Lettering and Type

lettering & TYPE
The works of commercial sign

painters often showcase inventive
and accomplished examples of
custom lettering in use.
creating letters and designing typefaces
Princeton Architectural Press, New York
bruce willen nolen strals
With A Foreword By Ellen Lupton
lettering & TYPE
Project Editor: Clare Jacobson
Copy Editor: Zipporah W. Collins
Designer: Post Typography
Additional Designers: Sara Frantzman and Eric Karnes
Primary Typefaces: Dolly and Auto, both designed by Underware
Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Bree Anne Apperley, Sara
Bader, Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Becca Casbon, Carina Cha,
Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Carolyn Deuschle, Russell Fernandez, Pete
Fitzpatrick, Wendy Fuller, Jan Haux, Aileen Kwun, Nancy Eklund
Later, Linda Lee, Laurie Manfra, John Myers, Katharine Myers,
Lauren Nelson Packard, Dan Simon, Andrew Stepanian, Jennifer
Thompson, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton
Architectural Press Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
Published by
Princeton Architectural Press
37 East Seventh Street
New York, New York 10003
For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657.
Visit our website at www.papress.com.
2009 Princeton Architectural Press
All rights reserved
Printed and bound in China
12 11 10 09 4 3 2 1 First edition
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without
written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of
copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Willen, Bruce, 1981-
Lettering & type : creating letters and designing typefaces / Bruce Willen
and Nolen Strals ; with a foreword by Ellen Lupton. 1st ed.
p. cm. (Design briefs)
Includes index.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-56898-765-1 (alk. paper)
1. Type and type-founding. 2. Lettering. 3. Graphic design (Typography)
I. Strals, Nolen, 1978- II. Title. III. Title: Lettering and type.
Z250.W598 2009
686.2'24dc22
2009003470
vi Foreword, Ellen Lupton
viii Preface
xi Acknowledgments
Context
1 Legibility, Context, and Creativity
6 A Compressed History
of the Roman Alphabet
Systems & Type-ologies
16 Systems
20 The Ideal versus the Practical
22 Conceptual Alphabets and Lettering
26 Writing, Lettering, or Type?
30 Letter Structure
33 Type and Lettering Classication
36 Exercise: Fictional Characters
38 Book Typefaces
42 Display Lettering and Type
Creating Letters
46 Thinking before Drawing
49 The Lettering Process
52 Foundations
54 Exercise: Flat-Tipped Pen
56 Creating Text Letters and Book Type
60 Modular Letters
63 Exercise: Modular Alphabet
64 Screen Fonts
66 Handwriting
68 Script Lettering
70 Casual Lettering
72 Distressed Type
74 Interview: Ken Barber
CONTENTS
Making Letters Work
Transforming Type
76 Customizing Type
78 Turning Type into Lettering
81 Exercise: Modifying Type
82 Ligatures and Joined Letterforms
84 Interview: Nancy Harris Rouemy
Lettering as Image
86 The Opaque Word
94 Interview: Shaun Flynn

Designing Typefaces
96 Behind a Face
99 Character Traits
100 Letterform Analysis
101 Lowercase
108 Uppercase
116 Numerals
117 Punctuation and Accents
118 Type Families
120 Spacing and Kerning
122 Setting Text
124 Interview: Christian Schwartz
126 Glossary
128 Bibliography
129 Index
4 1
2
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Letters are the throbbing heart of visual communication. For all the talk of the death
of print and the dominance of the image, written words remain the engine of infor-
mation exchange. Text is everywhere. It is a medium and a message. It is a noun and
a verb. As design becomes a more widespread and open-source practice, typography
has emerged as a powerful creative tool for writers, artists, makers, illustrators, and
activists as well as for graphic designers. Mastering the art of arranging letters in
space and time is essential knowledge for anyone who crafts communications for
page or screen.
This book goes beyond the basics of typographic arrangement (line length, line
spacing, column structure, page layout, etc.) to focus on the form and construction of
letters themselves. While typography uses standardized letterforms, the older arts of
lettering and handwriting consist of unique forms made with a variety of tools. Today,
the applications and potential of lettering and type are broader than ever before,
as designers create handmade letterforms, experimental alphabets, and sixteenth-
century typeface revivals with equal condence.
Type design is a hugely complex and specialized discipline. To do it well
demands deep immersion in the technical, legal, and economic standards of the type
business as well as formidable drawing skills and a rm grasp of history. This book
provides a friendly, openhearted introduction to this potentially intimidating eld,
offering a way into not only the vocabulary and techniques of font design but also the
sister arts of lettering, handwriting, calligraphy, and logo design. Simple, inventive
exercises expose readers to creative methods, inviting them to explore fresh ways to
understand, create, and combine forms. Throughout the book, the voices of some of
the worlds leading type and lettering artists illuminate the creative process.
Authors Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals are two of the sharpest young minds on
the contemporary design scene. I rst met them as my students at Maryland Institute
College of Art (mica), where they now teach courses in experimental typography and
lettering. Even as students, they were never march-in-line designers. Instead, they
were intellectuals with an iconoclastic edge who pursued their own view of art and
design, connected with music and cultural activism more than with the standard
professional discourse. Along with their maverick spirit, Bruce and Nolen have always
FOREWoRD
ellen lupton
brought an incisive and controlled intelligence to their work, which today ranges
from hand-screened, hand-lettered posters for the Baltimore music scene to sophis-
ticated graphics for the New York Times and the U.S. Green Building Council.
The initial concept and outline for this book were developed in collaboration
with MICAs Center for Design Thinking, which works with its students and faculty
to develop and disseminate design research. The books voice and philosophy reect
the authors unique point of view as artists and thinkers. Letters, they suggest,
are alive and kicking. Anyone who is fueled with a dose of desire and an ounce of
courage is invited to plunge in and take on twenty-six of the worlds most infamous
and inuential characters. The language of letters ranges from the bersophisti-
cation of fonts designed for books to the singular quirks of custom logotypes and
the clandestine mysteries of grafti. Its all there to be explored and grappled with.
Anyone who tries a hand at designing letters will walk away withat the very
leasta deepened respect for the opponent.
Saks Fifth Avenue
Valentine
Lettering, 2008
Marian Bantjes
Words communicate both visual
and written information. These
letters ornate ourishes eclipse
the words themselves to form a
larger image.
vii
Practical information about creating letters and type often amounts to a series of
truisms or guidelines for executing a particular process or style. While a designer
can apply every rule or typographic axiom literally, what makes lettering and type
design endlessly fascinating is the exibility to interpret and sometimes even break
these rules. Lettering & Type aims to present devotees and students of letters with the
background to implement critical lettering and type design principles, discarding
them when appropriate, and to offer readers a framework for understanding and
approaching their own worknot only the how but also the where, when, and
why of the alphabet.
Part of our own fascination with letters comes from the endlessly surprising
nature of these common objects. The ubiquity of letters in our daily lives makes them
a familiar subject matter, ready to be interpreted by generations of designers, artists,
and bored schoolchildren alike. Like many other designers, we have loved letters from
an early age, inventing our own comic book sound effects, illustrating our names in
our notebooks, and drawing rock band logos on our desks during math class. We have
yet to outgrow the enjoyment of losing ourselves inside a lettering or type project.
In a world governed by increasingly short deadlines, instant communications, and
machines that let us do more with less, spending an entire day drawing a handful of
letters is indeed a beautiful and luxurious act.
In Lettering & Type we have sought to create a book with a wide focus on
both the methods and the reasons for making letters, something that will appeal to
students of type design, ne artists, graphic designers, letterers, and anyone else with
a curiosity about the forms and functions of the alphabet. Our approach to Lettering
& Type comes from our experience teaching at the Maryland Institute College of Art,
as well as our own practice, which often extends into graphic design, illustration,
lettering, and type design. We have augmented our rsthand knowledge with the
inspiring work of contemporary designers and artists, and with lessons absorbed
from a wide range of theorists and historians.
Compliments of the B&O
Railroad Company
Dinner menu, 1884
Letters and design respond to
new ideas and technologies.
This illustration and its electric
lettering herald a newly
connected world, accessible by
the telegraph and railroad.
Library of Congress, Rare Book and
Special Collections Division.
PREFACE
Lettering & Type is organized into four sections, which build a broad, theoretical
overview of lettering, typography, and the roman alphabet into a many-bladed
reference tool for designing letters and typefaces.
Section One, Context, investigates the ideas and history that inform lettering
and typography, exploring the concepts of legibility, context, and creativity while
illuminating the alphabets complex evolution. This intellectual and historical
context sets the stage for Section Two, Systems & Type-ologies, which discusses the
systems underlying every typeface or lettering treatment and outlines a framework
for approaching, analyzing, and creating the attributes and elements of lettering and
type. Section Three, Creating Letters, dives deeper into the realities of constructing
letterforms, expanding the theoretical approach into a practical discussion of specic
methods and styles. Section Four, Making Letters Work, looks at letters as they are
appliedin situations from type design, logos, and lettering treatments to psyche-
delic posters and fantastic illustrative alphabetsproviding a practical and inclusive
foundation for designing typefaces and implementing lettering in the real world.
Accompanying the concepts discussed in the text, many contemporary and
historical examples of typefaces, graphic design, and lettering appear throughout
Lettering & Type. Supporting these illustrations are diagrams and exercises meant
to expand on specic ideas while dispensing lessons and advice that can be applied
to the readers own work. Interviews with skilled practitioners in the elds of type
design, lettering, ne art, and graphic design present contemporary perspectives and
approaches to designing and working with letters.
Envisioning, writing, and assembling all of these elements to create Lettering
& Type has been an enlightening and energizing process for us, as we have immersed
ourselves in the history and minutiae of lettering and type design. We hope that
readers will nd similar insight and inspiration within these pages, no matter what
their relationship is to the alphabet.
Opposite:
B vs RUCE
Drawing by the author, age ten.
Geometric Alphabet
Book cover (detail), 1930
William Addison Dwiggins
Parallel to similar explorations
in modern art and architecture,
lettering and type creations by
many early-twentieth-century
designers celebrated geometric
and mechanical shapes.
Lettering & Type would not have been possible without
the generosity of the design community and of this
volumes many contributors. We dedicate Lettering & Type
to everyone who has contributed artwork, wisdom, and
editorial suggestions, and those who have supported us
along the way. In particular we thank Ellen Lupton for her
condence in our abilities and her constant encouragement
and guidance in many of our creative endeavors. Her
extraordinary Thinking with Type was the inspiration and
exemplar for this volume and sets a high benchmark for
every typography treatise that follows it.
In addition we wish to the thank the following
people whose contributions, guidance, and assistance
have helped us realize Lettering & Type: Clare Jacobson at
Princeton Architectural Press and copy editor Zipporah
Collins, whose incisive guidance and editing have
brought this project to fruition; Ken Barber, Ryan Brown,
John Buchtel, Lincoln Cushing, Jennifer Daniel, Cara Di
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Edwardo, John Downer, Mike Essl, Shaun Flynn, Brendan
Fowler, Sara Frantzman, Laura Gencarella, Sara Gerrish, Isaac
Gertman, Sibylle Hagmann, Nancy Harris Roeumy, Kathryn
Hodson, Chris Jackson, Denis Kitchen, Tal Leming, Barry
McGee, Matt Portereld, Christian Schwartz, Underware,
Kyle Van Horn, Armin Vit, as well as all our other friends,
family, supporters, clients, and collaborators throughout
the years, including our former instructors and current
colleagues at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the
supportive MICA community at large, and especially our
studentswho have in turn educated usand whose work
graces these pages.
Most deeply of all we thank Sarah Templin and Sara
Tomko (for their enormous patience and tireless support),
Richard and Margaret Willen (for the invaluable advice
and editing), Katie Strals, Pete and Lou Strals, Chris Strals,
Mema, Papa, Grandma, all the Willens, Cohens, Needles, and
Moores, and all the Browns, Mumms, and Carlowes.
Main Drag
Installation, 2001
Margaret Kilgallen
Photo courtesy of Barry McGee
CONTEXT
Legibility, Context, and Creativity
Letters and the words that they form are homes for language and ideas. Like buildings,
letterforms reect the climate and the cultural environment for which they are
designed while adopting the personality of their content and designers. Although
letters are inherently functional, their appearance can evoke a surprisingly wide range
of emotions and associationseverything from formality and professionalism to
playfulness, sophistication, crudeness, and beyond. Designers and letterers balance
such contextual associations with the alphabets functional nature, melding the
concerns of legibility and context with their own creative voices.
As in all applied arts, functionality lies at the heart of lettering and typography.
Legibility is what makes letterforms recognizable and gives an alphabet letter the
ability and power to speak through its shape. Just as the distinction between a building
and a large outdoor sculpture is occasionally blurred, a written or printed character
can be only so far removed from its legible form before it becomes merely a conuence
of lines in space. Legible letters look like themselves and will not be mistaken for other
letters or shapesan A that no longer looks like an A ceases to function.
Letters or words whose visual form confuses or overwhelms the viewer disrupt
communication and diminish their own functionality. Such disruptions are generally
undesirable, but the acceptable level of legibility varies according to context. Some
letterers and designers pursue an idea or visual style rather than straightforward
utility. In these cases, the appearance of the letters themselves can take on as much
importance as the text they contain or even more. When used appropriately, less
legible letterforms ask the reader to spend time with their shapes and to become a
more active participant in the reading process. Unusual, illustrative, or otherwise
hard-to-read letters often convey a highly specic visual or intellectual tone and are
meant to be looked at rather than through.
Letter Box Kites
Alphabet, 2008
Andrew Byrom
The letters of the alphabet do
not always exist in two dimen-
sions. Letters can be structural,
functional, time-based, or even
interactive.
Unlike contemporary arts voracious quest for new forms, the impetus to
create unconventional or groundbreaking letters is generally less urgent to type
designers and letterers, whose subject matter is based on thousands of years of
historical precedent. As a letterform becomes more radical or unorthodox, it
begins to lose its legibility and usefulness, requiring designers to balance the new
with the familiar. This has not prevented letterers, artists, and designers from
creating an endless variety of novel and experimental alphabets. New forms and
experiments slowly widen the spectrum of legibility, shifting and expanding the
vocabulary of letters.
Two thousand years of reading and writing the roman alphabet have shaped
the standards of legibility and continue to sculpt it today. What was regarded as
a clear and beautiful writing style for a twelfth-century Gothic manuscript is to
todays readers as difcult to decipher as a tortuous grafti script. Nineteenth-
century typographers considered sans serif typefaces crude and hard to read,
yet these faces are ubiquitous and widely accepted in the twenty-rst century.
Familiarity and usage dene what readers consider legible.
The tastes and history that inform legibility are part of the context in which
letters live and work. Often hidden but always present, context comprises the what,
where, when, who, and how of lettering and type. At its most basic, context relates
to the ultimate use of any letter: What message will the letterforms communicate?
Where and when will they appear? How will they be reproduced? Who will view
them? But context also represents the broader cultural and social environment in
which letters function. Nothing is more important to an artist or designer than
context, because it provides the structure from which to learn and work.
Centuries of baggage have colored different styles of letters with a wide
array of associations, as contextual relationships are continually forged and
forgotten. When creating and using letterforms, designers harness, reinforce,
and invent these social and cultural associations. Long before the development of
movable type, the stately capital lettering styles of the Romans stood for power,
learning, and sophistication. As early as the ninth century, scholars, artists, and
politicians associated these qualities with Imperial Rome and sought to invoke
them by adopting Roman lettering styles. Even today, graphic designers employ
typefaces such as Trajan, based on Roman capitals, to convey an air of classical
Opposite top:
Les Yeux Sans Visage
T-shirt graphic and typeface,
2006
Wyeth Hansen
Hansens typeface, Didont,
pushes the high-contrast forms
of eighteenth-century modern
type to their natural extreme.
Despite the disappearance of
the letters thin strokes, the
characters underlying forms
can still be discerned.
Laptop for Sale
Photocopied yer, 2008
Rowen Frazer
This yer plays with context
through a tongue-in-cheek,
hand-drawn interpretation of
pixel lettering.
helvetica, 1957, Max Miedinger blur, 1992, Neville Brody
trace, 2008, COMA broadcloth, 2005, Post Typography
post-bitmap scripter helvetica, 2004, Jonathan Keller the clash, 2006, COMA
helvetica drawn from memory, 2006, Mike Essl signifcient, 2007, Jonathan Keller
These fonts all take the typeface Helvetica as their point of departure.
By redrawing, distorting, or digitally reprogramming its letterforms,
the designers reinterpret this ubiquitous font in new ways.
3 context
Practice and Preach
Poster, 2004
Ed Fella
The individuality of hand lettering can allow the artists drawing
style to act as a visual signature. Both of these posters are cohesive
despite their assortments of disparate letterforms.
Hotdogs and Rocket Fuel
Poster, 2007
Jonny Hannah
lettering & type 4
sophistication. Similarly, the crude stencil lettering painted on industrial and military
equipment now appears on T-shirts, advertisements, and posters where the designer
wishes to present a rough and rugged image. Even the most isolated or academically
constrained letterforms inevitably evoke cultural and historical associations.
Letters connotations and contextual relationships shift over time. Unexpected
usage of a specic style of type or lettering can create an entirely new set of associa-
tionspsychedelic artists of the 1960s co-opted nineteenth-century ornamental type
styles as a symbol of the counterculture. More routinely, the connotations of fonts
change through hundreds of small blows over the years. Type styles like Bodoni,
which were considered revolutionary and difcult to read when rst introduced, are
today used to imply elegance and traditionalism. Likewise, the degraded lettering
of the underground punk culture in the 1970s and 1980s is now associated with the
corporate marketing of soft drinks, sneakers, and skateboards.
While these contextual relationships often suggest a specic style or approach
to a lettering problem, the unlimited possibilities of lettering and type accommodate
numerous individual interpretations. Even subtle changes to the appearance of letters
can alter the contents voice. Designers sometimes add new perspectives or layers
of meaning by introducing an unexpected approach or contrast. Lettering a birth
announcement as if it were a horror movie poster might not seem entirely appro-
priate, but, depending on how seriously the new parents take themselves, it may
express the simultaneous joy and terror of birth and child rearing. The voice of the
designer or letterer, whether loud or soft, can add as much to a text as its content or
author. The designers ability to interpret context and address legibility underlies the
creative success and the ultimate soul of lettering and type.
