Typography Theory - Create Strong Designs

1. Class Preview: Once you learn everything you need to know about typography from the very beginning, thin this glasses for you. We will review different font styles and typefaces, including San Sarah, Sarah decorative and script fonts. We will dive into the history of fonts to help you better understand when you should use the many different options you have. Typography plays a big role in creating modern slick design. On will review several practical and solid examples of this in action turning spacing. These are all important terms to know, and we'll review examples of this type hierarchy is essential for creating clean professional design and understanding. Proper type hierarchy helps viewers digest large information. With these, we'll review several great examples of type hierarchy, and I'll go through why each one works so well. No. By the end of the scores, you will increase your level in understanding typography by seeing real world examples throughout this entire class. This courses lecture based so no software is required to learn. So let's get started 2. Typography In Design: typography and design. Chicago free plays one of the biggest roles in design By setting the mood and tone for a design piece, type could be loud or could be solved. It could be bold. It could be settled it in creative sins of elegance or grace, or could create a sense of urgency. First of all, typography is the art or technique of displaying words are texts and a readable, digestible and appealing way. This is an art form for a reason. As typefaces can be arranged in so many ways, it can seem overwhelming for any designer at first typefaces or groups of bonds that share a similar style or characteristic. Take, for instance, times New Roman. This very popular type base consists of different fonts, these fonts consistent for different sizes and weights. But they're all part of the same times. New room and tight face font is a term you hear most often and refers to one of the many fonts that make up a whole type base or type family. Sometimes when people say I found a really cool thought, they really made they find a really cool typeface, as font refers to just one style or weight of any given font and any given typeface, so each font is broken down further. And it's a collection of cliffs, which represented individual character number or punctuation mark typefaces air split up into several main classifications. Sarah Fonts, Farfan said, have these little tales or accents at the end of each letter stem. These accents make smaller type easier to read, and that's why you see Sarah fonts like a Times New Roman appear frequently in books and smaller printed text as it's easier for the eye to make out that character because those little tails and little serves san serif fonts sands, meaning without in French is without those little syrups or without those little accents or tails. At the end, a classic example of a sans serif font will be Helvetica. You may have seen Helvetica used in public transportation systems. The New York subway, for example, uses Helvetica as its main typeface. These make for great headlines because of the simplicity and clean lines. Because they have more simple and clean appearance. They do not compete with the other design elements as much as a Serra font would script. Pontes took on a whole nother life with beautiful curves and stroke weights. They could be very precise with defined structure are they could be fun, hand written and take on a very unique characteristic script. Bonds could be one of the harder funds to use because they demand attention, and certain script bonds can be hard to read. For someone who may not speak the language as their primary language, some scripts look fantastic with certain letter combinations said. They have a strange looking letters or characters. They may be hard to work with our line up properly with the advent of the iPad and apple pencil. Now it's easier than ever to write out your own headline and script letter. Hand lettering is a custom version of the script Bon, written out by pen, pencil and vector rise and isolated in voter shop or another editing program. Sometimes a hand written bond can appeal to a particular audience. They can look custom and authentic, giving the design a very unique look. The last main typeface categories decorative this feel more like graphics instead of type. Grunge is a popular variation of this typeface category. Thes typefaces, air so detailed that they can even stand alone as a statement without the need for photos or other design elements because of your detail. But be careful not to overuse. They can easily be overwhelming, if not used correctly, to understand how to use typography and design. We need to first understand the anatomy of typography of next, we'll find out exactly which terms you need to know. 3. BONUS Lecture - The Anatomy of Type: typography has a special place in the world of design. I could dramatically impact the way designed feels it could make a design look busy or clean. It could even be the design itself, so understanding the anatomy and structure of typography will go a long way in deepening your understanding of design. This is a simple Sarah font as we know it's a serif font because of those little brackets at the end of each character. Each letter this word is called a character. If you were to draw a line that hugs the bottom of each letter, not including the little tales which are called D senders, this line would be called Baseline. You can also draw a line across the top of these characters, which does not include what's called the A Centers are this little area right here, and you control your second baseline. What is in between these two lines is the