How to Choose and Use Script Typefaces
Nigel French offers a guide to some of the most beautiful and expressive typefaces of all.
This article appears in Issue 69 of InDesign Magazine.
There are certain typefaces that belong in every designer’s toolkit: along with the workhorse serifs and sans serifs, and a handful of display faces, we all need some scripts for those times when we want an elegance— or an informality-that “normal” typefaces can’t deliver. Though they come in many varieties, script typefaces all convey a handwritten feel.
There are the formal script faces, of course—the kind of thing you’ll find on certificates, diplomas, and wedding invitations. Derived from 17th-century writing styles, these refined letterforms are intended to lend an air of sophistication, history, and authority. They are cursive, and many of the characters have strokes that join them to other letters.
Then there are the informal scripts for when you want a casual or quirky feel. These are usually friendly and approachable and give the impression of having been created quickly and spontaneously (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The formal (Snell Roundhand) and the informal (Dom Casual). Switch their roles, and the message becomes confused and even humorous.
Many scripts can also be classified according to the writing device they suggest: calligraphic pen or quill, broadtipped marker, or even paintbrush. The tool they evoke usually hints strongly at their preferred usage (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Scripts that evoke a quill (Bickham), a marker pen (FF Market), and a signpainter’s brush (HouseMovements Sign).
A Few Basic Rules for Script Fonts
Like all type classes, script faces come with their own set of dos and don’ts. These are mainly common sense, yet it’s surprising how often you see them flouted —and seldom with good results. To start with, never put a formal script in all uppercase.
Just as you wouldn’t write with a free-flowing hand in uppercase, you don’t want to set script that way (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Setting script (in this case, Bickham) in uppercase looks daft.
Then there is the issue of kerning. For the type designer, script faces present a labor-intensive challenge: the letters must connect—just like the strokes of handwriting. With thousands of possible letter combinations, this means many late nights of painstaking kerning to adjust the fit of letter pairs. If the script typeface has been well made, that is, with good kerning metrics, the Metrics method of auto kerning in InDesign will almost certainly be preferable to Optical. By choosing Metrics, you are opting for the pair kerning that the type designer labored long and hard over. Optical kerning, on the other hand, often preferable for display faces, will ignore the kerning metrics and use InDesign’s best guess for letterspacing based upon the character shapes. The result is that connecting strokes will often miss each other like star-crossed lovers.
Using Metrics kerning is a good starting point. In addition, be prepared to apply additional manual kerning as necessary. In Figure 4, you’ll see that optical kerning fails to connect the letters, and while metrics fares better, additional manual kerning is required to adjust the Go and wi letter pairs. With no alternate characters in this particular font (Mistral) and no dotless i, the wi combination is awkward at best.
Figure 4: Often you can get the best results by using a font’s built-in kerning plus a few manual tweaks.
Another important consideration when working with scripts is size. For their exuberant descenders and ascenders to be contained in an em square, scripts may look disproportionately small at text sizes compared to “normal” typefaces. If you’re combining a script with a serif or sans serif face, it may require some resizing to look proportionate.
Make a Splash with Alternate Characters
Many script faces that are available in OpenType Pro format offer a range of alternate characters that you can take advantage of via the Contextual Alternates feature from the OpenType menu in the Control panel or Character panel (or through styles, of course, which would be even better). Because each letter pair connects differently, the ability to apply Contextual Alternates can make a substantial difference to the overall effect of your type. For example, an O may be drawn differently according to the letter that precedes it. This is the “context” part of Contextual Alternates. With this feature activated, the shape of certain characters changes on the fly according to what character you type next. If you’re in the market for a script typeface, the availability of these alternate characters might be a major factor in your choice (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Top: With Contextual Alternates off, the o and e do not connect, and the e and s connect awkwardly. Bottom: I’ve used the Glyphs panel to manually apply alternates to the y, the o, and the i in Caflisch Script.
Irrespective of Contextual Alternates, alternate characters allow a degree of personalization not possible with a standard font. You can add swashes at the beginning of the word and finials at the end, but be careful not to overdo it: too many swirls, and you might induce an attack of vertigo in your reading audience (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Swashes and finials applied to the starting and ending letter in Bickham Script, respectively for each word, using the Glyphs panel set to Show Alternates for Selection.
What’s a swash?
Swash: An elegant extension on a letterform, either a modification of an existing part or an added on part.
Finial: The curved or tapered end of a stroke that has no serif.
Source: fontshop.com
The Conundrum of Perfection
There is something inherently oxymoronic about script typefaces: they are intended to emulate the human hand, yet they carry the traits of digital perfection. Every a is the same as every other a, every s the same as every other s. The uniqueness that they are touting is undermined by the knowledge that someone with the same font can, with a few keystrokes, be just as unique. So if you’re choosing a script for a logo or headline treatment, consider hand-lettering the text. I mean it, this needn’t be an onerous task: you can base the letterforms on an existing script face, and in their re-creation, you can introduce—intentionally and otherwise— your own flourishes and idiosyncrasies.
These personal touches will humanize the result and make it truly your own. Using the Pen tool in Illustrator has never been, nor probably ever will be, easy or intuitive, but it is easier now-and once you get the hang of keeping your anchor points perpendicular, redrawing your letterforms with the Pen tool is a meditative process that can yield pleasing results (Figure 7).
Figure 7: Grafolita Script Medium, above, and my customized version, below.
If you have good handwriting and a graphics tablet and stylus, why not create the letters from scratch? After all, what could be more unique, more infused with personality than your own handwriting (Figure 8)?
Figure 8: Handwritten in Illustrator, starting with a sketch, manually tracing with the Pen tool, and then applying a calligraphic brush stroke.
If you find you have an aptitude for drawing letters, you might want to take it further and, using a font creation program like FontLab Studio or Fontographer, make a fully functioning font. This can be immensely satisfying and informative— but be prepared to kiss goodbye any free time you may have had (Figure 9).
Figure 9: My brief foray into font design using Fontographer.
If you just want to dip your typographic toe in the healing waters of font creation, there are several options: fontstruct (from the good people who bring us fontshop.com), BitFontMaker2, yourfonts.com, and Calligraphr.
Final Advice
Using script faces is a lot about common sense. Don’t lose sight of their origins: they come from handwriting, and many are intended to evoke a particular writing implement. If you have the time and the inclination to hand-letter your text, you can really humanize your work. When it comes to script faces, they are not all created equal. The adage that a well-designed typeface is as much about the space between the letters as the letter shapes themselves is especially true with scripts. How good are the metrics, and how well do the letters connect? And consider the availability of OpenType features for any script face you may be auditioning. It’s these flourishes — combined using your own highly refined designer’s sensibilities, of course —that will bring a degree of interpretation and individuality to type.
This article was last modified on October 18, 2024
This article was first published on March 16, 2023
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