Individual artists and designers inject creativity into the process of making
letters through their concept, approach, and personal style. Sometimes this individu-
ality takes a very visible form: an artists emblematic handwriting or lettering
technique acts as a unifying visual voice to words or letterforms. More frequently,
a particular idea or discovery informs creative type and lettering: a type designer
stumbles upon an especially well-matched system of shapes for a new typeface, or a
letterer adds a subtle-yet-decisive embellishment to a word.
Despite the countless numbers of letterforms that have been written, designed,
and printed, the possibilities of the roman alphabet have yet to be exhausted. The
skills, motives, and knowledge of letterers and type designers continue to inuence
the way that text is understood and perceived, placing the creation of letters within
both visual and intellectual spheres. The designers ability to balance and control
legibility, context, and creativity is the power to shape the written word.
5 context
A Compressed History of the Roman Alphabet
As tools and symbols that exist at the nexus of art, commerce, and ideas, letters
reect the same cultural forces that inform all other aspects of society. Institutions
and authorities from the Catholic Church to the Bauhaus to the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority have used their political and cultural clout to inuence,
manipulate, and establish the alphabets prevailing forms. Letters are not created in
a vacuum, and their appearance is as subject to the whims of power and taste as any
other feature of society. The roman alphabets history cannot be separated from the
history of Western civilization.
The shapes of the alphabet as we recognize them today became standardized
and codied in the fteenth century. Working during a period of commercial
expansion and technological innovation, Renaissance typographers took handwriting
and lettering styles and systematized them into movable type, a set of elements that
could be rearranged and reproduced. Type had already been in use for centuries in
China,
1
but the compact and efcient character set of the roman alphabet made
it especially adaptable to printing. This powerful combination would spread the
alphabet and literacy across the Western Hemisphere.
The roman alphabets phonetic nature makes it ideally suited to typog-
raphy. Where Chinese languages employ a logographic alphabet comprising tens of
thousands of distinct characters, the roman alphabet consists of twenty-six easy-to-
learn letters and their variants. Each letter corresponds to specic sounds of speech.
Though not perfectly phoneticsome phonemes are conveyed through combinations
like th, and many letters represent multiple soundsthe roman alphabet is a potent
system for transcribing written language. The ancient Greeks, whose own writing
system eventually cross-pollinated with the Romans, referred to the alphabet as
stoicheia (elements), in recognition of its powerful and fundamental nature.
2
Greece adapted its written alphabet from Phoenicias,

conforming Phoenician
characters to the Greek language. This early Greek writing system ltered through
the Etruscan civilization to the Romans, who rened and codied it to such a degree
that the Roman alphabet inuenced later evolutions of Greek. By the rst century
ad, the Roman uppercase was fully developed, and its forms are documented in the
formal inscriptions carved on edices throughout the Roman Empire. This ancient
Opposite:
Lindisfarne Gospels, Saint
Marks Gospel opening
Illuminated manuscript,
710721
Eadfrith, Bishop of
Lindisfarne
Insular medieval artists in the
British Isles departed from the
Roman forms of the alphabet,
creating inventive and highly
decorative letterforms such as
the INI that dominates this
incipit page.
The British Library Board.
All Rights Reserved. Cotton Nero D.
IV, f.95. British Library, London.
The letters of the roman alphabet have adopted many
forms and styles over several millennia. These are just
some of the common variants of the letter A.
1. Robert Bringhurst, The
Elements of Typographic
Style, version 2.5 (Point
Roberts, WA: Hartley and
Marks, 2002), 119.
2. Johanna Drucker, The
Alphabetic Labyrinth:
The Letters in History and
Imagination (New York:
Thames and Hudson, 1999).
lettering & type 6
300 B.C. 200 B.C. 100 B.C.
FORMAL GREEK ALPHABET
Classical Ionic/eastern alphabet adopted
and used in Athens.
ROMAN ALPHABET
Early formal lettering styles, as preserved
on Roman inscriptions.
greek
Roman alphabet is a direct ancestor of contemporary letterforms, and its composition
appears surprisingly similar to our own roman uppercase. The term capital letters even
derives from the location of inscriptions on Roman monuments, where this style of
letter is typically found.
Unlike the uppercase alphabet, which has clear origins, the roman lowercase
has a more convoluted background. The Romans considered their inscriptional,
uppercase alphabet a form and style distinct from their informal writing scripts
and cursives. Carefully built from multiple strokes of the chisel or brush, the stately
Roman capitals are lettering, as opposed to the handwriting used for books and legal
documents. Just as contemporary designers choose specic fonts for different situa-
tions, the Romans chose divergent styles and even different artisans for each unique
application. Contemporary roman uppercase comes from lettering, while the roman
lowercase forms are based on handwriting.
As Christianity became a dominant force in the Roman Empire, the church
deliberately began to distinguish its writing and lettering from the styles it associated
with Romes pagan past. Greekwhich was the churchs ofcial languageand its
lettering inuenced early Christian inscriptions, adding more freedom and looseness
to the Romans balanced alphabet. Emperor Constantine gave his blessing to a writing
style called uncial, which became the standard hand for many Christian texts. These
Greco-Christian inuences from within the empire collided with the writing styles
and runic forms of invading northern European tribes, who by the fth century had
overrun Rome several times.
The years after the fall of the Roman Empire were a turbulent time for Europe
and for the alphabet. Such periods of social, political, and technological upheaval
A Rough Timeline of the
Roman Alphabet
The alphabets evolution is not
linear. Divergent styles, schools,
and practices have coexisted
and overlapped throughout the
history of the roman alphabet.
This timeline loosely traces
the history of some styles and
movements that are key to the
evolution of the alphabet. Many
of these writing, lettering, and
typography styles correspond
with important historical
trends, reecting the external
forces that shape the alphabets
prevailing forms.
lettering & type 8
100 A.D. 200 300
OLD ROMAN CURSIVE
An early script used for informal writing.
ROMAN RUSTICS
Quicker, slightly less formal styles than Trajan letters
typically written with a pen or brush.
CLASSICAL ROMAN LETTERING
Formal Roman alphabet fully developed and in use, as exemplied
by the inscription on Trajans Column in Rome.
roman
often correspond with challenges and revisions to social and artistic standardsthe
Industrial Revolution, the years between the two world wars, and the development of
the personal computer all correspond to fertile and experimental periods in lettering
and typography. The early Middle Ages were no exception, as a wide variety of new
lettering styles and alphabets proliferated in Europe. Since the central authority and
inuence of Rome had dissolved, an increasing number of regional variations on the
alphabet developed around local inuences, Christian writing styles, and the angular
letterforms of northern Europe.
During this time, monks and scribes kept alive the basic structure of the
roman alphabet through the copying of manuscripts and books, including Greek,
Roman, and especially Christian texts. Some of these source manuscripts contained
ornamental initial capitals at the beginnings of pages or verses. As monks transcribed
the words of the gospels and manuscripts, they began, particularly in the British
Isles, to create extravagantly embellished initials and title pages whose lettering owed
little to the Roman tradition. These Insular artists treated letters abstractly, distorting
and outlining their forms to ll them with color, pattern, and imagery. Some of the
wildly inventive shapes are more decorative than legiblethese pages were meant
to be looked at more than read. The clergy, who already knew the gospel openings by
heart, and a predominantly illiterate society could view the exquisite lettering of these
incipit (opening) pages as visual manifestations of Gods word.
The wide variety of highly personalized, decorative, and irregular letters
that proliferated during these years reect Europes fractured and isolated political
environment. In 800 ad, Charlemagne briey reunited western Europe under
the banner of the Holy Roman Emperor. Consciously invoking Imperial Rome,
For more on the evolution of the
roman alphabet and typography,
see Nicolete Gray, A History
of Lettering (Oxford: Phaidon
Press, 1986); Johanna Drucker,
The Alphabetic Labyrinth
(New York: Thames and
Hudson, 1999); Gerrit Noordzij,
Letterletter (Point Roberts, WA:
Hartley and Marks, 2000); and
Harry Carter, A View of Early
Typography (London: Hyphen
Press, 2002).
9 context
500 600 700
HALF-UNCIALS
Alphabets with ascenders and descenders that use
both cursive and uncial forms.
INSULAR, MEROVINGIAN STYLES
New styles from the British Isles and
France that are less rooted in Roman
tradition.
CHRISTIAN STYLES
Looser compositions and lettering
inuenced by the Greek alphabet.
late roman & christian insular
UNCIALS
Formal book hands that synthesize elements of
Roman capitals, cursives, and rustics.
Charlemagne revived political and social practices of the Roman Empire, including
Roman lettering styles. His court letterers resurrected the forms of classical Roman
capitals, using the letters intellectual associations to give the Holy Roman Empire a
mantle of legitimacy.
The major alphabetic legacy of this Carolingian period is its minuscule writing
style. Distantly related to half-uncial scripts used by the Romans, the Carolingian
minuscule developed as a standard book hand meant to replace the fragmented
writing styles of western Europe. Carolingian minuscule is a clear, classical writing
style whose steady rhythm is punctuated by straight and decisive ascenders and
descenders. The minuscule would eventually evolve into the contemporary lowercase
alphabet, and todays readers can easily read and recognize most of its shapes.
Although the minuscule did not immediately catch on throughout the
continent, its impact was felt centuries later through the work of Renaissance writers
and artists. Italian humanist scholars and letterers moved away from the prevailing
gothic styles that had supplanted the Carolingian minuscule, turning once again to
ancient Rome and its classical letterforms. Their new, humanist writing style synthe-
sized minuscule and Romanesque gothic forms with the roundness, openness, and
regularity of classical Roman lettering. These lettera antica reect a renewed interest
in classical Roman and Greek art, literature, and design. It was this style that Italian
printers would translate into type later in the fteenth century.
While the rst European metal typefaces directly copied the pen-written
structure of gothic letters, some Italian typographers were beginning to distill
typographic letterforms from their handwritten cousins. Venetian printers such
as Nicolas Jenson (c. 14201480) and Aldus Manutius (c. 14501515) designed and
Gothic lettering, c. 1497
Giacomo Filippo Foresti
Sharp, pen-drawn gothic
lettering was used throughout
Europe in the late Middle Ages.
Writing and lettering styles
such as Rotunda, Bastarda,
Fraktur, and Textura (shown
here) were translated into
some of the earliest European
typefaces, and they remained in
use in some countries well after
the popularization of humanist
letterforms.
1000 1100 900
CAROLINGIAN STYLES
Along with Carolingian minuscule, a general
revival of classical Roman letter styles.
POST-CAROLINGIAN STYLES
Forms inuenced by, but starting to diverge from, Carolingian traditions.
ROMANESQUE
New, experimental forms showing
increased contrastprecursors to
gothic styles.
carolingian / holy roman empire romanesque
CAROLINGIAN MINUSCULE
A new alphabet partially based on half-uncial scriptthe
origins of todays lowercase alphabet.
commissioned some of the early and most inuential roman typefaces. Though
informed by lettera antica, these typographers did not merely imitate existing
writing. Instead, they regularized their letters into shapes that are more sculpted
than handwritten. This transformation from writing to type reected a classical and
rationalist approach, but, as signicantly, it emphasized the new tools and methods
used to produce type. Carving and ling away the shapes of metal typefaces brought a
new mechanization to letters that untethered type from the pen and set the stage for
developments that followed.
Fifteenth-century Venice was a center of Renaissance trade and printing, and
the widely admired designs of the Venetian printers roman type spread throughout
Europe. Looking beyond the handwritten form, European printers and typographers
continued to rationalize the alphabet. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth
century, type became progressively more structured and abstract. Type designers such
as William Caslon, Pierre Simon Fournier, and John Baskerville created typefaces that
moved farther away from the pen-written letter. Giambattista Bodoni, Firmin Didot,
and others developed intensely rationalist typefaces that owe more to mechanical
construction than to the uidity of handwriting. These transitional and modern
typefaces include few of early types ligatures and alternate glyphs, which were meant
to impersonate the motion and eccentricities of handwriting.
As typography became more rationalized, some letterers moved in the
opposite direction. By the sixteenth century, type had eliminated much of the need
for scribes and copyists. To distinguish their art from typography, master letterers
created writing manuals that taught intricate forms of cursive handwriting to an
expanding literate class. These writing and lettering styles exhibit Mannerist and
Ornate gothic capitals,
c. 1524
Giovanni Antonio Tagliente
The decorative ourishes
and geometric motifs of this
Mannerist calligraphy are
a prelude to the even more
amboyant lettering that
European writing masters
would create in the following
century.
11 context
1300 1400 1500
GOTHIC
Angular, compressed book hands that are
often paired with ornate, rounded capitals.
HUMANIST
A balanced writing style synthesizing Carolingian and
Romanesque hands with classical Roman forms and proportions.
RENAISSANCE TYPE
Movable type expressing Italian printers
classical and humanist design sensibilities.
ITALICS, MANNERISM
Script hands and type with more
exaggerated forms and axes.
renaissance gothic
Baroque tendenciesexaggerations in form and axisand their scripts incorporate
ornamental swashes and elaborate ourishes that cannot be mistaken for metal
type. Fraktur, the gothic counterpart to Mannerist and Baroque styles, mixes angular
pen-drawn forms with high-contrast, often extraneous embellishments. Created as
both lettering and type, Frakturs broken letters remained popular in the Germanic
countries long after roman styles became the norm elsewhere in Europe.
As the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
accelerated Western societys commercial aspect, it dramatically affected the forms
and uses of type and lettering. Signage for businesses and buildings took on a more
prominent role, and the demand for novel letterforms increased. During this period,
type designers began looking beyond traditional typography and classical writing to
the less-restrained work of lettering artists and sign painters. Certain gothic styles
were revived, and new, fanciful takes on decorative lettering found widespread use.
Making use of technologies such as wood type, foundries and designers exaggerated
and reinterpreted modern letters in outrageous and inventive ways, creating radically
bold fat faces, whose thick, ink-hungry strokes made them a prominent xture on
advertisements and other printed materials.
Fat faces and other imaginative new styles made the nineteenth century one
of type designs most fertile periods and laid the groundwork for contemporary
display lettering. Perhaps the most important development of this time was the
sans serif letter. While classical and isolated instances of sans serif lettering exist
throughout Western history (many Greek inscriptions lack obvious serifs) unserifed
forms had not caught on among letterers or type designers. A neoclassical revival of
Greek culture and architecture coincided with the insatiable desire for fresh styles
lettering & type 12
3. Nicolete Gray, A History of
Lettering (Oxford: Phaidon
Press, 1986), 173.
4. William Morris, Art and
Its Producers (republished
from the essay of the same
title, 1901, by the William
Morris Internet Archive, www.
marxists.org/archive/morris).
1700 1800
1900 2000
FRAKTUR
A gothic blackletter style used mainly in
northern European countries.
BAROQUE, ROCOCO
Letters in which the axis varies widely as type
moves farther from its origins; increasingly
embellished letters.
MODERN/NEOCLASSICAL
Rationalized letterforms with a vertical
axis and increased stroke contrast.
ADVERTISING TYPE
Bold, extreme, and experimental letters,
often ornamental or geometric.
ARTS AND CRAFTS
A revival of handcrafted forms inspired
by classical and medieval styles.
nineteenth-
centURY
neoclassical baroque
modern movements
ART NOUVEAU
Organic, uid, and expressive
letterforms.
DE STIJL
Elemental, geometric, and
grid-based letters.
BAUHAUS
MODERNISM
Geometric and
mechanical forms.
Rationalized, precise
forms, putting Bauhaus
ideals into practice.
PSYCHEDELIA,
POP REVIVALISM
Warped letterforms and
a revival of nineteenth-
century styles.
POSTMODERNISM
Deconstructed type and
digital experiments.
DADA
Lettering and type that celebrate
the chaotic and absurd.
and likely played a role in the invention of nineteenth-century sans serif
letters,
3
which began to appear in the work of sign painters and letterers.
New media and applications such as router-cut wood type and sculptural
signage were ideally suited to no-nonsense sans serif forms.
The unbridled commercialism and laissez-faire approach to
nineteenth-century letters inevitably provoked a backlash. Artists of the
Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and similar movements returned in the
late 1800s to the artisan production values of the early Renaissance and
pre-printing era, emphasizing craft above commercialism. Calligraphers
and typographers like Edward Johnston (18721944) and William Morris
(18341896) dismissed the mass-produced, typically crude fat faces
in favor of humanist, often hand-drawn letterforms. Many of these
artists viewed their work in a communitarian lightWilliam Morris
saw handcraft as a tool to vanquish the great intangible machine
of commercial tyranny which oppresses the lives of all of us.
4
Such
renewed faith in the handmade caused letterers to gravitate toward a
more personal and organic alphabet, reviving both gothic and humanist
traditions. An increasing number of artists, architects, and other
A Lecture!
Broadside, 1853
In place of classical typographys reserved palette
of font styles, nineteenth-century printers
combined many outlandish, unrelated fonts. This
American poster mashes together novel styles such
as slab serifs, fat faces, and decorative typefaces.
Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections
Division.
nontraditional letterers began to move letterforms into a more abstract realm beyond
the conventional shapes of the roman alphabet.
The mechanized brutality of World War I effectively ended the Art Nouveau
movement and ushered in several new strains of lettering and typographic experi-
mentation. Dadaists and Futurists sought to destroy the meaning of language by
pushing the boundaries of legibility and readability. Modernist designers in the
de Stijl movement and at the Bauhaus experimented with scrupulously geometric
interpretations of the alphabet that removed all humanist traces from their letter-
forms. Melding the machine age with populist and socialist ideals, Bauhaus designers
attempted to create pure and mechanical forms of the alphabet, unencumbered by
historys baggage.