very core of your word or character. This helps you find a balance in your wording. We may find that you have more a sending and decently characters in this revelation can help you decide how to balance the slow going type when creating your mobile exam. The line that could be drawn across the top on the tip top of your A singers is called the Ascent Line. The line that could be drawn across the bottom of your D senders just called the D sent line, so hopefully that could be easy to remember. A really good fought. You'll be able to draw these nice straight lines that go across your character's not all funds. Do that grip box like this one don't always follow the same line patterns. Let's expand our typography vocabulary. The tail is the very tip of the character Descend er, as we know now, makes up the entire bottom section. But the tail is only the very tip. This is the example of the stem of the character years or anything that expands outside of side of character, including this gene. Unfortunately, the anatomy of typography is same somewhere. Think human and Adam. So this is an example of a shoulder. Loops are common in certain block tires, anything that has closed inside a character shape. It's called a closed counter. This is an example of a character leg crossbars of the second set. Join two stents together. For example, in this a there are around boarded a 50 other total terms of vocabulary words for describing character anatomies, but we will not review them all. There are many I've learned just by creating this lesson that I was unaware of the right vocabulary word for word. That means knowing some of the basics is fantastic. But don't feel like you have to have all of these terms memorized. What's most important is studying how tight feels, looks and behaves with other characters, words, colors and designs to make our overall pieces cohesive and balanced. I'll go over a few terms that are less no terms in the world of design, many of these phrases in terms or thrown around and client emails and professional feedback you may receive. So these are pretty important. Current ing is the manually created space between each character. Each type has a natural current ng added to it. When you mainly reduce or expand the spacing between the characters using software like the ones will be using For this class, you'll get the term current and local design. For example, I always try to manually Kern type characters because even slight adjustments could make a big impact on how it looks. The default spacing on bonds is not always perfect. Also, Colonel could help balance a logo by increasing or decreasing the space created between characters. Tucking that letter into reduced extra white space can elevate your type in your design. I love playing around with different bond options. When I worked with headlines or logos, some bonds worked really well for my desired effect. Beautiful syrups, tales and groups. But take, for instance, the slots. Notice how they look pretty similar at first glance, but they vary quite a bit when you zoom in and you know what you're looking for. The space created between sentences or phrases is called leading. The amount of letting that it's between sentences and a larger paragraph can really change the look and feel of a block of type. A larger leading or spacing has a chance to breathe and look very clean. Tighter spacing could build pretty cramped. When you're learning intermediate or advanced design techniques, you'll need to know how to manually space and balance your logos headline and custom lettering. When working with headlines. I like to tighten the white space between characters and between words. I took certain words and toe extra white spaces of other words, and that seems to feel right and balance. When I do this, we could do this easily. In Adobe Illustrator, I'm taking a simple three word headline and finding the right space in between the characters and between the words notice the big difference, using the default spacing in the font and then using my own custom version. There's a big difference when I'm able to kind of noodle around with it. Sometimes your main headline and phrases. The biggest focus of the design and having this custom look goes a long way and looking professional. It's also good to combine different bond types and styles for the same headline. It really helps break up the more important words. So in this case, making the and and the other smaller text italics and they script font, and combining that with this really nice gold sand terrifying really works well here. Also, tucking in words and reducing large amounts of white space between the characters and letters makes it seem like a nice, cohesive design. Rest of lettering is very important and branding and logo design. This example. I am taking two types of script bonds, and I'm combining them to make one unique blend. Script bonds can be tricky. When you may not like the capital letter of a certain script bond. You can switch it out for another script brought to see if it looks better and reads better . So in this case, I can actually tell what the first letter is. Now. You could take a regular, typical font and use it as a base fund. From there, you can add something totally unique to and make it distinct brain. 