Book Excerpt: Typography Essentials

This article appeared in Issue 128 of InDesign Magazine.

In the following excerpt from her book Typography Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Working with Type, Ina Saltz shows how to make use of case, leading, images, and more to create beautiful and effective layouts with type.

Using Cases

Majuscules are majestic. Minuscules are modest. Uppercase and lowercase letters (so called because they were kept in separate drawers of the typographer’s “case,” or cabinet) have distinct purposes. Capital letters, as they are also known, speak loudly, while small letters are quieter.

Again, everything is relative; very lightweight uppercase letters in a simple sans serif might speak more quietly than a chunky slab serif lowercase. Everything depends on proportion and the mix.

Project Cover

Creative Director, Designer Vanessa Holden

Photographer Ellen Silverman

Client Real Simple

Though the magazine’s logo is in caps, the cover employs simple, modestly sized lowercase cover lines; unlike many magazines, it does not wish to “shout” visually. The core of its mission is to calm and reassure the reader.

Project Tablet edition

Creative Direction Joe Zeff Design

Client Kids Discover

Cases are flipped here, as the enormous bold sans serif headline clearly dominates all other text in caps in the left panel.

Initial Caps and Drop Caps

Initial caps mark the beginning of a chapter or an article; drop caps may be used throughout the

text to mark logical breaks in the text and to provide entry points for the reader. Drop caps may continue the style of the initial cap or be a variation of it. Drop caps and initial caps continue a long tradition that dates back to the earliest illuminated manuscripts (which often had entire scenes depicted within the counter spaces of the letterforms). There are many options for drop caps and initial caps: partial or full indents, partial or full outdents, tops flush with the body copy, baseline alignment with the first line of body copy, baseline alignment with any body copy, and baseline within the depth of the initial cap (these last two are called raised drop or initial caps). Some text does not lend itself well to an initial cap; most common are opening paragraphs beginning with a quote mark or punctuation, or when opening paragraphs are too short to accommodate the height of the cap.

Project Feature spread

Design Director Louis Fishauf

Designer Louis Fishauf

PhotographerPierre Manning

Client Toronto Life

The initial cap is partially contained within the opening paragraph, and the wrap hugs its diagonal leg. Its vertical position matches the capital A in the headline, a nice touch of alignment.

Project Feature spread

Creative Director Donald Partyka

Photo Editor Ramiro Fernandez

Photographers Nicolas Villaume and Aurora Seleet

Client Americas Quarterly

This unusual version of an initial cap sitting on top of and aligning with the text column allows it to be scaled up; as an outline, it is lightweight and does not interfere with the overlapping headline.

Project Feature spread

Design Director Carla Frank

Designer Erika Oliviera

Client O, The Oprah Magazine

The initial cap sits partially within the text block and links into the photo; the top of its middle crossbar “kisses” the image. It intrudes upon the image, as does the pull quote at the top of the page.

Increasing Leading

Space between lines (leading) should be increased if the measure (line length) increases beyond the optimum range, or if the letterforms vary even slightly from a highly legible text face (designed to be read in quantity at small sizes). Even Bodoni, with its strong vertical strokes (in comparison to its horizontal strokes), may require a bit more leading to compensate. Increasing leading, even slightly, aids the eye in finding its place when it cycles back from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.

Project Cutthroat: Native Trout of the West

Art Director Charlie Nix

Designers Charlie Nix and Gary Robbins

Client University of California Press

The longish introductory quote is more legible (and more elegantly presented) with extra leading.

Project Single page

Creative Director Donald Partyka

Client Americas Quarterly

This airy text block has extra leading in keeping with the spacious graphic treatment and the other elements on the page.

Legibility Taking a Back Seat

There are reasons why legibility might not be a designer’s primary concern. When type is treated as an image, it can communicate on a different level. Type can be manipulated or used in such a way that it is difficult or impossible to read and still play a pivotal role in the reader’s understanding of the text.

Project Feature spread

Creative Director, Designer Dirk Barnett

Photographer Rennio Maifredi

Client Blender

This artist’s appearance was clearly the inspiration for the opposite text treatment; a youthful audience of music lovers will undoubtedly be more interested in appearances than content (as it takes a great deal of effort to decipher this text).

Project Lateral + Vertical

Design Director Jeremy Mende

Designers Amadeo DeSouza, Steven Knodel, and Jeremy Mende

Client American Institute of Architects, California Council (AIACC)

This poster for a design conference does provide some basic information, but it must be searched out amid the woozy graphics; since the readers are likely an audience of designers, they are probably willing to make the effort.

Project Poster

Company Henderson Bromstead Art Co.

Client Triad Health Project

The text is so embedded in the gridded imagery that we can scarcely make it out, but it is repeated at the bottom left. The poster is coveted as memorabilia from the event, but it “pushed the decorative envelope,” says the designer.

Organized Entry Points

Readers are beset by distraction, and unless they are highly motivated, they will take the path of least resistance (which might mean ignoring the text completely). Much has been written about the decline in attention spans and the competition for attention from all sides. So the successful typographic designer will offer up an appetizing smorgasbord of options for the reader, offering many places where the text may be entered and consumed in bits and pieces that can be easily digested. This layering and compartmentalization may also signal that there is something for everyone: more perceived value because there is a lot of content constrained in a confined space.

The delicate interplay of hierarchy has an important role: relationships of bold and light, roman and italic, small and large, and caps and lowercase should faithfully represent the relative importance of the content. Typographic hierarchy cues the reader to evaluate the content in relation to the whole. Variety in typographic presentation is the key to directing the reader to pierce the typographic veil. Even modest adjustments in size, weight, width, color, and slope can signal shifts in the content to provide entry points. Overall balance must be maintained simultaneously, making these pages among the most complex to design well.

Project Single page

Creative Designer Donald Partyka

Designer Cathy Yun

Client Americas Quarterly

Eighteen different sizes, styles, weights, and colors of type populate this deceptively simple single page. The overall effect is clean, compartmentalized, and organized, so readers may easily enter the text at many points and choose bite-size info bits. Infographic options include a map, a poll with percentages, sound-bite quotations, and a pie chart.

Project The Culturati Caucus

Design Director Chris Dixon

Art Directors Randy Minor and Kate Elazegui

Designer Robert Vargas

Client New York

Spectacular in its complexity, this four-page cultural survey section pulls off a tour de force of organized entry points by using a mixture of strong grids, the restraint of two colors, and the simplicity of two type families. Segments include an intro, seventeen infographics, and eight sets of survey quotations, plus all of the attendant credits and other “utility” text. Subtle changes in width, weight, and slope, as well as the use of small but essential chunks of white space, demonstrate a masterful handling of detail and an awareness of how readers enter and absorb the content.

Text Overlapping Images

Legibility issues come into play when type overlaps images: the image demands our attention. To make the type stand out, type size and style, contrast with the background, and stroke weight all contribute to the important separation between the background and the foreground. Laying a few words of display type over an image can be complex enough, but where some designers go wrong is laying a quantity of text type over an image—this is sure to make reading a difficult task.

Project Covers

Creative Director, Designer Steven Hoffman

Client Sports Illustrated

These covers demonstrate some good techniques for making sure that type is legible when overlapping complex details and many levels of contrast. The type must have enough weight and be large enough to stand apart from the images, but that is not always sufficient. A combination of outlines and hard and soft drop shadows provide separation and “lift” the text visually forward from the images.