Like the renements applied to the roman alphabet in the late Renaissance, the
technological advances and experimentation of the avant-garde found a more rened
and practical voice in the mid-twentieth century. Typefaces like Helvetica and Univers
embody a modernized, postwar society pushing toward a more utopian outlook. It
is not too much of a stretch to say that the same forces of order and afuence that
midwifed the Roman uppercase and Renaissance typography informed midcentury
modernist type design.
Through the twentieth century and to the present, cycles of experimentation
and codication have grown progressively shorter. Midcentury modernism was
rejected by the psychedelic styles of the 1960s. Psychedelia was in turn co-opted
as pop typography and was followed in quick succession by postmodernism and
digital typography. The compression of typographic history is reected in contem-
porary lettering and type. The 1990s modernist revival, digital experimentation, and
a reinvigoration of handmade lettering have all taken place against the backdrop
of the internet, where the entire history of type and lettering rests at designers
ngertips. Myriad styles live side by side in an exponentially growing volume of
online content, while words and letters play an even more central role in day-to-day
life. Simultaneously, the knowledge and tools for conceiving lettering and type have
become more accessible, spreading to a more diverse section of the population.
Although the power to dene and dictate the standards of the alphabet is less concen-
trated, it is no less potent.
Typographic Collage
from Les mots en libert
futuristes
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti,
1919
Jan Tschicholds universal alphabet, designed in
1929, uses only straight lines and circles to build the
letters and phonetic marks of this single-case font.
Opposite:
Biennale de la Jeune
Creation
Fannette Mellier, 2006
Digital color calibration marks
become lettering on this art
exhibition poster.
15 context
systems &
type-ologies
Systems
Any lettering or type is based on a system. Like a moral code for the alphabet,
typographic systems are sets of visual rules and guidelines that govern the actions
and decisions involved in creating letters. These implicit systems enable characters to
work together, by regulating and dening their appearancedictating their shapes
and sizes, how they t together, and their visual spirit, as well as all other underlying
tenets of the letters. Lacking a strong code, a lettering treatment or typeface rarely
leads a successful life.
Analyzing and dening a typographic system is a bit like playing Twenty
Questions. Instead of Animal, vegetable, or mineral? one might ask, Serif, sans
serif, or mixed? Are the characters all the same width, or do they vary from letter to
letter? If there are serifs, what shapes do they take? Are the round characters at sided
or curved? Do the letters lock together, or are the spaces between them irregular?
The more questions one asks and answers, the better one can understand or create a
typographic system. A well-established system constitutes the core of any typeface.
Either consciously or unconsciously, type designers build and follow rules
that direct the myriad choices involved in creating a font. If a designer elects to draw
letters with very round curves, this decision affects every curved character in the
alphabet. If one or two letters do not reect the systems curves, they appear uncom-
fortable and out of place within the font. Even relatively minor choices like the size
of an is dot are telegraphed throughout the character set. Each decision that affects
an alphabets visual code or the way that any letters relate to each other is part of the
typographic system. By closely adhering to a system, a designer creates a typeface
whose characters interact in a natural and consistent way.
Matchstick Alphabet
(detail)
Alphabet, 2008
Lusine Sargsyan
Matchsticks radiate from
letter skeletons formed by the
bright red match tips, creating
an almost three-dimensional
effect. The unusual material
unites (and potentially ignites)
the eccentric characters of this
ammable alphabet.
Above:
Miss Universum
Typeface, 2005
Hjrta Smrta
Right:
Neon letters
Alphabet, 2008 (ongoing)
Hjrta Smrta
Like a ransom note, each of
these alphabets employs a
palette of mismatched letters,
building an unconventional
typographic system based on
the random and the unique
qualities of each character.
A shared physical material
rather than the forms of the
letters unies the recycled
neon sign alphabet.
lettering & type 18
Typographic systems do not always remain static. Only the most rigid idea-
driven systems of conceptual alphabets stay completely true to their origins. For
the typical lettering treatment, alphabet, or font, the designer constantly renes
and revisits the governing system as the project progresses. Sometimes a specic
character presents new challenges to the system, forcing the designer to revise the
parameters. New letters or words might suggest improved solutions to previously
drawn forms. Creating lettering and type is a lengthy process involving numerous
revisions to individual characters as well as to the typographic system.
As one-of-a-kind creations, lettering and handwriting accept more elastic
relationships between the characters, but systems govern them much as they do
typefaces. Unlike type, each lettered or written character is created for the specic
instance or word in which it is used, allowing the designer greater leeway to dene
the system. Since the letters themselves do not have to adapt to multiple situations,
their forms can be much more specic or unique. A lettering treatment may even
contain many versions of a single character that are visually united through the style
or personal hand of the letterer. Since the visual relationships between letters are the
engine of any lettering system, a consistent visual framework drives lettering just as
much as it does typesystems make letters work.
Freight Text
Typeface, 2005
Joshua Darden
Freights italic combines softly curved forms with angled, chiseled edges.
Sharp, wedge serifs are juxtaposed with rounded, ball-shaped terminals,
reinforcing the typefaces overall palette of round and faceted shapes.
Composite
Typeface, 2002
Bruce Willen
Distinctively shaped counters,
at-sided characters, and
selective use of slab serifs dene
the system of Composite. A
typographic system is developed
by applying these traits consis-
tently throughout the alphabet.
19 systems & type-ologies
bending the rules
Sometimes introducing
counterintuitive elements
into a typographic system
yields unexpected results.
While some other sans serifs
from the turn of the twentieth
century, such as Akzidenz
Grotesk, include a more
appropriate single-story
version of the letter, Franklin
Gothics anomalous g and the
fonts slightly exaggerated
stroke contrast give the
typeface added warmth and
individuality.
Futura: Preliminary Drawings and Final Lowercase Type
Drawings, 1925. Typeface, 1927
Paul Renner
Like similar experiments by other modernist designers, the letters of
Futura began with purely geometric circles and straight lines. The
nal typeface makes accommodations to legibility and typographic
tradition, adapting its geometric concept to the world of functional
typography. Futuras ne balance between the ideal and the
practical has sustained the typefaces popularity since its debut.
Even Futuras famously
geometric O is not perfectly
round. Slight adjustments
in stroke weight add proper
emphasis to the vertical sides
of the character.
Although Futura is based on geometric ideals, concessions such as
narrowing the width of letters and tapering strokes at connection
points improve the fonts legibility and overall functionality.
lettering & type 20
Romain du Roi
Engraved alphabet, 16921702
Louis Simonneau
The Ideal versus the Practical
Attempts to rationalize and standardize the alphabet are a recurring theme
throughout the history of lettering and typography. Countless artists, designers,
scientists, and even governments have developed model letterforms that embody
their philosophy or ideals of beauty and reect the social and technological context of
their eras.
Renaissance scholars and artists applied a newly analytical approach to
science, art, and the alphabet, drafting complex geometric templates to construct
idealized roman letters. As typography spread throughout Europe, these exercises
further deemphasized the handwritten origin of the alphabet, a trend that continued
through the following centuries.
In the 1690s at the behest of the French Acadmie des Sciences, a royal
committee began studying letter design, with the goal of developing an ofcial royal
alphabet. More than a decade later, the committee presented the resulting romain du
roi (kings roman) against a nely engraved grid (to which the letters did not always
conform). Robert Bringhurst designates the romain du roi as the rst neoclassical
typeface, because of its strict vertical axis, and the alphabets italic includes early
examples of sloped roman forms.
1
The romain du roi sought much of its inspiration in classical Roman letter-
formsconsidered the pinnacle of letter design by many artists and typographers
and idealized Roman lettering continued to inspire constructed alphabets from a
variety of sources. In the early twentieth century a new utopian model took hold, as
modernist experimenters reduced the alphabet to basic geometries of circles and
straight lines. Inuenced by the logic and efciency of modernism, designers such
as Jan Tschichold (19021974) and the Bauhauss Herbert Bayer (19001985) created
highly rationalized geometric letterforms. These alphabets were far removed from
the alphabets handwritten origins, as they imagined the letter reduced to its purest
mechanical forms.
Creating lettering or type is a tug-of-war between the ideal and the practical
the systems concept versus its functionality. The most successful typefaces and
lettering treatments nely balance the aspirations and constrictions of their concept
with the compromises, idiosyncrasies, and practicalities of application and legibility.
Renaissance designers of utopian alphabets discovered the limitations of applying an
inexible and uniform system to a fundamentally subjective and irrregular subject.
Likewise, the rigid geometries of the Bauhaus experiments found a more practical and
applicable voice in modernist typefaces such as Futura, Helvetica, and Univers, which
Underweysung Der
Messung
Constructed alphabet, 1525
Albrecht Drer
German artist Drer wrote
several treatises that
mathematically analyze
subjects as diverse as the human
form, perspective drawing,
and the alphabet. While
Drer managed to rationalize
many of the characters in this
gothic alphabet, when he was
confronted with less regular
forms, the idiosyncrasies of
handwriting crept into his
formula.
1. Robert Bringhurst, The
Elements of Typographic Style,
version 2.5 (Point Roberts,
WA: Hartley and Marks,
2002), 129.
Perhaps an ultimate expression
of mechanically inspired
type, the forms of OCR and
MICR fonts (optical character
recognition and magnetic ink
character recognition) were
rst developed in the 1950s and
1960s specically to be read by
digital scanners.
successfully infuse the hand-derived forms of the roman alphabet with rationalized
qualities. Most type designers and letterers take this pragmatic approach, balancing
their ideal system with the requirements of legibility, utility, and context.
Conceptual Alphabets and Lettering
While the majority of fonts and lettering treatments accept the practicalities of
legibility, some designers refuse to compromise their original vision and system.
These conceptual letters or alphabets rarely aim to create the most readable text,
and their letterforms occasionally lack recognizably alphabetic characteristics.
Instead, conceptual alphabets illustrate or embody ideas, sets of constraints, and
editorial perspectives, illustrating their concepts through letterforms rather than
strictly pictorial means.
All type and lettering treatments begin with a concept, whether straight-
forward or elaborate. What sets conceptual letters apart is a rigid adherence to
their guiding principles above other concerns. Sometimes these alphabets tackle
complex subjects or associations, typographically translating an abstract idea,
opinion, or process. Other conceptual letters, such as the geometrically constructed
alphabets of the Renaissance, apply a rigid formula to their structure, forcing their
forms into the constraints of an inexible system. Like performance art, many
conceptual alphabets emphasize their creation process, with the end result being
less important than how they get there. A process-oriented alphabet may force
its designer to create letterforms under a very specic set of conditions or with a
particular, sometimes unusual, set of tools.
Unlike typical fonts or letters, some conceptual alphabets do not strive to
convey a particular lettering style or look, and the result may surprise even the
alphabets creator. Conceptual letters can take the form of a lettering treatment,
word, or poster created for a particular application. Others exist only in AZ form
and are never arranged into words. An increasing number of contemporary artists
and designers view the alphabet as a subject for art and experimentation, not just a
set of tools used to convey language. Conceptual letters are dedicated to their idea
above all else.
Opposite:
Having Guts
Lettering installations, 2003
Stefan Sagmeister with
Matthias Ernstberger, Miao
Wang, and Bela Borsodi
The words in this series of
constructed lettering treat-
ments appear and vanish as
the camera angle, lighting, or
arrangement of objects changes.
Photos by Bela Borsodi.
Fire in the Hole
Alphabet, 2006
Oliver Munday
Burned and disgured toy
soldiers summon a host of outside
associations to this alphabet.
lettering & type 22
lettering & type 24
Opposite:
Slitscan Type Generator
Adobe Illustrator script, 2006
Jonathan Keller
A custom computer script automatically generates this alphabet by
slicing and recombining the letters of every font on a users computer.
The script produces different results depending on the quantity and
styles of fonts that a particular user has installed.
Below:
Years of Love
Lettering installation, 2008
Hayley Grifn
Using birdseed as her medium, the designer
executed several lettering treatments in a
Baltimore park and photographed them over
three days.
Far right:
Conjoined Font
Typeface, 2006
Post Typography
Each character in this typeface connects to
others on a square grid, turning text into a
semi-abstract typographic pattern.
Right:
Imageability: Paths, Edges, Nodes,
Districts, Landmarks
Font family, 2002
Michael Stout
Based on Kevin Lynchs classic urban planning
book, Image of the City, this series of fonts
charts the forms of the alphabet through Lynchs
ve identiers for mapping and navigating the
urban environment.
Writing, Lettering, or Type?
Writing, lettering, and type represent three distinct methods of creating letters. A
written letter or word is created with very few strokes of the writing implement
think of cursive handwriting or a hastily scrawled note. Lettering builds the form of
each character from multiple, often numerous, strokes or actionsa love note metic-
ulously carved into a tree trunk or a hand-drawn letterform in grafti, for instance.
Type is a palette of ready-made shapes, enabling the reproduction of similar- or
identical-looking letters through a single actionlike summoning digital characters
from a keyboard or pressing a rubber stamp on a sheet of paper.
Writing emphasizes quick communication and execution above appearance.
Until the development of typography and, crucially, the spread of digital correspon-
dence, handwritings relative speed and ease made it the most reasonable method for
written communication. Imagine how long it would take to carefully draw each letter
of a grocery list, and the advantages of a legible and efcient writing system become
clear. This is not to suggest that writing is unconcerned with the aesthetics of letters.
On the contrary, many handwriting methods and primers throughout the centuries
have espoused the handwriting styles that their authors considered most beautiful or
legible. The ability to write well, in terms of aesthetics as well as articulateness, was
regarded as an integral part of literacy and education.
Lettered characters are constructed through multiple actions and may
involve several tools or processes. A digitally drawn logo, a neon sign, and a chiseled
inscription on a church doorway are all examples of lettering. Like writing, lettering
is a one-of-a-kind creation, designed for a specic application. Even master letterers
cannot duplicate exactly the same form from one instance to anothervariations
inevitably occur. Lettering differs from handwriting in that its main focus is usually
on technique and visual appearance. While speed may be important, it is generally
less so than the end product. More than it does in writing and type, context inuences
the way lettering looks. The uniqueness of each lettering treatment allows its designer
exibility and creativity to respond to a given context in very specic ways. Letters
can be compressed, warped, or interlocked to t a particular space. Words can be
built from the most appropriate medium or material, from pencil to stainless steel to
chocolate syrup.
This faded, hand-lettered
sign reveals the multiple
brushstrokes used to build each
character. Although it lacks
the dening characteristics
of type, careful lettering can
mimic typography.
No War
Monumental lettering, 2003
Verena Gerlach
Designed to protest the war in Iraq, this lettering installation
uses a matrix of lit windows to form letters. The words
become legible as building occupants leave for the evening
and switch off (or leave on) the lights in each room.
Sketchbook pages
Calligraphy, 20062007
Letman (Job Wouters)
Some calligraphy blurs the line between handwriting and
lettering. As letterforms grow more polished and embellished,
they become more lettering-like. In some cases the artists
intent may be the only distinction between an expertly
written paragraph and a quickly lettered word.
lettering & type 28
Lettered or written characters that can be reproduced and rearranged become
type. Type unites the detail and formality of lettering with the speed and ease of
handwriting. The ability to create and reproduce preexisting characters through a
single action differentiates type from writing and lettering. Reproduction methods
have varied and evolved over the centuries. Metal and wood typefaces, rub-down
transfer letters, typewriters, rubber stamps, stencils, photo lettering, and digital
fonts are all examples of type. Types strength and beauty lie in its ability to look the
same in any context. One can type an A thousands of times and achieve a consistent
result, yet writing or lettering the same character will produce variations. Type also
constitutes a system of powerful relationships, which transform a palette of shapes
into a true kit of parts capable of endless recombinations. Like any set of tools, type
has power that is measured not just by individual elements but also by how the parts
work together. Unlike lettered and written characters, each typographic glyph must
be ready to redeploy into a new word formation at any time.
Thanks to digital technologies, typography has usurped many of writings
long-held roles. It is much faster and more practical to write letters, take notes, or
chart nances by typing on a computer than by handwriting these communications.
Likewise, graphic designers have replaced lettering artists with digital fonts that
can quickly reproduce effects similar, though not usually equal, to custom lettering.
The loss of personality and individuality found in handwriting and lettering is an
unfortunate side effect of the proliferation of type. Nonetheless, an exponentially
growing library of new and more sophisticated typefaces keeps increasing the range
of types voice.
Los Feliz
Typeface, 2002
Christian Schwartz with
Zuzana Licko and Rudy
VanderLans, Emigre.
Original sign lettering by
Cosmo Avila
Los Feliz is based on hand-
lettered signs on an auto parts
store in Los Angeles. The nal
typeface retains many of the
idiosyncrasies of the original
lettering, but standardizes
them into a more regular
system.
Photos by Matthew Tragesser.
Quick cursive and print hands
are two common forms of
writing. As characters become
more painstakingly executed
or constructed, they become
lettering. Type occasionally
mimics writing or lettering
styles with its ready-made
palette of shapes.
writing
lettering
type
taper The thinning in or out of a
stroke, usually found at a join
cap height
x-height
baseline
ascender
descender
counter
serif
stem / vertical stroke
bowl
join The area where two strokes intersect
dot
apex
vertex
diagonal / diagonal stroke
leg
waist
spine
arm
tail
shoulder
eye
spur
nial
aperture
accent mark / diacritic
stroke A single mark and motion of the writing
implement; when applied to type or built-up
lettering, the term is more gurative
swash
connecting stroke
beak
punctuation
nial
tail
crossbar
crossbar /
horizontal stroke
terminal
descent
foot For more lettering and type
terms and denitions, see the
Glossary on pages 126127.
lettering & type 30
letter structure
reexive A serif that implies an abrupt
change in the direction of the
stroke, such as that found at the
feet of most roman letters
A serif that suggests a
continuous motion into or
out of a stroke, such as on
most italics
bilateral serif unilateral serif
unbracketed / abrupt serif bracketed / adnate serif
transitive
calligraphic serif,
asymmetrical
bracketed
serif
cupped serif
wedge serif unbracketed
serif
slab serif
clarendon
(bracketed slab)
latin
tuscan
antique tuscan
teardrop
terminal
ball terminal,
bracketed
ball terminal,
unbracketed
sheared
terminal
beak
text serifs
display serifs and nineteenth-century styles
terminals
serifs and terminals
represent the entrance and exit
marks of the pen. The origins
of various serif shapes relate to
different writing styles, tools, pen
angles, and amounts of pressure.