4. Type Styles - History of Serif Fonts : I hope to give you some insight on some commonly used typefaces that you can add to your front collection to help make picking out bonds much easier for your design projects. At one time, I had over 1000 different plots installed only used a small handful land, and I suggest you keep a special list of 20 to 30 hand picked, commonly used wants to use on projects. Not only will this keep your consistent girl make choosing that perfect want a lot easier. You and the syrup typeface category. There are several wonderful choices, obviously, times New Roman is the default Sarah Font you see on most programs like Microsoft work, for example. But have you heard of died dot Bakersfield? Gary Bond? What is the difference between these type faces? And how do I know which one to use If I'm interested in using a Sarah plight face To understand this, we need to go way back in time to the first uses of Sarah wants as we know them. Today, there are four main categories of Sarah plants. Old style, transitional, Dine on and slab Sarah. These are listed in order in which they were first used in history. Old style was used back in the olden days. Were Ye Olde was a real phrase. Italian printers were interested in creating a type that was easy to read for book printed . Old styles are very easy to read and printed form, and that's because there's not a large difference of contrast in the thickness of the lines . Great example of an old style font would be gear Ammand Berkeley minion on Palin, Tina. The next evolutionary step Sarah's Maid was a move into transitional. Transitional was established in the mid 18th century and there between old style and modern fonts. Thus the name transitional. The contrast or the differences between the thickness and the thinness of the lines of the characters are more dramatic with transitional syrups. Instead of the more harsh endings transitional bonds Tinto have more ball terminals. Ball terminals are the rounded ends of the type stems as opposed to the rough end. As in this example Times New Roman is a classic example of a transitional serif font. Died own our modern Sarah was the next step in syrups history there, characterized by the even more dramatic contrast between the thickness and thinness of lines in the typeface died. DOT is a common and readily used example of a died own our modern Sarah Bondo knee as another wonderful example and is commonly found and design programs as a default. Sarah Font Take, for instance, can VA. It has this fund available as a default selection. Daido nor modern syrups are highly stylized, and it's no wonder they're commonly found in high in fashion brands because there is a high contrast between the thickness and thinness of lines. You could put more spacing between the characters and at a very dramatic flair. A lot of famous brands who's died out as a chosen typeface, including Vogue and CBS, which is a major broadcasting network in the United States. They used iDot. I personally tend to pick a modern Sarah fought. We're doing work for high end clients as his thinner line seemed to add a beautiful elegance that's hard to achieve. The old style serif font. They also make for dramatic poster headline with simple, solid backgrounds. The last stop in the history of Sarah Fonts is thes slab serif. Very different from its predecessors. This font was originally designed to demand once attention on poster designs. The very thick and bold pines with almost no contrast. Chunky, thick, bold. They certainly grabbed our attention throughout the years. They've even you slabs Arabs on wanted posters back in the Old West to make sure you took notice and designers who slaps heirs for the same reason. Have a political statement slaps. There might be a good choice to come, man. That attention. Rockwell is a great example of a slab serif. The IBM logo uses a custom font very close to Rockwell, Archer and Archer Pro or both slabs Arabs. I use commonly in my design projects, and you could see a similar font being used at a large bank cold Wells Fargo. Now that we understand Sarah Fonts, let's check out San Serif fonts. 5. Sans-Serif: San Serif fonts have a special place in design, the word sands and French means without syrups. And the past 20 years, Sarah Flaunts have taken a back seat to San Serif Fonts. San Serif fonts Tinto having more modern, clean and sleek appearance, but they can sometimes lack the subtle elegance or charm needed in a particular situation. But if you want a modern clean look than a Sancerre might become your best friend. San Serif fonts Farfan set like Sarah or tails or acting to end of characters clean and simple, these can have benefits over Sarah fonts. In many situations, they can convey a sense of modernism and minimalism. San Serif fonts originated at a much later date than its predecessor. That's because the use of digital and computer screens required a more clean and simple font. Back when computers had a low resolution display, the small details and Sarah fonts were lost, and thus the need for a more simple sans serif font. San serif fonts are fantastic for big, bold headlines. Take, for instance, is poster design. A Sarah font just does not have the high impact modern design. I'm going for the San Serif font lives perfectly and matches the overall theme of the poster. San tariffs work great for headlines, but for small body copy that comes in large blocks of text, they can sometimes get lost their great for websites and digital mediums. And that's what they're designed for. But for print projects that require large blocks of text, sometimes a Sarah font works a little better. But it depends on the mood and style you're going for. It's hard not to mention a Sand Saref, without mentioning Helvetica. A san serif like Helvetica works well with tight spaces, all sands Arabs, especially when lower case work very well with tight spacing or gaps between the characters . Madura is a geometric style of San Sarah. They tend to be mathematically precise, with its perfect round curves in circles. The Google logo is very close to for tour, although they added their own flair. Of course, don't say and Gabbana used for tour a day. My bold as their tight face of choice avant garde is a