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Alphabets
We use 3 different
alphabets in
typographic design
UPPER CASE
lower case
italics (or oblique)
Upper & Lower
The terms upper
case and lower case
date from the earliest
days of printing, when
the different alphabets
were kept in different
parts of the printers
case of letters
CAPITALS
e early printers
copied their
capital letters
from inscriptions
carved in stone
TRAJANS
COLUMN, 113ad
A B C D E
F G H I M
N O P QV
R S T V X
lower case
lettering is
based on a
style of
handwriting
from the 9th
century
Italics
Italics are a third alphabet
based on a popular style
of cursive handwriting,
used in the Vatican
Italics
They were originally used
to save paper and print
cheaper books because they
were more compact than
Roman types
Italics
But there were no
Italic capitals, so
standard Roman
capitals were used!
T y p e s e t T i n g
For 400 years after
Gutenberg
invented moveable
type, printers
composed lines of
type by hand, one
letter at a time.
When the printing
was completed, the
letters were
returned to a type
case.
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The rival Monotype system
was invented around 1887
phototypesetting
together with the
offset lithography
printing process,
this method of
setting type took
over in the 1970s
desktoppublishing
with the
introduction of the
Apple Macintosh
DTP revolutionised
type from the
1980s
ironically
after hundreds of years spent developing
technology designed to eliminate the dent in the
paper caused by letterpress printing, letterpress is
very fashionable again!
Categories
Fonts fall into several
different categories, and
can be identied by
looking closely at the
letters
Serifs
All the early typefaces had
serifs the short cross
lines at the end of the
strokes forming the letters
ese were based on the way
the stonecutters would nish
inscriptional letters with their
chisels
Serif fonts are popular for
setting long passages of text
because they are easy to read in
smaller sizes
Serifs
Sans Serif
Type without serifs is
called sans serif.
Sans serif types rst became
popular in the 19th Century.
BY THE
MID-20TH
CENTURY,
THEY WERE
THE
DOMINANT
FASHION IN
DESIGN
Magazines
tend to use one of the following:
Ultra-ne serif
(known as hair serifs)
Big fat serif
(known as slab serifs)
Sans serif
Examples follow...
Hair Serif
Didot Bodoni
VOGUE
Slab Serif
Clarendon
Clearface
way out west
Heat
American
Typewriter
Sans Serif
Helvetica Futura
Frutiger
Univers
COSMOPOLITAN
Myriad Gill Sans
Helvetica
the worlds
most
popular
typeface
Helvetica is the vanilla
ice-cream of fonts
Mainly because it was installed on
every Linotype machine in the
USA and then on every Mac
AkzidenzGrotesk
1899
Helvetica
1957
Helvetica is
not a very
modern
design
these are classed as
Grotesque fonts -
also known as
grots
gill sans
a humanist sans serif
1926
used by
the BBC
futura
a geometric sans serif
1927
theres
nothing
it cant
do!
univers
a neo-Grotesque sans serif
1954
works
well with
any other
font
optima
a humanist sans serif
955
inspired
by
Galileos
tomb in
Florence
1
frutiger
a humanist sans serif
1975
used by
Paris
CDG
Airport
myriad
a humanist sans serif
992
used by
Apple
since
2002
1
use no more than two or three
different fonts
You can also vary weight, width,
colour
design
Left aligned text
should form a
straight line at the
left side of the page.
This is the usual form
of alignment in
passages of body
text.
Right aligned text
should form a
straight line at the
right side of the
page. This is rarely
used - usually in a
layout design for a
coverline.
Centred text should
only rarely be used.
You might use it for
a title or a poem,
but there are few other
good reasons.
Justied text should
form a straight line at
both the left and right
side of the page. This
is a common form of
alignment in body text
in books and articles.
Usually the last line is
not justied.
Spacing can be adjusted between
words and individual
L E T T E R S (word spacing
and letter spacing).
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R PAING
many mod0n RM have
sma0 Hmks and
hundkds of RM
chaMd0 paikngs
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MOST
Typography
is dBign
to be
unobtrusive
BUT
Dispy
pogMphy
is meant
to be noticed
knowing the rules makes it easier to
experiment!
Background
Cover lines
Skyline
artwork
Nameplate
Cover Story
Bar Code / Cover Price
Corner
Snipe (or
Pug)
Puff
Usually white, or part
of the cover photos
background
Usually a single subject
against a clean
background
(Could be a strap line, if
theres a background colour
here)