By the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the forms of serifs and
terminals had become detached from
their calligraphic origins, as type
designers and sign painters treated
serifs as separate ornamental or
geometric elements.
axis refers to the angle of emphasis
within a letter or stroke. Letters or
typefaces with modulated strokes
have areas of thicks and thins,
visible in rounded characters like
the o or a. Typefaces derived from
broad-nibbed pen writing typically
have a diagonal axis that reects the
angle of the pens tip. Multiple axes
can exist within the same font or
letter. Axis differs from slope, which
refers to the angle or slant of an
italic or oblique font.
(See also Angle of Translation
on page 52.)
contrast is the amount of
variation from thick to thin
within and between the strokes of
a character. Without any contrast
or stroke modulation, letters
suffer from uneven color, and their
horizontal strokes appear optically
thicker than their stems.
The x-height is the vertical
measurement of a lowercase letters
main body, usually dened by
the x. It differs from typeface to
typeface. Increasing a fonts x-height
increases the apparent size of the
letters and generally improves
legibility at small sizes. An exces-
sively large x-height can have the
opposite effect, reducing the overall
readability of word shapes and
making the letters seem graceless.
An x-height that is too small can
produce letters that look top-heavy
or stunted.
Rounded characters and pointed serifs extend slightly
above the cap height or x-height and dip just below the
baseline. These subtle overshoots optically compensate
for the softness or pointedness of the formswithout
an overshoot these characters would appear smaller
than the at or squared letters.
Ascenders may
be taller than
the cap height.
The x-height is
generally greater
than half of the
cap height.
lettering & type 32
adobe garamond adobe jenson dolly
baskerville didot futura helvetica
scala sans
low contrast
scala
medium contrast
Letters drawn with no
stroke contrast
didot
high contrast
Type and Lettering Classification
Like scientic classication, the categorization of letters and type enables one to
better analyze and understand their traits, forms, and history. Printers and type
historians rst devised classication systems in the nineteenth century, providing
order and categorization to an exploding menu of new type styles. The categories
generally correspond to periods of art and intellectual history, from the humanist
faces rst used during the Renaissance to the transitional fonts of the neoclassical
period. Different type foundries and scholars gave their own labels to letter classes,
and the specic names and descriptions continue to generate disagreement today.
Sans serif letters alone have been referred to as grotesks, grotesques, gothics, dorics,
antiques, and lineals. The actual terms of classication, however, are less important
than the characteristics and systems that they represent. One does not have to know
the scientic term for a dog to know that it barks.
At their most useful, categories of lettering and type represent sets of
attributes shared by many typefaces and lettering treatments. These classes give
designers and typographers a solid starting point for discussing and analyzing
typographic systems. Type categories are guideposts only, since their borders are not
absolute. While most letter examples can t into a single category, many defy neat
classication. Just because the attributes of scripts and slab serifs seem incom-
patible does not mean that slab serif script letters do not exist. Some transitional
or geometric sans serifs exhibit humanist inuences, while semi serif or mixed
serif fonts live with one foot in the serif and the other in the sans serif world. As
experimentation continues, letterers and type designers are not constrained by the
boundaries of traditional type categories.
Humanist / Old Style
Renaissance- and Baroque-era type designers looked to Roman lettering and calligraphy as
inspiration for their typefaces. These humanist letterforms incorporate elements of calligraphic
handwriting such as the diagonal axis of the broad-nibbed pen and the softened, wedge serifs that
replicate the pen strokes starting point. Type designers continue to create contemporary revivals
and interpretations of humanist forms.
Transitional / Neoclassical
Transitional serif letters retain humanist traces, yet their forms are more ordered and rationalized
than old style characters. These rationalized features usually include a vertical axis, increased stroke
contrast, and details that appear formalized and constructed, like symmetrical serifs.
Modern / Didone
Typefaces like Bodoni and Didot modernize and streamline the forms of the alphabet, pushing
them farther from their humanist origins. Modern letters have a strictly vertical axis, heightened
or extreme stroke contrast, and serifs that feel mechanically drawn or constructed rather than
smoothly written.
Slab Serif / Egyptian
As their name implies, slab serif letters possess squared-off serifs that abruptly extend from the
characters main strokes. First developed in the early nineteenth century for signage and advertising
printing, the slab serif, with its relatively uniform stroke weight, was a counterpart to the extreme
stroke contrast of the popular Ultra Bodoni styles.
Clarendon
Clarendons are a specic subset of slab serif letters. Where the typical Egyptians serifs terminate
in angled, abrupt connections, a clarendons serifs are bracketed (adnate) so that the serifs ow
smoothly into the stem of the letterform. Many clarendons bear similarities to transitional and
modern forms, exhibiting greater stroke variation than typical slab serifs.
Humanist Sans Serif
Though sans serif type and lettering did not become popular until the twentieth century, examples
of sans serif lettering exist in some Renaissance inscriptions and have precedent in classical Greek
letterforms. The modulated stroke weight, greater contrast, and true italic versions of humanist
sans serif letters convey a calligraphic inuence, which in some cases even includes ared terminals
that suggest serifs.
Transitional Sans Serif / Industrial or Realist Sans Serif
Transitional sans serif fonts, like their nineteenth-century counterpart, the slab serif, were
developed as advertising display type, based on the work of contemporary sign painters. While
the letter shapes are similar to serif forms, most of the handwritten qualities are missing, giving
transitional sans serifs a more detached, functional quality. Typically, transitional sans serifs lack a
true italic, display low stroke contrast, and appear rationalized and constructed.
Geometric Sans Serif
Based on geometric rather than humanist forms, the characters of geometric sans serifs are
constructed around a basic set of elementstypically circles, triangles, and straight lines. This rigid
design approach frequently imparts a modular and mathematical spirit to the letterforms. Although
these alphabets were rst developed in the early twentieth century, the proportions of some
geometric sans serif letters bear a resemblance to those of classical Roman capitals.
Half Block / Octagonal
Another style popularized by nineteenth-century sign painters and wood type makers, half blocks
are formed around an octagonal shape, using straight lines. While the angularity of their facets gives
half blocks a geometric or machined quality, the use of straight lines to suggest complex curves can
lend an unexpected subtlety to some letterforms.
Script / Cursive
Scripts include many lettering styles, from calligraphic to brush lettering to even mechanical
and geometric letterforms. More than other type or lettering styles, scripts and cursives directly
reference the handwritten origin of the alphabet. As in cursive handwriting, a connecting stroke
often joins adjacent forms, creating words that ow from letter to letter. Reecting the handwriting
process, scripts generally employ italic rather than roman letterforms.
Organic
Organic letterforms generally convey a human-made or natural origin. Their forms usually feel
spontaneous, loose, or even grown, rather than built up and mechanically constructed. While many
organic typefaces or letters can also be considered decorative, some fonts are surprisingly readable at
text sizes and have a warm, handwritten feel.
Blackletter / Old English / Gothic
Gothic lettering styles were widely used throughout medieval Europe, and Johannes Gutenberg
employed a gothic Textura as the rst European printing type. Gothic letterforms unrepentantly
display the strokes of the broad-nibbed pen, and the capitals are frequently ornamental and nely
detailed. Poor legibility and strong associations conne most contemporary gothics to the realm of
display lettering and type.
Decorative / Display / Ornamental
Decorative or display letters include any type or lettering with embellished or decorative forms.
While they often exhibit attributes of other classes, display letters are specically meant to be used
at large sizes where their detailed or unconventional features work best. Since custom lettering is
better suited than type to creating detailed, ornamental, or monumental letterforms, contemporary
lettering often falls into this broad category.
Type designers and letterers develop and follow
typographic systems that guide the shapes of
their letters. These underlying systems provide a
structure for stringing together the inconsistent
forms of the alphabet. A typographic system is
also a formula for addressing new or unexpected
shapes and situations.
Imagine that the ctional characters
on this page are recent additions to the roman
alphabet. How might a designer convincingly
adapt these characters to an existing typeface
with a well-dened system? Choosing several
existing fonts (such as Franklin Gothic, Sabon,
and Bodoni), closely analyze their traits and
underlying system. Using their existing letter-
forms as a guide, draw each ctional character
as if it were a member of the character set in the
fonts that you have chosen. Whether a designer
is constructing an a or a , typographic systems
provide guideposts for creating letterforms.
lettering by sara frantzman, based on adobe garamond
Exercise based on a tutorial by Jonathan Hoeer originally posted on www.typophile.com.
Look at related shapes and letters as a guide
for designing new forms. Where do the stroke
emphasis and axis occur? How round are the
curves? Which direction do serifs face? How
tall are the ascenders and descenders?
Exercise: Fictional Characters
Some alphabet letters come in
multiple avors. The two-story
and single-story versions of
the lowercase a and g are used
interchangeably, and some lettering
treatments or fonts employ
less-common cursive versions
of letters like S and Q. Specic
typographic systems, constraints,
or styles dictate which version of
a letterform is most appropriate.
Script and italic alphabets
frequently differ greatly from their
roman counterparts; most true
italics employ a single-story a, and
many use a single-story g.
Even the dot of an i can speak
volumes for a typographic system.
Dots may be circular, square,
lopsided, calligraphic, or an unusual
shape. The height of the dot above
the stem and how it corresponds
to the dots of punctuation marks
affect the overall characteristics of
a system.
franklin
gothic
futura
adobe
garamond
united
Dolly
Drawings for typeface, 2001
Underware
While the evolution of type design
has progressed from handwriting-
derived forms toward ever more
structural letter styles, some
contemporary designers, especially
in the Netherlands, have returned
to the calligraphic origins of typog-
raphy. Dolly (used to set the text
of this book) is unabashedly based
on pen-written lettering, giving it
warmth and approachability.
futura
futura book
Book Typefaces
Book typefaces are the foundation of all typography. That the term book describes
an entire genre of type, lettering, and handwriting is no accident. Fifteenth-
century European printers rst developed type based on formal writing styles used
to reproduce manuscripts and books. These early typefaces translated the book
hands of scribes into cast metal, creating new forms that did not merely imitate
handwriting but also reinterpreted and regularized it. As this new technology
replaced labor-intensive hand copying, typography sparked and enabled the almost
universal literacy now taken for granted in many parts of the world. Despite the
thousands of new and experimental font styles designed over the last two hundred
years, serif book typefaces are the most read classes of letterforms, comprising the
body type of most books and periodicals and many websites.
As the name implies, book typefaces are meant for setting large quantities of
text at a single point size. Primary concerns for designers of book type are legibility
and readabilitythe visual distinctions between each character and how well the
letters convey their messages over the course of sentences and volumes. Since book
type is typically used to set lengthy texts, the readability and visual ow of long
passages is as important as the legibility of single words. Legibility studies have
shown that the shapes and outlines of words are as important for comprehension as
the forms of the letters themselves.
2
Individual capital letters may be more legible
than lowercase, but uppercase sentences or paragraphs become more difcult to
read without the distinctive up-and-down rhythm of the lowercase alphabet. The
lowercase design is the most crucial element of a book typeface.
While serif fonts account for the bulk of book typefaces, many sans serif
faces also work well as body copy. A well-made sans serif book face is no less legible
than a serif font, although some readers have indicated a preference for serif type
in long texts.
3
Sans serif book typefaces contain many nuances that facilitate their
functionality at small point sizes. Book sans serifs typically have looser letterspacing
than their all-purpose siblings, as well as increased tapering where two strokes meet.
Some sans serif faces even add calligraphic forms to increase letter differentiation
Before the development of photolithographic printing and
digital typography, type was a three-dimensional object. To
compose the text of books and periodicals, typographers placed
each piece of metal or wood type by hand (or later by using a
linecasting machine such as a Linotype). The at area of a piece
of type that makes contact with the paper is the types face.
Some font families include a
specic book style that differs
from its roman font and is
meant for setting small text.
lettering & type 38
2. Rolf F. Rehe, Legibility, in
Graphic Design and Reading:
Explorations of an Uneasy
Relationship, ed. Gunnar
Swanson (New York:
Allworth Press, 2000).
3. Ibid.
Opposite top:
Arnhem
Typeface, 19982002
Fred Smeijers, OurType
Some recent type designers
have designed darker book
faces that recapture the
robustness of letterpress
printing. Arnhem, originally
created for a Dutch
newspaper, combines sharp
detailing with a solid stroke
weight and compact width.
Page from De Re Rustica
Printed roman type, 1472
Nicholas Jenson
Early printed books mixed type
with hand-lettered initials,
ornaments, and punctuation.
Special Collections, University of
Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.
(such as a serifed capital I), more pronounced stroke contrast, and true italics. These
distinctions improve the reproduction and legibility of small-scale sans serif type.
Small sizes are where book letters do most of their work. Typographers
typically use book typefaces at sizes between six and twelve points. (This text is set at
nine points.) As letters get smaller or more distant, ne details blur and disappear.
Hairline serifs dissolve, and small openings close. Subtle modulation becomes lost
among letters of uniform stroke weight. This is especially true at minute printing
sizes, as viscous ink ows outward and expands into the paper. Most book type
avoids extremely delicate detailing, or it harnesses the degradation process purpose-
fully. Some fonts incorporate expanded counters and apertures to retain legibility;
others possess sharp serifs, meant to round and retreat at small sizes; and some allow
the printing process to soften their angular forms. Book faces often employ more
generous widths and letterspacing to enhance legibility and readability.
A reader comparing book typefaces will notice that they all have a relatively
similar range of typographic weight and color. Certain weights of text are easier to
read than othersa novel printed entirely in an extra bold or lightweight font would
drive away readers by the dozen. If one squints at a page of text, the paragraphs
appear as gray blocks. Bolder fonts create a dark gray, while lighter fonts look paler.
Some designers and typographers prefer light, airy pages while others favor denser,
more solid text. Many early printed books featured dark pages of muscular letterforms
that emulated the layout and spacing of handwritten manuscripts. As production
techniques improved, it became possible to design type that retained ne detail
through repeated inking and printing, allowing for lighter, sharper letters and pages.
Whether their book type is delicate or sturdy, most designers adhere to the
idea that text typefaces are reserved containers for conveying written language.
Design historian Beatrice Warde famously compared good typography to a clear
crystal goblet, an unobtrusive vessel that allows one to appreciate and focus on the
designs content.
4
While convincing arguments may be made against this maxim,
especially about display lettering, book types primary goal is still to effectively serve
and present its content.
Scala and Scala Sans
Type family, 19901993
Martin Majoor, FontFont
The serif and sans serif versions
of Scala both work well as text
typefaces. Calligraphic and
humanist elements give Scala
Sans a classical countenance
while softening its forms.
4. Beatrice Warde, The
Crystal Goblet or Printing
Should Be Invisible, in
Looking Closer 3: Classic
Writings on Graphic Design,
edited by Michael Bierut,
Jessica Helfand, Steven
Heller, and Rick Poynor
(New York: Allworth
Press, 1999).
Bald Is Beautiful
T-shirt graphic, 2007
Nolen Strals
Many instances of successful display lettering are created
for a one-time, site-specic use. Unlike type, which must
function in multiple combinations and environments,
display letters can adopt very individualized forms and
arrangements to best suit their setting.
Display Lettering and Type
More so than small-scale book type, display lettering expresses the tone and spirit
of a design. Although book styles can function at display sizes (and vice versa),
display letters are different animals, designed for different purposes. As far back as
Imperial Rome, sign painters and stone carvers employed lettering styles separate
from the cursive and book hands of scribes. The classical capital letters carved into
Roman edices convey highly formalized elegance and detailing that match their
monumental application. Since display letters mean to call attention to themselves,
often at large sizes, designers creating display lettering or type have invented many
ornamental and wildly unorthodox styles and treatments over the centuries.
Display lettering is found in posters, signs, web banners, magazine headlines,
logos, grafti, and countless other applications where the letters themselves must
attract notice or convey an idea. Like book type and writing, display lettering is meant
to be read, but display letters also set the visual and intellectual stage for the texts
content. An uninected sans serif headline in all caps might impart a modernist or
rational feeling to a poster, while the same headline created with ornate, decorative
letters could add a sense of obsession, opulence, or fussiness. Understanding such
associations allows designers, letterers, and typographers to harness them to convey
very specic moods and ideas using only the alphabet.
Good Stories
Magazine, 1899
The highly ornamented
lettering on this masthead
tells a story of its own.
Functional serif book
type is used for the small
text, contrasting with the
dominant display lettering to
produce a visual hierarchy.
Freight Big
Freight Text
Typefaces, 2005
Joshua Darden
Renements in stroke weight, contrast, and serif
detailing differentiate the display font, Freight
Big (shown solid here), from Freights text weight
(shown in outline).
Below:
Money #1
Hand-painted sign, 2002
Steve Powers
Artist Steve Powers uses the visual
language and display lettering styles
of twentieth-century signage to
reinterpret anonymous consumerism
into a series of personal messages.
Right:
An Albatross
Poster, 2004
Seripop
Gratuitous swashes were a common
feature of 1970s display typography.
On this poster excessive swashes
mutate and sprout like kudzu
throughout the hand-lettered text.
lettering & type 44
Display letters can be serif or sans serif, wide or narrow, ultra bold or ultra
thin, extremely ornamental or uncompromisingly minimal. Hand-drawn lettering,
scrawled characters, type, and even sculptural forms built as furniture or shaped from
food can function as display. A wide range of possibilities and parameters exists for
display lettering, constricted only by a projects demands and the designers creativity.
Typographic conventions bend farther with display lettering than with book
type. Where book type must maintain basic levels of legibility to stay useful, display
lettering can conform more readily to a designers or letterers creative impulses,
design parameters, or conceptual system. Designers may feel freer to push the bound-
aries of legibility, especially with very short amounts of text. In certain cases it is justi-
able or even desirable to make readers exert themselves to decipher the content. Like
a couture gown, specic display letters might not be appropriate for all situations,
but they can convey a dramatic rst impression when used judiciously.