fun you may have seen several times in your lifetime as you use that all lower case for the Adidas logo. Also notice that it's all lower case, and they're using tight spacing. This looks nice and works really well. Many companies that try to reinvent themselves in the modern era will sometimes switch their front from the Sarah to a San Sarah to show an adaptation to the digital modern world . Google is a great example of this in action. I remember seeing the old Google Flint in the early days of the Internet, with its old style serif font. Of course, after a recent rebrand, they switched to a sans serif font, and it really helps to make the logo feel more sleek, fresh and revitalized. Now that we know some of the basic typefaces and some of their uses and design, we're ready to learn about how to space them, learn what Kern ing is and how thought weights come dramatically impacted, designs mood and feel 6. Kerning, Spacing, Alignment, Weight and Placement: many typefaces have different font styles and waits. Font weights come in different many flavors. Some typefaces have a wide variety of weight choices, with some fonts. Only have a few. I love using a fault like railway or a gill sands because they offer a full suite of weight choices, weights and packs. A designed by emphasizing the appearance of a lot but making a bold for making it light, bold weights or strong have high impact and grab your attention. They almost convey a sense of yelling are talking in a louder voice that can help you highlight what is most important to the viewer. Call. The actions are usually in a bold weight, as those are very important to highlight to the viewers. Lighter weights, especially the lightest, which would be a thin weight, can feel streamlined, modern. They could be a way to highlight something by being soft and subtle. Take, for instance, something like cancer, not something you want to yell out to the world as it could be scary, but a fitter weight choice looks nice here, almost calming the viewer instead of making me feel provoked. Lighter are thin. Waits cannot be too small in size. I usually do not make them smaller than eight points, as lighter fonts tend to be hard to read. At a certain size level, there are lighter weights, bold weights and now everything in between, which are your regular and semi bold waits. Regular weights are perfect for body copy. Using a bold wait for body copy could make it seem loud and distracting, especially if it's a large block of text. I want to talk about spacing and design. Spacing can have a great impact on how type is not only perceived but creates. The tone for the design piece wide are tight spacing. That's the big decision of designer needs to make. When working with type and headlines. Wide spaces between a few words are a single word, for example, can elevate the type to make it seem more elegant and high end wide. Spacing in a longer phrase or paragraph, can seem a little overwhelming. Tighter spaces can make a design have a sense of urgency. It could also help make a strong type seem cohesive and connected. Wider spacing in lower case letters almost never once. Well, I suggest if you're going to do a headline or a phrase with wider spacing to make sure used uppercase as upper case characters. Standalone, stronger than lower case as they're more balanced and heavy and structure as we reviewed before turning is a term used for the manual space in between characters. Hurting is very important, as not all characters and a font will have perfect spacing by default. Sometimes in a in the w, we need to have the spacing close, just a hair for them to feel more connected. This is example of me manually adjusting the spacing between characters and adobe illustrator. Just small tweaks in the spacing can make a word or phrase feel more polished than just the default spacing we also reviewed in earlier lesson. The spacing between sentences is called letting. You could see how have a wide spacing or letting between the sentences can affect the overall look and feel of a block of copy. Wide spacing and a smaller block of copy can help the block of text expand to a larger part of the design. If there's plenty of white space to cover, of course, tight spacing can help the block of text feel more together and read more as one unit. Of course, with anything a design, there's a thing is too much or too little. Be careful about your letting it could make or break your design. A good rule to follow is to use tighter spacing. Are letting, in short, two or three lines. Subheadings or headlines Wide spacing between only two or three sentences could make the second or third lines feel kind of disconnected and not appealing to the eye. When it comes to alignment and typography, you have many weapons in your arsenal. Nothing beats the power of left alignment and anchoring text and providing a strong balance in your design, especially with longer headlines and phrases. Left alignment can make longer text more stable and grounded and feeling. If I center align the same block of text, it seems to lose something. Center Alignment with shorter words and phrasing can be very powerful, though Right alignment can still be useful, though, although I use this alignment the least when it comes to typography, even when it makes sense to use right alignment like in this example, sometimes it has a stronger acre point using left alignment. There's something about reading from left or right that is challenged when you try a right alignment. I do think that right alignment could still be used to help balance out designs. Take, for instance, this photo I left align the phrase of color to help balance the overall design. The design is heavy on the left. Because of that photo, the right alignment of the phrase