Letterers and typographers frequently create hierarchy by mixing display
letters with book type. A poster that screams james brown with ultra bold in-your-
face letters catches the viewers eye. After drawing the viewer in with arresting display
type, smaller book type assumes the more mundane task of announcing where to
buy concert tickets. Since display type is less adaptable and less useful at small sizes,
such partnerships between display and book letters allow compromises between
typographic eye candy and legible functionality. Designers occasionally use book type
at display sizes (generally above twelve points) to maintain consistency with body text
or to emphasize subtle design features not apparent at text size. Fonts like Matthew
Carters Bell Centennial or John Downers Vendetta reveal unorthodox detailing and
construction when blown up large.
Book type adapted for display purposes conveys a very different spirit from
that of letters made from jewelry, hotdogs, or toys. Display letterings ability to
employ any number of materials, attitudes, and techniques has given rise to an
ever-growing body of letter styles, conceptual alphabets, and inventive approaches.
Designers and artists continue to explore the possibilities of the alphabet, and their
letters speak with an endless variety of voices and tones.
rogues gallery
The characteristics that make
display letters appropriate for
use at large sizes make them
poorly suited for small text.
Subtle details and ornamen-
tation disappear, while tight
letterspacing that looks good
large causes small type to
seem cramped.
Bell Centennial
Typeface, 1978
Matthew Carter
The ink traps and detailing
added to improve the
reproduction of very small
text in telephone books become
distinctive, ornamental
elements at display sizes.
creating letters
Thinking before Drawing
No successful typeface or lettering treatment just happens. Before the pencils are
sharpened or the computer screen illuminated, there is an idea or concept. A designer
understands the content that the letters will communicate and the context in which
they will appear. The clearer this perception is, the more precise and powerful are the
projects results. A well-developed idea contributes just as much as well-constructed
characters to lettering and types successful outcome.
Letters are never neutral no matter how neutral they may look. Every style
and approach is weighted with its unique baggage. Neutrality itself, a trait often
praised in Helvetica and other modernist types, carries somewhat conicting associa-
tions of both intellectuality and blandness. The abstract nature of letters affords them
physical exibility but also opens them to the burden of countless subjective associa-
tions. Designers can summon a variety of strikingly different voices from the exact
same text simply by adjusting the letters appearance. The visual elements of letters
(style, scale, color, and the like) combine with these numerous contextual associations
to establish tone.
A designers understanding of such associations is just as important as a
rm command of the alphabets forms. Designers consciously choose styles whose
contextual relationships best complement, illuminate, or expand on the content.
Letters can work in concert with imagery. Pairing spare modernist type with a photo
of minimalist architecture reinforces the associations of both the text and the image.
Pairing elaborate, hand-drawn lettering with the same photo creates contrast and an
entirely different set of associations. Since type or lettering can communicate a very
specic perspective or tone, a grasp of these relationships is as crucial as a designers
drawing skill.
Disparate styles of letters add
their own color and connota-
tions to text. Each of these three
lettering treatments suggests a
very different kind of party.
Dishwasher Pete
Poster, 2007
Oliver Munday
Under-the-sink water
pipes become the initials of
Dishwasher Pete, an itinerant
author who spent more than a
decade attempting to hold down
dishwashing jobs in every state
in America.
Guardian Egyptian
Type family, 2005
Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz
Englands the Guardian commissioned this extensive,
proprietary font family for use in the pages of its newspaper
and magazine. Barnes and Schwartz developed multiple styles
of Guardian Egyptian for diverse applications, including
condensed fonts that allowed for longer headlines and versions
adapted for very small text. Several slight weight variations
(or grades) were created to account for ink spread on different
paper stocks and presses.
lettering & type 48
City of Brotherly Love
Ambigram, 2000
John Langdon
Ambigrams exploit the exibility of letterforms to present words
that can be read from multiple orientations. Intensive planning
and sketching are required to make the same combination of strokes
(in Love and City of Brotherly/Philadelphia) describe multiple,
dissimilar characters, from different viewpoints.
Articulate
Editorial illustration sketch, 2007
Post Typography
Thorny barbs added to a calligraphers cartouche cause the word to
take on a darker, less-positive signicance.
The Lettering Process
Very few people can jump into a typeface design or lettering treatment and produce a
perfect set of letters in one shot. Even lettering or handwriting that appears casual or
off-the-cuff is usually the result of an extended process, which might involve quickly
writing the same word dozens or hundreds of times until perfected. When creating
lettering or type, designers often begin with pencil and paper to produce a quicker,
more natural evolution that stays true to the designers handeven when the nal
letters are rendered digitally. Since the computer screens crispness adds a polished
facade to even poorly drawn characters, many letterers and type designers try to pin
down the essence of their letterforms on paper before taking them into the computer.
All letters are not created in the exact same way, but common steps are at
the heart of drawing letters for typefaces as well as custom lettering treatments. A
designers initial idea rst appears in sketch formas thumbnails in a notebook, a
rough digital layout, or perhaps a doodle on a napkin. Typically, designers go through
The Deathset
Lettering sketches for CD
cover, 2008
Nolen Strals
When creating hand-drawn
lettering, designers typically
start by drawing loose skeletons
of the characters and layout
to resolve proportions and
spacing. The letters outlines
and relationships become
gradually more dened with
each step of the process.
49 creating letters
lettering & type 50
Folk Rock and Roll
Sketches and T-shirt graphic,
2007
Wyeth Hansen
The design process often leads down unintended paths. This lettering
started as intentionally crude, analog forms, which mutated as
Hansen began to experiment with quilting-inspired digital patterns.
Unhappy with his initial computer-drawn results, Hansen redrew
all of the artwork by hand before digitally rendering the nal design.
2007 Johns Hopkins Film
Festival
3-D poster, 2007
Post Typography
To harness the 3-D effect of anaglyphic printing, two drawings of slightly different perspectives mimic
the left and right eyes points of view. Based on initial sketches, a physical model of the type tower was
built and photographed from two angles. These two photographs became reference images for the two
nal lettering treatments on the red and blue printing plates.
51 creating letters
multiple rounds of sketches in which they dene and rene their letters system and
soul. Each ensuing sketch may be slightly more detailed and polished, as the designer
resolves the letterforms and their relationships to each other. This process exposes
aws and conundrums, occasionally necessitating a return to square onewhich is
much easier to do with rough sketches than with detailed drawings. As the sketch
reaches a certain level of renement, the designer abandons looseness and makes
the transition to a nal medium or form, where the letters are inked, sculpted, cut,
digitized, or otherwise completed.
This is by no means a fast process. Lettering is slow and meticulous work. Each
stepconceiving, sketching, creating roughs, and nishing the artworkcan take
hours, days, or weeks to complete. Designers and letterers labor even over thumbnails,
honing the original design before embarking on the lengthy process of perfecting each
letters shape. The concept and sketch stages regularly take much longer than the nal
rendering. As each individual letter develops, every small adjustment is scrutinized
for how it relates to its immediate neighbors and within the overall system. A word is
more than the sum of its parts only if each letter acts purposefully.
Foundations
The same basic principles shape all letters, whether a lighthearted typeface or
an austere bespoke headline. Fundamentals of structure, proportion, and color
determine legibility, even for letters that test its limits. The rules that guide letters can
best be bent if they are rst understood.
The lowercase characters of the alphabet are the most widely used and read.
Their basic anatomy derives from centuries of letters written with a broad-nibbed
pen. This at-tipped writing tool creates areas of thicks and thins within each
character, building a pattern of contrasting emphasis that continues throughout the
alphabet. The historical source for capital letters is different, but the pens, brushes,
and chisels used to make their classical forms reect the same pattern of stroke
modulation.
Modulation creates the axis of a letter, the angle of emphasis visible in rounded
letters like the O. Through thousands of years of reading and repetition, the Western
eye has grown accustomed to the pen-drawn form of the alphabet and its slightly
sloped or vertical axis. The generally vertical stress of the pen is the reason why letters
horizontal strokes are thinner than their verticals, even in low-contrast sans serifs.
Awareness of axis and the pens emphasis provides a key for understanding the
shapes of the roman alphabet. A letter with no stroke modulation or whose horizontal
strokes are thicker than its verticals will look wrong to the reader. Occasionally
designers use such wrongness to great effect, but more frequently it betrays a poorly
constructed character.
The relationships and dimensions of individual elements within each letter
establish its proportions. Proper proportioning determines a letters stability, tone,
and legibility, and tells whether it is cut from the same cloth as its neighbors. The
white space inside and around letters (the negative space) is as important as the marks
that dene a letters structure: altering the proportions of an Rs three negative spaces,
for example, can dramatically change the properties and appearance of the letterform.
The space between characters in a word also affects how the text is perceived. Since
the eye primarily recognizes the outlines of letters, minimizing the space between
characters reduces legibility. Conversely, excessive or irregular spacing maroons
letters in a sea of white, disrupting the ow of reading.
angle of translation
The angle at which a at-tipped writing tool is held determines the
axis and stroke emphasis within letters. Strokes become thickest as
they move perpendicular to the pen nib and thin as they move along
the angle of the writing tip. The angle of translation informs the
appropriate patterns of emphasis of any letter, whether drawn with
a pen or constructed digitally.
A broad-nibbed pens stroke
weight varies according to the
width of the at nib and the
strokes angle of translation.
The stroke weight of an
expandable nib depends on the
pressure applied by the writer
more than the angle of the hand
holding the pen. The popular-
ization of expandable nibs
inuenced type and calligraphy
styles of the eighteenth century.
lettering & type 52
cap height
x-height
baseline
The color of type or lettering is the overall lightness or darkness of its letters.
In the pages of this book, the paragraphs all have a consistent visual color across
them. No characters appear signicantly darker or lighter than others. The letters
of the typeface work in unison, each stroke, counter, and letterspace balancing to
create a cohesive rhythm. The more a particular letter stands out from its neighbors
in shape, size, or color, the quicker a readers eye is drawn to and gets stuck on it.
Cohesiveness makes text easier to read; a letter that interrupts the eye is a visual
roadblock that breaks readability.
The underlying principles and origins of the alphabet affect the way we
perceive letterforms, from letters that invoke historical conventions to those that
follow an unorthodox path. Though the processes and goals differ for each designer
whether creating lettering, writing, or typethe same concerns and relationships
apply to any kind of letter.
horizontal
stroke guide
Although lettering and type design are two distinct practices,
they share many of the same structural foundations. The invisible
guidelines of the cap height, x-height, and baseline help determine
the consistency and personality of both lettering and type.
If the baseline and cap height of the word shape uctuate, counter
spaces and stroke weights change in proportion to the overall size
and shape of the letters. A varied stroke weight emphasizes the
spatial quality of characters drawn in perspective.
Words on a curve or angle look and read best when the shape of the
baseline reverberates upward through the entire structure of the
characters.
Even when creating broken or ornamental letters, designers will
make decisions that suggest the traditional forms of the characters.
Decorative forms and breaks in stencil letters typically relate to
norms of stroke axis, modulation, and serif placement.
rogues gallery
Curving or bending type
digitally destroys the stroke
proportions and detailing of
the original letters. Redrawing
the characters manually
enables the designer to nesse
and preserve the traits of the
letterforms.
53 creating letters
Exercise: Flat-Tipped Pen
The contemporary shapes of the roman alphabet
developed from calligraphic forms written with a
at-tipped, broad-nibbed pen. Even highly ration-
alized letterforms and typefaces are interpretations
of these organic, handwritten shapes. Traces of the
broad-nibbed pen live on in almost every typeface as
modulated stroke weights and thick or thin axes.
Using a at-tipped calligraphy pen or
sharpened carpenters pencil, practice drawing the
alphabet on these pages. The hand holding the pen
Begin by drawing these basic
strokes, taking care to hold the
pen at a constant angle. Use the
entire forearm more than the
wrist. Repeatedly draw these
basic strokes until they are
uent and consistent.
3
4
5
1
1
1
1
1
1
1 1
1
1 1 1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1 1
1 1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2 2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2 2
2 2
2
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
4
3 3
3 3
Letters are formed with
combinations of strokes.
The rst stroke denes the
characters width, height, and
placement, while additional
strokes complete its proportions
and form. Practice drawing the
alphabet until the propor-
tions and construction of the
letterforms start to feel smooth
and natural.
Since the uppercase have
evolved from lettered rather
than handwritten forms,
capital letters are built more
geometrically than lowercase
ones. With the exception of the
Zs and some serifs, the angle
of the pen stays consistent in
humanist calligraphy.
should be kept at a relatively consistent angle
throughout the stroke; a thirty-degree angle
creates the forms shown here. Changing the angle
of the pen changes the axis of the stroke. Held
horizontally, the pen creates a modern axis with
highly contrasting vertical and horizontal strokes.
Compare these pen-lettered forms to typefaces
like Jenson, Garamond, and Baskerville, noting
the relationships in axis, emphasis, stroke weight,
and serif construction. Almost all typefaces are
informed by these hand-drawn origins, paying
homage to them in different ways. Even sans serifs
like Franklin Gothic and Gill Sans retain subtle
traces of the pen in their letterforms.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1 1
1
1
1
1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2 2
2
3
2 2 2
2
3
2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3 3
3
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
5
pen lettering by cara di edwardo
To learn more about the art of
calligraphy see Sheila Waterss
Foundations of Calligraphy
(Greensboro, NC: John Neal
Bookseller, 2006).
Vendetta
Typeface, 1999
John Downer, Emigre
Vendetta employs an unusual construction that is both calli-
graphic and geometric. The letters abundant facets and angular
strokes become apparent when shown at display sizes.
Versa
Drawings and typeface, 19932004
Peter Verheul, OurType
Versas organic forms were originally conceived as a display
alphabet, following in the footsteps of faces like Albertus
and Optima. As Verheul rened the typeface, its original
eccentricities became less pronounced, and the nal roman
exhibits the evenness and openness of text type.
banner
display
subhead
text
plus
reverse
Creating Text Letters and Book Type
Reading a good book typeface is like wearing a well-broken-in shoe. The eye slips
comfortably into the letters, which become an extension of the text itself. To maintain
this comfortable and transparent quality, the shapes of book letters cannot stray too
far from the conventions of legibility. Even the most contemporary and imaginative
text type is part of a long visual lineage. Any letter whose form departs too far from
the currently accepted shapes of the roman alphabet will be more difcult to read,
especially at small sizes and for large bodies of text. Nonetheless, designers have
managed to interpret book writing, lettering, and typography in expansive ways.
Creating text type is an arcane craft that is fundamentally bound to percep-
tions of legibility and readability. For most of alphabetic history, all letters were
created at actual size. Contemporary designers enjoy the relatively recent luxury of
working in large dimensions and scaling their letters at will. Although working at
actual size leaves less room both for error and for delicate detailing, it provides a
direct connection to the letters end use. Like telecommuting to a job, working large
offers countless benets, but it can also leave a designer isolated and out of touch. For
type designers working digitally, or otherwise scaling lettering or handwriting, the
context of end use is crucialthey must constantly keep in mind how the characters
will appear in their intended environment. Letters that look great six inches high may
look terrible when used at book sizes.
Since all metal type is created at actual size, designers of metal type must create
separate matrices for each point size of a typeface. Although this is a much more
arduous task than repurposing a single font for many sizes, it allows a type designer to
optimize each letter for its end use. As the font sizes grow smaller, a type designer will
subtly increase the x-height, letterspacing, and width while exaggerating small details
like serifs and aperture size. Contrast generally decreases at small sizes, to maintain
the robustness of thin strokes. Even though these adjustments may slightly alter the
character of the letterforms, they make letters more legible and readable at small sizes.
Some contemporary designers and digital type foundries have revived the practice
of releasing typefaces with multiple fonts for specic sizes, acknowledging that type
designed for use at twelve point may not work as well at six point.
Vincent
Type family, 1999
Matthew Carter
Commissioned as a type family
for Newsweek magazine,
Vincents six fonts are each
designed for specic applica-
tions. The display faces have
narrower widths and spacing,
while two text weights provide
slight variations in overall
color. The heavier Reverse
is used for setting white
text knocked out of a dark
background.
57 creating letters
eading a good book typeface is
like wearing a well-broken-in
shoe. The eye slips comfortably
into the letters, which become
an extension of the text itself. To maintain
this comfortable and transparent quality, the
shapes of book letters cannot stray too far from
the conventions of legibility. Even the most
adobe garamond dolly
scala baskerville
bodoni century schoolbook
bryant condensed thesis sans semi light
While the basic frames of the roman alphabet forms cannot be distorted too
much without damaging their legibility, the details that give letters their person-
ality are malleable and subject to numerous interpretations. Walter Tracy, in his
book Letters of Credit, lists three principal elements that dene the individuality of
book type.
1
Stroke weight and contrast are the heaviness of the line and the amount of
variation between thick and thina high-contrast V may pair a heavy left stroke with
a very ne right diagonal. Axis or stress alludes to the pens angle of translation and
determines where the heaviest part of a round stroke fallsthe O of a modern letter
is heaviest on its left and right sides, while a humanist Os weight is distributed more
toward its northeast and southwest corners. Serif shape is dened by the designer and
relates to the overall tone and origins of a letters style.
Although contrast, axis, and serif shape are crucial to classifying and
categorizing letters, several other factors are also important to the overall spirit
and legibility of text letters. The x-height and the length of ascenders and descenders
critically affect a letters legibility, readability, and proportionslong ascenders and
descenders look elegant and improve the readability of wordshapes, but they inversely
affect the x-height and legibility at small sizes. Aperturethe size of the openings
in letters like C or ais another factor in legibility. The shape and geometry of curves
also inuence letters, since the framework of book letters depends on the curves of
the lowercase alphabetround, generous curves might make letters feel open and
friendly, while other angles can suggest the trace of the pen. Perhaps most subtle but
no less important, line and edge quality affects a letters general tone and expression.
Lines can feel soft and supple, straight and precise, faceted, or even rough and
textured. Line quality is less apparent at small sizes, but its nuances contribute to the
overall feel of the lettering, writing, or type.
These essential elementscontrast, axis, serifs (if any), curve shape, x-height,
aperture, and line qualityblend with many other specic decisions and individual
characteristics to give text letters their own voice. Any of these elements can be taken
to extremes, but doing so will affect the letters legibility or the texts readability.
Designers of book and text letters delicately blend form and function within the basic
framework of the alphabet and the connes of legibility.
While all text type aspires
to certain standards of
legibility and readability,
fonts that can perform at
text sizes come in many
different styles and avors.
1. Walter Tracy, Letters of Credit
(Boston: David R. Godine,
Publisher, 1986), chap. 7.
59 creating letters
Modular Letters
Modular describes any letter assembled from a limited palette of distinct elements. In
one sense, almost all typefaces are modulara fonts system is usually built around
a similar set of shapes and marks. But where most typefaces adjust their traits to suit
each characters needs and structure, modular letters follow a strict system with a
xed set of modules. Typically these elements are geometric and simple in shape
square pixels on a digital display or modernist circles, squares, and linesbut
designers are increasingly using more ornate forms and even physical objects to
construct modular letters.
Traditionally, modular lettering has responded to the limitations and possi-
bilities of the media used to create it. Avant-garde designers in the early twentieth
century used decorative, geometric elements from the letterpress to build modular
letterforms. Their work explored and celebrated the grid, a trend also seen in the
modern art and architecture of their contemporaries. Expanding and exploiting the
abstract nature of the alphabet, these designers approached letters as structural rather
than handwritten forms.
Contemporary designers have taken a broader approach to modular letter-
forms, pushing the possibilities of digital screen fonts and creating letters from more
complicated elements. Modular letters force the designer to work within a strict
system, a limit that many designers nd a compelling challenge as they manipulate
predetermined elements in new ways. Although the components of modular lettering
are limited, the spirit and shapes of the letters themselves are not.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Architecture Exhibition
Poster, 1931
Hendrik Theodorus
Wijdeveld
This posters headline text is
constructed from ornamental
printers rules and letterpress
blocks.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts,
The Modernism Collection, gift of
Norwest Bank Minnesota.
Arrays of physical objects, such as the bricks of this London markets
facade, can become elements for making letterforms.
Photo by Daniel Rhatigan.
Electronic signboards and monitors use modular grids to display
information. This signs grid is surprisingly complex, as revealed by
the malfunctioning E.
61 creating letters
Whimcircle
Alphabet, 2004
Tore Terrasi
Above:
Young Leader Live
Sessions
Lettering, 2004
Alex Trochut
Although sinuous and
decorative in appearance, the
characters in this lettering
treatment are assembled from
a reduced set of elements.
Below:
Scandinavian Sparks
Typeface, 2004
Hjrta Smrta
Created for an exhibition of
Swedish art and design, the
characters of Scandinavian
Sparks are built from symbols
and motifs found in traditional
Swedish handicrafts.
lettering & type 62
Maintaining equal widths and
proportions, build a modular
alphabet from these three
geometric shapes: a 1x1 square, a
1x2 rectangle, and a 1x1 quarter
circle. Use as many or few shapes
as needed. Bear in mind that
smaller grids provide a more
limited set of design options.
Examples of student work from the Maryland Institute College of Art
eugenia wang
carlos vigil
kate morgan
katie mclachlan
Exercise: Modular Alphabet
From modernist experiments to bitmap fonts,
designers have explored the possibilities of
creating letters from a reduced palette of shapes.
The predened forms and restrictive systems
of modular letters make them a quick and
approachable method for building letters. In spite
of the constraints, new and surprising letterforms
can be built with modular elements.
Create an alphabet using only a small set
of basic geometric shapes. Begin by working on
a grid, where the regular and repetitive modular
elements feel most at home. Your grid can be
reductive, expansive, or somewhere in between.
After establishing a grid and a visual approach,
design letters that represent the alphabets basic
forms like H, O, M, R, A, or n, o, b, a, v. Stick to
and rene the system as needed, until these initial
letterforms feel consistent. Gradually construct
more characters until you have designed
the entire alphabet. Test the letters in word
combinations periodically to expose aws and
inconsistencies.
Keep the shapes proportional;
do not scale or distort any of the
components. Do not overlap the
elements or use a white shape
knocked out of black forms.
Screen Fonts
The limitations of digital technology present a different kind of challenge for
type designers. Some electronic displays force the rounded and irregular forms of
the alphabet to conform to their pixel grid. Screen and bitmap fonts are modular
typefaces designed specically for display on digital screens. These faces use the
smallest element of the display, usually pixels or LEDs, as their module. When
enlarged, bitmap forms appear blocky and jagged, but at small sizes a well-designed
bitmap font can suggest the subtleties and curves possessed by analog typefaces.
Designers of bitmap fonts have tackled the difcult problems of making screen type
legible at small sizes and converting the nuances of a serif typeface into chunky
pixel modules. Some designers use the limitations of bitmap fonts for visual effect,
blowing them up to large sizes, building ornate forms from pixels, or incongruously
using screen fonts for print applications.
Unibody
Eight-pixel typeface, 2003
Underware
Unibody is a surprisingly typographic
family of bitmap fonts. By altering the
emphasis of the letters curves, its italic
creates the appearance of sloped forms
without actually slanting the letters.
Emigre #14
Magazine cover, 1990
Rudy VanderLans
This issue of the design
magazine Emigre examines
the impact of Switzerlands
design heritage on young Swiss
designers. Its cover combines old
and new in lettering, rendering
pen-derived Fraktur letters as
digital bitmaps.
Georgia
Typeface, 1996
Matthew Carter, Tom Rickner
The nuances of a scalable, vector
typeface designed for print do not
always translate well to the screen.
Anti-aliasing is a method of suggesting
curves by blurring and graying the
ragged edges of the bitmaps. When
designing Georgia for Microsoft, Carter
worked in reverse of the typical process,
beginning with a bitmap version of the
fonts, which were then adapted into the
more rened outline version.
For more on the complex processes of
adapting type for the screen, see the
Microsoft Typography Group:
www.microsoft.com/typography.
FFF Alias
Seven-pixel typeface, 2002
Fonts For Flash
65 creating letters
lettering & type 66
Handwriting
Handwriting is the simplest form of creating letters and has existed parallel to
lettering since the beginning of the alphabet. Handwritten letters are typically
made with one or two quick and uid marks. Although some lettering is also drawn
with a few simple lines, the intent of the writer separates writing from lettering.
Handwriting is usually more casual and efcient than lettering. Where lettering is
mainly concerned with the visual appearance of the text, writing focuses on putting
information quickly to page.
This emphasis on speed and function does not preclude writing from speaking
in its own visual tongue. Handwriting can convey the delicacy and sophistication
of a formal cursive, the relaxed timbre of a quick note, or the shakiness of a lunatic
scrawl. When written deliberately, handwriting operates much like a palette of fonts.
Slight variations in style can express different tones while maintaining the consis-
tency of the writers hand. Although lettering and type can also evoke personality and
mood, handwriting adds an intimacy that the others cannot. Graphologists and other
handwriting analysts believe that handwriting can subconsciously reveal a persons
mental or physical state.
Cursives, romans, quickly written capitals, and even combinations of the
three can be examples of handwriting. Script and cursive styles are a common form of
handwriting, since connecting multiple letterforms with a continuous line increases
writing speed. Writing naturally expresses both the hand of its writer and the tool
used to create it, whether a crayon, pencil, or broad-nibbed pen. The expressive and
personal qualities inherent in handwriting have given it added signicance in a world
of precise and often impersonal digital type.
Opposite:
100 Most Inuential
People
James Victore
Quickly executed handwriting,
enlarged to display size,
creates a striking contrast with
the rectangular border and
precisely rendered forms of the
Time masthead.
Because of the spontaneity
and variable qualities of
handwriting, designers will
often write the same text
several or even dozens of times,
until the right balance of form,
personality, and legibility is
achieved.
This letter from 1908 shows an elegant script written with a exible-nibbed
pen. Before the widespread use of typewriters and computers, handwriting
expertise was considered an important social and business skill.
Right:
Baxter
Typeface, 2006
Tal Leming and Christian
Schwartz
Baxter translates the friendly,
careful forms of schoolbook
handwriting into type.
Although it bypasses some of
handwritings inconsistencies
for the sake of a cohesive
system, this typeface maintains
a spontaneous spirit.
Script Lettering
Script lettering translates the sinuous italic forms of cursive writing into a more
formal system. When most people think of scripts they imagine the classic, slightly
embellished wedding invitation styles popularized by calligraphy textbooks and
numerous digital typefaces. But scripts comprise a surprisingly broad range of
approaches, from sloppy brush lettering to pixel fonts to elegant formal callig-
raphy. Some scripts are even streamlined and geometric, such as the mechanical
scripts that embodied the Art Deco style of the 1920s and 1930s. The dening
characteristic of script lettering or type is a visual link to the owing forms of
hand-drawn cursives.
Where handwriting strives for speed and utility, script lettering is more
methodically and purposefully executed. Although many scripts give the
appearance of a uid line of spontaneously written text, the characters are often
built from many strokes or processes. Digital lettering treatments and typefaces
that mimic the owing forms of the brush or pen require a particularly complex
process to translate smooth cursives into the mathematical realm of the computer.
The most accomplished script lettering and typefaces convincingly reproduce the
effortless motion of calligraphy, even when the letters are laboriously or geometri-
cally constructed. Some of these brush scripts and calligraphic lettering evolve like
a moviethe nal version edits together the best letters from multiple takes.
Digital technology has essentially eliminated cursive handwriting from
everyday communication, and a lack of regular exposure to script and cursive
letters makes these one of the more difcult styles for many contemporary
designers to master. Yet the same absence from the visual environment gives
scripts, especially custom lettering, a visual singularity that can bridge the gap
between type and handwriting.
Universal Penman (detail)
Calligraphy sample book,
1743
George Bickham, based on
lettering by J. Champion
The elegant scripts in this
famous English penmanship
guidebook were meant to serve
as practical examples for formal
business and correspondence
writing.
1 . corpus, Editorial lettering, 2007, Apirat Infahseng
2 . molotov, Logo, 2008, Andy Cruz and Eric Marcinizyn
3 . g script, Typeface, 20012002, Process Type Foundry
4 . reality is not controllable, Editorial Lettering, 2007,
Damien Correll
5 . is not magazine, Logo, 2005, Underware
emigre, Logo, 2004, John Downer
kant, Logo, 2007, Underware
uniting, Lettering, 2006, Topos Graphics
susannah, Logo, 2004, Underware
pop art, Logo, 2000, House Industries
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
1
3
7
2
5
8
4
6
9 10
Casual Lettering
Casual letters do not take themselves too seriously. These spontaneous-feeling
styles encompass brush scripts, whimsical handwriting, and the animated
bounciness of cartoon lettering. The forms can be lively cursives or chunky
block letters, hairline thin or obese, serif or sans, sitting on a solid baseline or
bouncing, overlapped or interlocked. Casual lettering often displays a naive or
anarchic quality, meant to give the impression that the letterforms were rapidly
thrown together, whether or not this is the case. Their general lack of sobriety
and formality gives casual letters a license to break rules of proportion and
position, rejecting the rigidity of conventional typography in favor of liveliness
and personality.
A whimsical offshoot of signage and advertising styles, casual lettering
arose at the beginning of the twentieth century alongside comic strips, vaude-
ville, and ragtime music. Hand-painted or -drawn casual lettering once graced
sheet music, signage, packaging, and advertising of every stripeon barber-
shops, cereal boxes, concert posters, and almost everything else. As digital
typography replaced lettering in the late twentieth century, the use of casual
lettering declined. The rigidity and impersonal qualities of type are contrary
to the nature of casual lettering. Today, graphic designers frequently use fonts
that impersonate casual lettering, but few of these typographic counterfeits
achieve the same spirited quality, and their application is too often relegated to
retro pastiche. As hand lettering has made a comeback in design, casual letters
and their inuence have returned to the mainstream, and more designers are
approaching casual lettering in a contemporary way.
Casual letterings spontaneous quirks often help letters interact with
their neighbors. Bouncy letters create a rhythm that guides the eye through an
otherwise unbalanced word. Interlocking letters poke at and bump around each
other, tting together like a jigsaw puzzle. A level of randomness in their appli-
cation keeps these modications from feeling forced and systematic. Casual
lettering is an antidote to stiff and solemn typography.
Opposite:
Mighty Night
Flyer, 2007
Letman (Job Wouters)
Approachable hand lettering
unites the dozens of casual styles
on this poster.
Hand-drawn lettering, c. 1963
Shag Lounge and Burbank
Typefaces, 2003 and 2007
Tal Leming, House Industries
These typefaces pay homage to
casual lettering of the mid-twentieth
century. While type cannot
duplicate all of the quirkiness and
singularity of hand-drawn lettering,
these fonts include alternate
characters and ligatures that
emulate the spirit of lettering while
maintaining the exibility of type.
71 creating letters
Social Coma
Record insert, 1997
Mark McCoy
Each word of these densely
textured liner notes was applied
with cracked rub-down transfer
letters and further degraded
through repeated photocopying.
Distressed Type
Distressed type is what happens when nice, clean letters from a good family get
dirty, are roughed up, and begin breaking the rules. Distress appears in worn or
chipped edges and rough textures or at the extreme in ripped, broken, and distorted
forms. Distressed letters can convey many effects, from simulating lo- repro-
duction methods to suggesting aging and decay or even violence. Today, distorted
typography is frequently associated with the grunge design style of the 1990s, but
intentionally disgured type has historic precedents.
Type foundries at the turn of the twentieth century responded to a renewed
interest in antiquity by introducing Rugged typefaces, whose rough edges and crude
forms mimicked the coarse results of antique printing. Irregular edges typied these
fonts, and their italics bore the uneven appearance of hand lettering. The Ruggeds
were usually more of a caricature than a true revival, clothing nineteenth-century
letterforms in the rough trappings of antique production methods.
Mid-twentieth-century designers used distress as a way to add emotion
to text. Tony Palladinos deftly ripped logo for Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho
lettering & type 72
rogues gallery
Fonts with built-in degradation
lack the chaos and randomness
of truly distressed letters. When
a degraded letter shows up
twice, looking exactly the same,
it doesnt look damaged as
much as fake.
rogues gallery
Gritty textures masked onto
clean-edged digital type are
a patina rather than actual
distress.
Hiroshima / Anniversary of the
Bombing
Poster, 1970
Ren Mederos
This broken, distorted headline
expresses the devastation caused
by the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima.
Courtesy of Lincoln Cushing.
Pabst Old Style
Typeface, 1902
Edward M. Lewis (original
version by Frederick Goudy)
Rough edges and slightly irregular
characters are key traits of early-
twentieth-century Rugged types.
typographically portrayed the torn psyche of the lead character. Crumpled and
broken letters have amplied the message in everything from headache medicine
ads to antiwar posters. Punk rock of the 1970s introduced popular culture to the
lo- aesthetics of zines, homemade posters, and diy typography. Photocopiers and
mimeograph machines provided cheap, gritty reproduction for artists working
with little to no budget. Punk designers and artists exploited the degrading effects
of these machines on type and image to great effect. Their cut-and-paste composi-
tions, degraded and dirtied through repeated copying, reected the raw, urgent
sounds of the music the artwork accompanied.
In the 1990s, type designers echoed the renewed popularity of punk music
and aesthetics with typefaces that imitated punks gritty, damaged typography.
Most of these fonts are the typographic equivalent of pre-ripped jeansdistressed
type always looks more natural when it reects the actual processes that have
broken it in. Type can have more to say (and sometimes just looks cooler) when its
not so perfect.
Night Terrors
Logo, 2006
Nolen Strals
Digitally sliced and shattered
type reects the hard-hitting
tactics of this roller derby team.
73 creating letters
Studio Lettering Sable
Typeface, 2008
Studio Lettering Swing Alternates
Typeface, 2008
House Spencerian
Logo, 2004
Superv
Logo, 1997
Ed Interlock (industries)
Typeface, 2004
Only Vegas
Logo, 2002
Amerikanische Badne
Lettering, 2007
Strictly Hey-Wake
Logo, 2003
Letterer and type designer Ken Barber has masterminded thousands of typefaces and lettering treatments as
typography director at the independent type foundry House Industries. Among the wide variety of lettering styles in his
portfolio, Barbers accomplished casual and script letters are perhaps his best known.
What makes a successful lettering treatment? The hallmark of lettering is its uniqueness, and successful
work capitalizes on this aspect. Hand-drawn letters not only convey the content of a particular message but
also have the potential to become the content itself. Beyond that, good lettering should ultimately demon-
strate harmony of form, balancing positive and negative shapes while maintaining visual uniformity.
How does your approach differ between lettering and type design? Lettering offers a remarkable amount of
exibility in terms of letterform construction, since only specic letters interact directly with one another.
Typographic forms, on the other hand, must work within a comparatively less accommodating system;
this demands sensitivity to the variable context in which the characters will appear.
What are the challenges of adapting one-of-a-kind hand lettering to the systematized format of type?
Although typography can be suggestive of lettering, its hardly a substitute for the real thing. The act
of drawing is a singular expression that cant be exactly duplicated. Capturing the gestural nuances and
subtleties of a hand-drawn silhouette is a tall order in digital type. Nevertheless, with keen observation
and clever engineering, typefaces can emulate some patterns and characteristics of lettering. The evolving
capabilities of digital font formats can also help bridge the gap between lettering and typography.
What considerations make creating a script typeface different from designing a roman? While roman forms
are visually linked by the negative space between them, the letters in a script must physically connect in
any given sequence. How this is accomplished is perhaps the most important consideration of a script.
Consequently, special attention must be given to the construction of joining letters.
Without giving up the colonels famous secret recipe, can you offer any tips or tricks for creating successful script
or casual letters? Though I cant reveal all eleven herbs and spices, there are a few essentials that script and
casual hands cant do without. (1) No matter what sort of letter youre creating, clearly dening its purpose
and application is indispensable. (2) Inform your design by investigating historical forms. Seemingly
disparate sources can end up inuencing a project. (3) Stick to the basics. The fundamentals of lettering
have endured for a reason, and they still apply in most instances. Study the work of those who inspire
youif possible, nd a mentor. Books and workshops are helpful, too, but they cant replace an experts
hands-on guidance. (4) Observe the lettering around you, and learn from it. (5) Practice, practice, practice.