of color helps to counter that strong, left sided photo and creates an overall balance in the piece so it does not feel heavy on one side or the other. Alignment doesn't always have to be the same throughout the entire headline. Sometimes you can have a little fun and break the mold by trying a right left right left alignment as long as the words flow in order down the page and illegible also do not feel like text has to go in straight lines. They could have curbs, Benz and show movement like in this example with the typography surrounds the subject text can also wraparound object to show movement. It feels like the type in the photo belong together as one. They're one Cui's of design unit, and that's a wonderful thing if we can somehow fuse design elements together like this, it helps people get almost immersed into the design, and it makes our job easier communicating complex ideas and information in simple ways. Cool and trendy. Thing to do in design today is toe. Have text, go behind objects like they're weaving in and out of layers and becoming one unified element. Be careful to make sure any text you put behind objects is legible and readable. The last thing you need is a really clever, cool headline hidden behind a photo that the viewer cannot read. It would be a shame, but you could do incredible things by having the text and objects interacting. And it's layered way magazines do this all the time with your front covers. Sometimes vital letters, air covered up. But you could still make out what the word is or phrase because it's very obvious. Take, for instance, is watermelon graphic. You know it, says watermelon, even though two vital characters were covered by it. The photo matches the words so your brain fills in the gaps of information. You can always have an object break upwards. In a phrase like this example, it is fun to play with type and photos together and design making things playful, fun, unique, an interactive are all part of the goal. Understanding that playful nature is something that takes time to master clay around with different photos and type and practice this playful dance. 7. Type Hierarchy : the golden rule in design is to follow strong type, hierarchy type hierarchy is the order of specific design elements and order of their importance. Usually, the headline is the most important thing in a design that's often bigger for this reason, or you may, is a typeface that a strong or bold or perhaps even a different color. Next up is your subtitle. You may not need a subtitle for all designs, but it helps to break up a large body of information by having one or two lines stand out in the beginning or be a bit larger. Your body copies usually next and contains the smallest text size outside of her small print. We want to make it shortened, enticing for those who are interested in greeting more. Back in the 19 fifties, during the golden age of advertising, the body copy was where the lion's share of the sales language would go, and it was important for the viewer to need to understand the overall theme of the ad and maybe even find out how that photo is connected to the product. Last but not least, is called action. This is usually toward the end, but it actually has the most important job to call the viewer to some sort of action by this product. Limited time sale. Visit the website for more information. This needs to be bold, perhaps another color to offset it as if it's important item in the overall hierarchy. We put it last because we want a pitch or sale idea or service or product before they see the call to action. I usually make the slightly smaller than the headline so it doesn't compete, but larger than the subtitle type hierarchy is seen in its full beauty. An editorial design with a clear sense of type hierarchy in every article, page and spread. These are wonderful examples. If you ever want to study, type Harkey, pick up a magazine and start to notice the theme. We just went over time and time again. It works, and that's why they have the standard of layout as designers. Our biggest job is to help people digest large amounts of information. Sometimes their job is easy because the amount of information we need to put into a given design is minimal. But that's not always the case. People love to cram large amounts of info into small areas, and the results are almost never good. I like to kiss or keep it simple. Stupid. Find ways that cut your copy and text down. Find ways to combine sentences or have only one called action. Say more with photos instead of type if need be, anything you could do to make it easier for people to digest the most important information First, how do you create a nice energy between font photos and design elements? What makes a compelling layout? I created a quick flyer for Jim with some generic promotions. What makes this layout work well? First off, it starts with a large, obvious headline or main attention grabber. It is a nice, clean Santerre bomb with a little spacing between the characters to add a little breathing room. It is obviously the main initial draw of the Flyer. It is white, so it has the highest contrast color against the dark background of the entire ad. Try to make sure your headlines air not too long. It's nice to break them up and put the remaining not as important part of the headline in a smaller sub line text. I brought out the green to connect it with the bottom of the piece. So it seems like there's one consistent color scheme. A powerful photo always works wonders. In this case, it's more of a dramatic black and white photo with a little bit of a breed. You filter once again to tie in our colors. It is not larger than the headline, so it provides a nice balance for the layout. We have a good bit of information to deal