Even if you dont become a virtuoso with a pen or brush, pushing around some ink on paper goes a long
way toward unlocking the secrets of successful script lettering.
Interview: Ken Barber
Beatbots
Logo, 2008
Oliver Munday
With a handful of well-placed adjustments and
additions, type can be transformed into illustrative
lettering. This motley cast of characters reects the mix
of contributors to this web magazine and message board.
Bats & Spiders
Lettering, 2008
Adam Okrasinski
Removing the curves of elegant
script type creates this jagged
digital cursive.
The Dilapidated Reanimated Expo
Logo and icons, 2006
Post Typography
For an art show exploring the reuse of vacant
properties in Baltimore, this logos fallen counter
forms reincarnate as support icons, following
the lead of the work in the exhibition.
making letters work
transforming type
Customizing Type
Customizing type gives prefab letters a new personality and individuality. Like a house
or an apartment, letters can be built from the ground up, or preexisting structures can
be decorated and modied to suit a designers tastes and needs. Using existing type
as a model or starting point is one common way that designers avoid the substantial
investment needed for originally drawn lettering. Many lettering treatments begin with
an existing typeface, either as inspiration or as raw material. Graphic designers alter
type to achieve results that the original typeface cannot produce.
The rationales for customizing type are as varied as the alphabet itself.
Modifying the characters of a logotype or headline text can give the letters new spirit or
alter the tone and meaning of the original typography. Rounding the corners of one or
two letters can make a cold word softer and more inviting. Adding swashes, ourishes,
or ornamentation to a letterform can imbue it with new panache or delicacy. Joining
two characters can imply connectedness or compactness. A subtle modication to a
counterform or curve can provide an implicit connection to similarly shaped elements
in a design. In some cases, an attribute or form that works well at small sizes may lose
its attractiveness at large scale, demanding renements or alterations.
Occasionally typographers create new or alternate characters to save a
typeface from itself. Some otherwise useful fonts may lack a few essential characters,
accents, or punctuation marks in their toolkit of symbols. At other times a typog-
rapher might nd certain characters poorly drawn or unsuited to a particular need.
Some less completely realized revivals of classical typefaces do not contain properly
developed modern characters like the (euro), @ (at symbol), and / \ (slashes). Since
these symbols joined the typographic lexicon relatively recently, they are not in every
typefaces original character set and may have been drawn with less regard or skill
than the alphabet letters. Some fonts contain only tabular, lining numerals with
unattractive text spacing, while others may have a letter that just feels out of place.
Rather than settle for a typeface that is almost right, designers can create their own
supplemental symbols, letters, or fonts to work alongside and enhance an existing
typeface. Whether supplementing a font or turning type into lettering, customizing
makes prefab letters speak with a new and individual voice.
Turning Type into Lettering
Designers alter type to create forms beyond the typical constraints of a font. Making
these custom letters harmonize with their surroundings requires an understanding of
the existing typographic systemhow the new arrivals or adaptations interact with
their neighbors is a chief concern. A designer usually attempts to integrate custom
forms and modications in a balanced way, although a jarring juxtaposition can
sometimes produce striking effects. Respecting and paying attention to the relation-
ships between modied characters and the system of their base typeface is the crucial
factor in type customization.
wingdings
Font Pirates and Saboteurs
Type design has a long and sordid history of piracy. Since the early days of movable type,
rival foundries have created knockoffs and imitations of popular designs. As typography has
migrated into digital formats, the means to copy, edit, and corrupt type have become relatively
easy, leading to an increase in typeface forgeries and misguidedly altered fonts. While using
type as a basis for lettering is a common practice, editing and changing the actual font itself is
generally inadvisable and frequently illegal. Besides infringing on the type designers copyright,
a bastardized or altered typeface is rife with the technical and artistic problems that arise
whenever a second (usually less skilled) author amends an original work.
Splice Today
Logo system, 2008
Post Typography
Bryant
Typeface, 20022005
Eric Olson, Process Type
Foundry
A logotype that is based on an
existing font naturally shares
many of the fonts traits,
making the original typeface
a natural companion to the
identity. Some designers take
this idea a step further by
creating or commissioning an
original, proprietary typeface
to better distinguish an organi-
zations brand.
lettering & type 78
Above:
Vic
Postcard, 2007
Post Typography
This logo for a jazz singer
began as type, which was then
customized to interact with an
illustration.
original type
(bodoni no. 1 italic)
upright v added,
spacing adjusted
letters condensed,
stroke weight thinned
new dot added to i
Keeping It in the Family
Combining two styles, cases, or
weights from the same family
is one of the easiest ways to
mix type. Since fonts in the
same family share many of the
same traits, the designer has
fewer readjustments to make.
This unicase lettering mixes
lowercase characters with
capitals, and a lighter weight of
the font is adjusted to match the
boldness of the uppercase.
all caps helvetica
lowercase letters inserted
a thinner weight of helvetica with a
comparable stroke weight is substituted
lowercase characters thickened to
match the capitals; spacing is adjusted
rogues gallery
Since good fonts have a
carefully dened system,
customizations that
disregard the attributes
of the original typeface
can create typographic
monsters. Compensating
for any changes that affect
color, width, spacing,
and consistency can help
customized type atone for
its sins.
mixing fonts, mixing messages
Combining two different typefaces within the same word or the same line
is the typographic equivalent of collage. Designers and typographers use
this juxtaposition to create a variety of effects, from the sharp, sometimes
shocking contrast between divergent faces to the subtle softening created
by inserting a rounded lowercase form into a line of hard capital
letters. While mash-ups of different fonts are relatively easy to execute,
a successful mixture of typefaces requires nesse and attention to detail
to merge dissimilar elements into a typographic whole.
full sail, Logo, 2005, Steve Sandstrom stone source, Logo, 2008, Shaw Jelveh Design russia! Logo, 2007, Art. Lebedev
79 making letters work
For graphic designers creating logotypes, headlines, or other
custom-lettering treatments, type is often a logical place to start.
Customization adds singularity to off-the-shelf typographyan
especially important approach for identities and editorial lettering.
Logotypes in particular demand a uniqueness that straight type may
not provide. Simple and powerful type modications are at the heart
of many distinctive logos and lettering treatments.
1
4
7
10
13
2
5
8
11
14
3
6
9
12
15
lettering & type 80
Even minor adjustments can give type a new or more
complex voice. An act as straightforward as rounding
sharp corners or creating a stencil from a particular
character can completely change the tone of a type
treatment. Modifying an existing font shifts it from
type into the realm of custom lettering, giving the
letters their own unique avor.
Choosing an existing typeface such as
Helvetica, modify one word in several different ways
to see how these alterations affect the appearance and
tone of the letters. Pay careful attention to the types
underlying system. Modications to one letter can
affect the rest of the word in unforeseen ways and
may require compensations in weight, spacing, and
width. Any adjustments should respect the relation-
ships of the typographic system.
Exercise: Modifying Type
1 . mica commencement exhibition, 2008, Oliver Munday
2 . production department, 2006, Folkert Gorter
3 . tkny (tokyo and new york), 2002, Ali Cindoruk
4 . victoria & albert museum, 1988, Alan Fletcher
5 . miyake, 2001, Ali Cindoruk
6 . gravity art, 2008, Folkert Gorter
7 . amt, 2004, Fwis
8. creative alliance, 2003, Traci Jones Design
9 . virtual army, 2008, Buro Destruct
10 . caf 03, 2002, Ian Lynam
11 . squids, 2007, Post Typography
12 . valley wines, 2006, A3 Design
13 . visualingual books, 2006, Maya Drozdz
14 . clair, 2006, Shaw Jelveh Design
15 . zoo york, 2007, Justin Thomas Kay
lettering by sara frantzman
Ligatures and Joined Letterforms
Like musical ligatures that bind notes together, typographic ligatures are two or more
characters joined to form a single glyph. In the days of metal type, ligatures were
typically created when the spacing between irregularly shaped characters like the f or
the y called for their forms to overlap or abut. Since the physical nature of lead type
precludes such an overlap, metal typefaces required a separate glyph to combine the
overlapping letters. Some contemporary typefaces have also revived archaic ligatures
like that stemmed from handwritten sources.
The two most common typographic ligatures, and , are typically included
in well-designed typefaces. The and glyphs, along with some rarer ligatures
that join ty and f, address particular combinations of letters that cross paths or
collide. Contemporary type designers increasingly include alternate, contextual, and
decorative ligatures in their typefaces to give them more personality, exibility, and
customization options. Digital typography allows for large numbers of ligatures and
alternates, granting new options for linking characters that are not possible with
metal type. Script faces and other fonts that derive their forms from hand lettering
benet the most, since contextual ligatures can mimic elements of handwritings
irregularity and connectivity.
Custom lettering provides even more opportunities for connecting,
overlapping, and locking letters together. Joining several characters can unify a
word or logotype, converting it from a string of letters into an image or mark. Even
with a proliferation of ligatures and alternates in type design, joined letterforms are
still a hallmark of custom lettering. The juxtaposition of forms in a specic word
may suggest new ligature combinations unavailable as type. With custom lettering,
designers are not limited to a typical palette of ligatures or ones that connect only two
adjacent characters. Even outlandish connections that stretch between words or snake
around characters are fair game.
Common typographic ligatures
alleviate awkward areas where
two letters overlap or create
problematic spacing.
Catasticho
Manuscript, 14781520
Monastery of San Lorenzo
at Venice
Many lettered and traditional
typographic ligatures derive
from cursive handwriting, in
which writers often connect
characters without lifting pen
from paper.
Special Collections, University of
Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa.
So Fresh, So Def, So Stupid
Lettering, 2007
Justin Thomas Kay
A mountain of custom ligatures and
letterforms turns otherwise ordinary
type into memorable album cover
lettering.
ATypI
Logotype, 2005
Underware
Left:
Mrs. Eaves Ligatures
Typeface, 1996
Zuzana Licko
This text font is a revival not only of
the work of John Baskerville but also of
many ligatures previously lost to time.
Over two hundred anachronistic and
original ligatures add liveliness and
eccentricity to the typeface.
The Lives They Lived
Typeface designed with
Patrick Grifn, Canada Type
Why Art Isand Is
Notthe New Fashion
Customized editorial type,
2007
Little Britain
Magazine spread, 2007
Angle of Repose
Lettering sketches and
magazine spread, 2008
A font serves as the starting
point for lettering that comple-
ments the geometric lines of the
buildings shown in this article.
As a designer and art director at the New York Times Magazine, Nancy Harris Rouemy is responsible for many of the
publications memorable lettering and type treatments. Whether creating her own lettering or collaborating with a
commissioned artist, Harris Rouemy complements the magazines distinctive photography and illustration with equally
compelling typography.
What are the reasons for customizing type in an editorial setting? Periodically, custom type is used to create
a brand for a themed issue, as a means of signaling to the reader: You are getting something special here;
take notice and read! Or it may be commissioned to push an idea when the photography needs a hand. If
the photography is especially provocative, I want to marry the image with an arresting type solutionone
in which content and form resonate.
Readers want to meet the face or place or thing that is described in the story, and there is no
doubt that photographs establish an objective reality for the content. But every so often, type transmits a
message that a photograph or classic illustration cannot. Lettering can convey layers of ideas that compel
the reader to decode and interpret, and thus become more active in the viewing experience.
What are the editorial strengths and weaknesses of using lettering or type as a main visual element? As we
become more and more entrenched in our computer era, lettering offers an infusion of freshness and
surprise. Theres a soulfulness, a humanistic quality that connects the reader to lettering. However, to
affect the wow factor, specialized type solutions have to be used in a judicious manner. The pacing of a
magazine is high priority; the balance between photography, illustration, the magazines fonts and manip-
ulated type treatments sustains visual pleasure. On occasion, its just as important to exercise typographic
restraint to allow the image to command the page.
How do you make the type and image relate to each other as well as the article? I always read the story rst.
The words and ideas revealed in the story will inspire the approach for the tone, the type, or a graphic
element used for the design solution. Typographic pages facing photography or illustration must relate
and play off of each other. Scale, structure, fonts, weights of letterforms, color, contrast, white space,
alignments will constantly vary depending on the specic image at hand.
What is your creative relationship with letterers when you commission custom lettering as opposed to creating it
yourself ? I rmly believe that collaboration always produces the best results. Initially, I have a direction in
mind. Its very much a back-and-forth developmental process, with both of us feeding off of each
others ideas.
What are the most important things to consider when creating custom letters? (1) Legibility and originality.
(2) Its the deviated form that draws attention and produces something memorable.
Interview: Nancy Harris Rouemy
The Opaque Word
Designers traditionally consider text and image as two separate compositional
elements. Written content supplements or is supplemented by imagery, which
may be photographic, informational, or illustrative. In some cases, however, letters
themselves become the designs image and focal point.
The abstract nature of letterforms enables them to easily assume new visual
personasto adopt expressive, emotive, and informational qualities typically
associated with images. When letters become imagery, they function on two levels: as
a container for textual content and as an expression of a visual idea. Using lettering as
image goes against book typographys precept that type should be an invisible crystal
goblet. By making letters something to look at as well as to read, the designer asks the
viewer to spend more time considering their forms and context, not just their content.
Artists have turned letterforms into imagery for thousands of years, distorting,
warping, and reinventing the shapes of the alphabet to augment the underlying
meaning and message of their words. Early Muslim artists avoided representational
imagery, which they believed would lead to idolatry. Instead of the ubiquitous
iconography of Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, Islam communicates its faith
through the abstract beauty of Arabic calligraphy. The supple strokes of the calli-
graphic alphabet reect and glorify the texts transcendent message, not unlike the
intricate letterforms found in medieval Bibles.
Such examples of decorative and illuminated lettering inspired nineteenth-
century artists and designers to inject renewed levels of craft, detail, and ornament
into lettering and type. Artists melded letterforms with plants, animals, and other
physical objects, and illustrators wove alphabet letters and human gures into the
same pictorial space. The Arts and Crafts movement renounced the mechanical
commercialism of the Industrial Revolution for a more personal aesthetic of softer
forms and handcrafted production methods. The small press movements renewed
emphasis on the hand of the artisan set the stage for the experimental lettering and
organic modernism of Art Nouveau.
The artists of the Art Nouveau movement broke down distinctions between
ne art, design, and craft. Architects, sculptors, and painters with and without formal
lettering training turned to the alphabet as another avenue for their artistic creations.
lettering as image
The Spirit, Life Below
Illustration, 1948
Will Eisner
This comic book title page
breaks the wall between text
and image by integrating the
main characters name into the
illustrationthe text becomes
a staircase leading down into
the gritty criminal underworld.
Courtesy of DC Comics and
Denis Kitchen.
With fewer preconceived notions about the way letters should look, Art Nouveau
artists broke free of traditional forms to create new and highly expressive alphabets
that embody the movements organic aesthetics. The letters in Art Nouveau signage
and posters bend and curve with the elastic structure and ourishes of the plant
world, also displaying an idiosyncratic touch of gothic lettering.
In the 1960s, San Francisco poster artists such as Rick Grifn and Victor
Moscoso combined elements of Art Nouveaus owing headlines with heavy
ornamentation borrowed from nineteenth-century wood type to create a new
language for letters. Just as the psychedelic music that their posters advertised was
a reaction against social norms, these intensely human, acid-bent letterforms were a
challenge to the eras prevailing cold modernism and orderly design. Letters curved,
swelled, and squeezed across their designs, blurring the lines between text and
image. Psychedelic experimentation meant not only to challenge the accepted forms
of letters but also to inject new levels of meaning into words simply through
their appearance.
Contemporary artists and designers have revived and reinterpreted the spirit
and conceptual approach of psychedelic artists into a new psychedelia adapted to
the digital age. Like its precursors, contemporary psychedelia can be viewed as a
reactive movementin this case a response to the speed, precision, and logic of
digital technology. While many of these contemporary artists reject the computer
in favor of obsessive hand-drawn lettering, some also exploit digital technology in
an antithetical way to create dense, barely legible alphabets or compositions. Where
the molten letterforms of the 1960s reected a fun-seeking, free-owing subculture,
todays psychedelia commonly summons two opposite sides of the zeitgeist, evoking
a paranoid and violent society or the overwhelming presence of commercial culture.
Other contemporary letterers exploit digital tools to create highly rendered letters
with a psychedelic disposition.
As letterforms transform into pattern or imagery, their text can become
extremely difcult to decipher. Not everyone nds this problematic. What a designer
loses in legibility might be recovered through the heightened graphic or narrative
importance of the letters. Occasional trespasses across the boundaries of legibility
or convention can sometimes enhance a visual or editorial statement. Letters that
become imagery blur the lines between form and function as well as design and art.
Ceramique Coilliot
Signage, 1898
Hector Guimard
This building and its ceramic
sign, both designed by French
architect Hector Guimard,
express Art Nouveaus unied
design approach through their
shared organic forms.
Photo by Oliver Waine.
The Nassau Rake
Newspaper, 1852
Type foundries took advantage of wood types freedom of
scale to create elaborate, pictorial type designs. This detailed
typeface (c. 1834) built entirely from caricatures is well suited
to use as the masthead of a humorous college newspaper.
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Poster, 1968
Rick Grifn
Although many psychedelic poster artists
pushed the extreme edges of legibility,
their concert posters functioned as effective
promotional tools by speaking the visual
language of the 1960s counterculture.
Courtesy of the family of Rick Grifn.
Hand & Soul
Title page, 1896
William Morris
The classically inspired capitals of this
Arts and Crafts title page cannot be
separated from the organic patterning
that envelops them.
Reproduced from Mosher Press Edition 1899.
Image courtesy of Philip R. Bishop/Mosher Press
website, hosted by Millersville University.
lettering & type 90
Organic
Lettering, 2007
Ryan Katrina with Mike
McQuade and Jamie Hall
These illustrative letters are
digitally collaged from photos
and drawings.