with one small fire. It is best to have a way to divide up that information, so it's not overwhelming. You're busy. I highlighted some of the text with Green that I thought was more important anyway to help the viewer break down. A lot of information will help dramatically with the overall feeling of the design, and color is a way to do that. We have an obvious called action. It is their main theme color of green, with a nice high contrast black their spacing between the lettering. So as a chance to stretch further across the bar and have some breathing room, I have now shown the viewer where to go for their next steps. You do not come up with this kind of layout on your first shot. It takes him playing around with the main graphic elements. To find out what seems to click, I struggle with the right headline flaunt and placement for a while until I figured out that it was the photo that needed modified. Once I kind of tweak the the photo a little bit. The headlines seemed to really fall in place. I'm in Canada today, and I wanted to show this flyer. Uh, that's a default selection in Canada, and I wanted to show you why it works and show you type hierarchy in action. So the first thing that pops out to me is the Name Cabana. So that's obviously the main name and attraction of this flyer. And of course it's big, and it's obvious, and it's a nice, simple sands hair font, and notice below is kind of more of a subtitle. So it's a little bit smaller than the headline, and they also used a very similar in the same top tight family. Ah, little bit of a bolder version to have it stand out, even though it's smaller and the next, you have a really nice dividing line, which helps break up the text boxes a little bit, so it doesn't feel like you have several blocks of type stacked on top of each other. So sometimes a nice dividing box, a little element graphic element can help kind of divide multiple boxes of text. You'll notice that the little bit less important of information is at the very bottom, and it's been the same font family. This entire thing is in the same pot family, and it's a lighter weight, and so it de emphasises it a little bit. It's the date and time, which is important. But selling the name and what the workshop actually is is more important, so you can see some wonderful tie up type hierarchy used on this flyer. This flyer actually has a backside, and they were able toe make the front nice and clean and put a more detailed information on the backside. It's you'll notice the very top. We don't really need a headline because we've already sold them on the front side with a big, larger banner. So you notice how it's a tiny bit smaller compared to on the front, and we re emphasized the sub line right below. And then you have a nice block of what you would call Body Copy, which repeats all the main information and location and noticed the call to action. It's probably one of the boldest weights used on this flyer, and for good reason. Notice how they used the yellow orange color toe. Also highlight it among all the other white type used in the body copy. Overall, this flyer has really strong type Parky and notice how there's a lot of information and lots of blocks of copy. But there seems to be some kind of order, and it really is pleasing to the eye. This example is another great case of solid type hierarchy. Notice the Big, Bold Sans Sarah headline and notice how it's on. Only two lines and the spacing are the gap between the two lines is a little bit tighter. There's not a wide gap there, so it reads as one nice, coherent line. You also noticed the subheading, a special birthday treat from us. If that was all one headline in the same thought, it would be kind of overwhelming, so they made it a smaller size, but they still made it made it a bold wait to still make it stand out among the much smaller body copy. And so we have the body copy, which has that lighter, thinner weight, and it pairs really nice with that bowler waited sub line above it. So the website at the bottom would be your call to action, and he noticed how it's a little bit bigger than the body copy. But it doesn't overwhelm the headline or compete with headline at all. You'll also notice that it's in all capital letters, and there's a little bit of spacing. Are Kern ing between the characters? So it gives a little breathing room and it helps it stretch across the page and helps it kind of anchor it with the rest of the text. You also notice all the text this center aligned, and so it kind of has a certain consistency throughout the piece, and it makes the overall peace feel balanced, so you'll notice. Our most important information is available flavors that titles the back of this flyer to let us know what we're getting ready to read, and you'll notice it's a nice, bold sans serif font and notice. The gaps between the two lines are somewhat tighter, so it reads as one unit available. Flavours, you'll notice, is quite a bit of information, but they were able to break it down into different categories to help my I break it all down. They've also bowled ID, the first title in each one of these three categories, to also provide some balance, but also to help me break each one of those down even further. You also notice the balance of all caps and then lower case. So the body copy has lower case characters and the top headline, Let's Take, for example, chocolate is an upper case and notice how it has a nice balance. It helps to divide the information and separate the title in the body, copy even further by making a little bit different with the type and the type of capitalization that's being used. I hope you know of a better understanding of how type hierarchy works and how you can utilize it to create better, more polished designs