Blessphemy (of the
Peace Beast)
Album packaging, 2006
Seripop
Want It!
Lettering, 2007
Marian Bantjes
Using an ornate script derived from the Saks Fifth Avenue
logo, the words and extravagant ourishes in these
whimsical lettering treatments suggest the clothing and
accessories promoted by a Saks advertising campaign.
This page, top to bottom:
Architectural Alphabet
Alphabet, 2007
Abbott Miller
Many illustrative alphabets nd the familiar forms of the
roman alphabet in unexpected places. Millers alphabet uses
modern architectural oor plans to create a contemporary
update of the neoclassical Architetonisches Alphabet
(1773) by Johann David Steingruber.
Hypertype
Alphabet, 2005
Luke Ramsey and A. J. Purdy
Some illustrative alphabets are pure exercises in pictorial
letterforms, the letters serving as a framework for artistic
expression or commentary.
lettering & type 92
10 Ways to Get a Job
Editorial illustration, 2008
Alex Trochut
Opposite:
Dollar
Editorial illustration, 2007
Christoph Neimann
An incisive lettering treatment can communicate entire
concepts with a single character. This image illustrates
an editorial on the declining value of the dollar.
OOIOO
Screen-printed poster, 2007
Sightings
Wzt Hearts
Color photocopied yer, 2007
Animal Collective
The designs of musician and artist Shaun Flynn stand out on bulletin boards and record store shelves in his native
Baltimore and around the country. Flynns posters frequently incorporate elaborate or hidden lettering, in some cases
abandoning any imagery in favor of a text-only solution.
You have a ne arts background. How did you get into lettering, which is often considered the realm of graphic
design? I rst began making posters out of necessity, for my bands in Baltimore. Youve got a show, you
need to promote it, and you want to make the poster look nice. Eventually other people began asking me to
do yers. I dont think I would have started making posters, especially for other people, without that aspect
of self-promotion of the music I was playing.
What, if any, distinction do you see between making a text-based poster and creating a drawing or art
installation? Both my posters and my artwork usually start with a simple material base and have a lo-,
handmade process. With posters you have a single pen or a box of markers. I like taking a simple object or
set of materials and turning it into something visually complex. I really appreciate bold simplicity, but Im
not a great simple designer. My work often winds up being ornate and taking a long time. It isnt neces-
sarily ornate for its own sake but about whether or not I think its worth putting the time into.
Why do you take a primarily hand-drawn approach to your yers and posters? I never had a computer or took
any computer courses in college. I really eschewed the graphic arts industry when I was in school. It wasnt
something I considered having to use because, of course, I was going to be a famous artist in New York.
It became quickly apparent after I started making posters that the hand-drawn aspect was a big part of my
interest. Handmade stuff is more interesting to me; your style emerges more quickly.
Your work often combines lettering and image into a single composition. Why do you approach posters in
this unied way? I like integrating lettering into the imagery of the poster so that it really feels like one
whole thing, not just some drawing from a sketchbook with words across the bottom. It makes an event
seem more important when theres an image that cant be detached from the show. Sometimes Ill focus
my energy on the information, the letters rather than the imagemaking the letters into the image
themselves. Its pretty innite what you can do to letters, and its amazing what your brain will read.
Anything can be very simply turned into some kind of letterform. Theres really no reason or need to have
anything else on a poster other than cool letters. If the poster is striking enough, whatever the degree of
legibility, people will spend a little more time with it.
Interview: Shaun Flynn
designing typefaces
Behind a Face
Like any good design or lettering, a good typeface begins with an idea. Many times
this is little more than a vague directionmaking a sexy looking font or creating
a typeface thats easy to read at small sizes. Other times a designer might have a
more specic goal, such as wanting to ll a perceived stylistic void among available
typefaces or developing a new interpretation of a classic face. Custom headlines,
hand-painted signage, and other one-of-a-kind lettering inspire a number of
typefaces attempting to reproduce the spirit of the original lettering, a much harder
task than it appears. Lettering and type are two distinct practices, related in many
ways, yet involving very different concerns and approaches. Where lettering produces
a one-of-a-kind result that depends heavily on its context, type design emphasizes
systems, consistency, and exibility.
Any typeface, whether inspired by geometric principles or by the individu-
ality of handwriting, differs from lettering in that all of its characters must work
together equally well, no matter how they are arranged. Like a set of building blocks,
a typeface is a kit of parts that can be recongured and reworked into countless forms
on a moments notice. The letters, gures, and symbols that compose this kit of parts
should be a family of equalsindividuals that are closely related and work hand
in hand without one particular character calling attention to itself. Good typefaces
function on the strength of their system and how the parts relate within the system.
Great typefaces apply a beautiful and powerful system to articulate a strong idea.
Along with a concept, a thorough grasp of a typefaces intended use helps
a designer navigate the thousands or even millions of major and minor decisions
that shape the face. A designer working on a book face will make choices favoring
legibility at text sizes over those favoring the fonts large-scale appearance.
Conversely, display fonts may emphasize subtle detailing and construction that
enhance use at large point sizes. A typeface created as a companion to an existing font
should echo some of its partners attributes. While a type designer can never predict
every possible use of a font, a typeface created without any application in mind may
be self-fulllingly useless. Those who know how to use type as well as design it have
a greater understanding of a fonts design requirementsit is no accident that many
early printers also created their own type.
Sketches for Odile
Type sketches and proofs,
20002005
Sibylle Hagmann, Kontour
Common steps in the type
design process include sketches
and many rounds of printed
and marked-up proofs. For
the design of Odile, Hagmann
reinterpreted the characteristics
of Charter, an unnished
1936 display face by William
Addison Dwiggins, into a
contemporary book type family.
Above:
Bryant
Typeface, 20022005
Eric Olson, Process Type Foundry
Before the advent of transfer lettering and digital type, drafters
sometimes employed mechanical lettering kits to rapidly
draw professional-looking letters. Bryant reinvents these
no-frills alphabets as a sophisticated digital typeface, adding
typographic renements like tapers, stroke modulation, and a
family of bold, italic, and condensed weights.
Below:
Twin
Typeface system and web application, 2003
Letterror
Twin resulted from a type design competition for the cities of
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Rather than represent the cities
with a single typeface, Letterror created a system of fonts, ranging from
no-nonsense sans serifs and casual scripts to unconventional, decorative
letters. To deploy its palette of ten type styles, Letterror developed a web
application to automatically change the fonts and appearance of text
based on user input and outside data, such as current temperature and
weather conditions in the Twin Cities.
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lettering & type 98
Character Traits
Type designers do not read the alphabet from A through Z. Instead, they separate
and categorize letters according to their individual traits. The diagonally shaped
letter A stands closer to W than to B, while the d might follow the p in sequence of
design. By analyzing and grouping characters that share traits, a type designer can
better rene and standardize the typefaces system. Breaking the letters down to their
separate elements and characteristics enables a designer to treat letters consistently
throughout a font. The design requirements of a capital R can be understood by
analyzing the characteristics of the P and K.
Most type designers begin drawing with n and o for the lowercase characters
and H and O for the uppercase. These control characters are examples of square
and round letters, and resolving their stroke weight, width, x-height, axis, and
other physical characteristics starts the process of eshing out and rening the
fonts system. Once a designer is happy with the rst two characters, and their
relationship to each other, he or she will try drawing a few other letters. These are
usually characters that share some traits with the control characters but present
new design challenges, such as the lowercase p and h or capital R and U. Making the
correct decisions and xing any issues at this early stage of the process are crucial,
as any problems or mistakes are amplied through the rest of the character set. A
problematic p or h may signal aws in the o or n. It is easier to change the serifs or
stroke thickness on a handful of letters than to go back and revise the entire font.
After the rst four or ve letters are resolved, a type designer usually considers at least
one diagonal character such as the v or A, and other potentially challenging letters like
the a or B.
Since letters in a typeface rarely stand alone, combining the letters into words
and sequences is a critical test that begins as early in the process as possible. If two
of the characters do not look good next to each other, one, both, or even the entire
system must be adjusted to make them work. Only after rening these rst half dozen
or so letters does a designer move on to the rest of the character set. By ne-tuning
and guring out how to combine the various traitssquare, round, diagonala type
designer creates a roadmap for building the rest of the typeface.
rogues gallery
Otherwise well-made lettering
falls apart when the characters
are used out of their original
context. Type must adapt to
innite groupings of words,
while custom lettering needs to
fulll only the requirements of
its particular application.
Forms and motifs repeat
throughout a typefaces system.
Although small variations
occur from letter to letter, type
designers employ a common
palette of shapes from which
to consistently approach the
construction of new characters.
Letterform Analysis
The diagrams on the following pages illustrate some basic principles, nuances, and
considerations for constructing each letter of the alphabet, loosely grouped by their
shared forms. Even this stripped-down, sans serif font (Franklin Gothic) contains
many subtleties of design and demonstrates centuries-old conventions. Because
of space limitations, Lettering & Type can diagram only this transitional sans serif
typeface, but applying these same critiques and observations elsewhere forms a basis
for understanding the principles and idiosyncrasies of any typefaces system. Letters
do not occur in isolation; designers and letterers have compared and learned from
precedent for thousands of years. Digital technologys ability to overlap and scale type
makes comparing two letters or fonts easier than ever. A type designer can quickly
analyze and contrast the traits of several existing typefaces, making it easy to see what
works and what doesnt.
Lowercase
Type designers typically draw at least some of the lower- and uppercase characters
concurrently to get a sense of the relationships between the two cases. Which case
is prioritized or resolved rst depends on the end use as well as the originating idea.
Text typefaces emphasize the lowercase, since these characters will nd the most use.
While a book font can get by with a workmanlike uppercase, the lowercase characters
often make or break a typeface. Decisions about the x-height, length of ascenders
and descenders, serif size, character width, counter space, crossbar placement, and
curve shape dramatically affect a fonts overall feel, legibility, and usefulness. Since
the lowercase does not take kindly to increased letterspacing, establishing accurate
spacing and side bearings for the lowercase alphabet is extremely important.
Gotham
Typeface, 2000
Tobias Frere-Jones, H&FJ
The inspiration for Gotham
consisted mainly of capital
letters found on metal
and hand-painted signage
in New York. Frere-Jones
began the typeface by
drawing the capitals and
then matched them with
a compatible lowercase
alphabet.
Photo by Isaac Gertman.
Odile and Elido
Typefaces, 2006 and 2008
Sibylle Hagmann, Kontour
While many of the same rules apply
to both serif and sans serif typefaces,
serif characters have their own sets
of concerns. Merely attaching serifs
to an existing sans does not make
a serif face. Adjustments for stroke
weight, color, and spacing must
all be considered when applying
these rules to a serif font. Serif
faces generally have greater stroke
contrast and letterspacing.
Although the conventions illus-
trated on these pages apply to
most fonts, not every typeface
adheres to these practices
some purposely ignore them
or even invent their own rules.
Each fonts individual system
provides its own formula and
rationale for how and when
these guidelines are followed.
Visit Underwares
TypeWorkshop.com for more
type design and lettering basics.
For additional letter-by-letter
diagrams and comparisons of
both serif and san serif fonts,
see Karen Chengs Designing
Type (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2005).
Many designers begin a typeface by drawing the lowercase
n. Once the n is perfected, the u, h, and m quickly follow
suit. While all four letters are similar, they usually have
subtle variations in emphasis, curvature, and width.
The counters of the n, m, u,
and h are not symmetrical.
The rounded portions of the letters
overshoot the x-height or baseline.
The shoulders of the n, m, and h push to
the upper right, balancing the weight of
the stems and emphasizing the forward
motion of reading and writing.
Considerable
tapering at the
join keeps this
area of the letter
from appearing
too dark.
The nish and
appearance
of the stems
tipsat, angled,
serifed, ared, or
otherare reected
throughout the
fonts system.
The two counter spaces of the m
are optically equal in area.
The ms counters are approximately the same
shape and area as the counter of the n. In some
typefaces the ms counters are slightly narrower.
In fonts with greater stroke contrast, the right stem
of the u is typically thinner than the left. In Franklin
Gothic there is only a slight difference.
The length and appearance of the ascenders
establish important relationships between the
x-height, cap height, and ascender height.
lettering & type 102
The overhang of the c does
not extend beyond the lower
stroke.
The es crossbar
is above the
centerline of the
letter.
To avoid appearing small next to square and diagonal characters, the round
lowercase letters all have overshoots and slightly broader widths.
The lowercase o maintains more circular
proportions in some typefaces, especially
in geometric sans serifs and modern faces.
Less common is a boxy and at-sided o,
which can reduce or even eliminate the
need for overshoots.
The shape of the counter and outside curves of the o
establish the rounded forms that are carried throughout
the typefaces system.
The stroke emphasis of the o
also determines the typefaces
axis. Franklin Gothic has
a vertical axis. Humanist
typefaces typically have
oblique stress, and the axis
may vary from character to
character.
Curved strokes
thin at the top and
bottom and thicken
at the sides.
The c is narrower than the o to compensate
for its added negative space.
A c with an
aperture that is
too large may
exhibit uneven
color; however,
apertures that are
too small reduce
legibility.
In old style and transitional
fonts, the eye of the e is typically
asymmetrical and sometimes
enclosed with a diagonal crossbar.
Signicant thinning of both round and
horizontal strokes keeps the e from lling
in and appearing too dark.
Like many twentieth-century sans serifs,
Franklin Gothics two-story a possesses a large
bowl and narrow aperture. The a in humanist
fonts typically has a much shorter bowl.
Signicant thinning
and tapering of the
horizontals prevent
the two-story a
from appearing too
dark and congested.
The top of the a is slightly narrower than
its bowl, to keep the letter from seeming
top-heavy and unbalanced.
In some fonts, the
a incorporates
a short tail or a
transitive serif
that references
the exit mark of
the pen.
The single-story version of the a,
frequently found in italics and
geometric sans serifs, is similar in
construction to the q.
Because of their angled strokes and joins, diagonal characters
typically display increased stroke contrast and tapering.
The vs left diagonal is thicker than its right.
This difference in stroke weight is more
pronounced in faces with high contrast.
The strokes of many vs
taper as they approach
the join. Ink traps exist
at the joins in some
bolder typefaces.
The w is narrower than the m and
is frequently asymmetrical.
The angles of the ws two middle strokes
differ from those of the outer strokes, to keep
the character from becoming too wide.
Thinning and tapering, especially
noticeable on the middle strokes,
maintain the ws even color.
On some bold fonts, ink
traps may be added to relieve
heaviness at the joins.
The lowercase x gives the illusion of
being a symmetrical character.
Subtle, or occasionally prominent,
offsets and stroke tapering maintain
the xs optical balance.
The top half of the x
is slightly shorter and
narrower than the
bottom half, to avoid
top-heaviness.
Stroke weight and emphasis
follow the axis and pattern
of the typefaces system.
The strokes of the y
taper into the join.
The ys join is above
the baseline.
The slightly thicker
left diagonal
reects the fonts
stroke emphasis.
The descender of the y
typically ares or ends in a
terminal.
This n is too wide, and
its curved top lacks an
overshoot.
rogues gallery
This ms right counter is
too narrow.
This cs aperture and
top stroke are both
too wide.
The counter of the h is
symmetrical, making
the letters shoulder
slump backward.
A low, heavy crossbar
and short nial make this
e top-heavy and out of
proportion.
This v appears wide,
and lack of stroke
tapering makes its join
too dark.
This perfectly symmet-
rical x lacks tapers and
appears top-heavy.
The strokes of this y join
at the baseline, making
its counter too large and
its tail too short.
This a has insufcient
stroke thinning, and
its top curve extends
beyond the letters bowl.
The diagonal stroke
may taper slightly.
The z is usually
narrower than
the n.
The bottom of the z is wider than its top.
Thinning, tapering,
and other optical
adjustments keep the
center of the k from
feeling too dark.
The zs diagonal breaks the rules of stroke emphasis and axis; in weight it is
similar to strokes that follow the opposite axis, top left to bottom right. This
anomaly reects a change in the angle of translation. Without this emphasis,
the z would appear too light, especially in serif fonts.
The base of the ks leg extends beyond its upper
arm, to keep the letter from appearing top-heavy.
The waist of the
k is above its
centerline.
The ks three counter spaces enclose relatively
equal areas of negative space.
Like the n, m, u, and h, the letters p, q, b, and d are all similar in
design. However, they are not merely the same letter ipped or rotated
separate adjustments in emphasis and axis occur for each letter.
The p, q, b, and d are narrower than the o, and
their counters are slightly more condensed.
Thinning and tapering at the joins prevent these
areas of the letter from becoming too heavy.
The top of the
qs stem often
ends in a spur.
The b and d are not just upside-down qs and ps. A slight
shift in emphasis and in the shapes of the counters reects
the letters orientation and balances the ascenders.
The spur that concludes the
bs stem is a calligraphic
legacy.
Tapering
maintains even
color at small
sizes.
This z lacks an adjusted
stroke axis, and its base
is too narrow.
The unbalanced
counters and high
join of this k create an
awkward gure.
Lack of an overshoot
makes this ps bowl feel
too small.
This bs bowl is the
same size as the os,
and it lacks tapers at
its joins.
This js dot is too small
and high, while its
wide tail causes spacing
problems.
This fs crossbar extends
too far leftward, while the
terminal is too far right.
A symmetrical crossbar
and extended tail make
this t appear to tilt
backward.
This r is too wide, and
its join is too high,
causing the letter
to space and color
unevenly.
The bowls of this g are
too similar in shape and
lack sufcient stroke
thinning.
rogues gallery
The bottom bowl of the s is wider
and taller than the top bowl.
Thinning of the top and
bottom horizontals keeps the s
from appearing too dark.
The s is not
two joined
semicircles. The
distinct curves
of the bowls join
through the ss
straight spine.
The curves and angles of the lowercase s relate
to (without necessarily duplicating) the slightly
more condensed forms of the capital S.
The single-story
version of the g, more
common in italics and
modernist sans serifs,
is easier to construct
than its two-story
sibling. One-story gs
usually share traits
with the bowl of the q.
Like the strokes of the
e and the a, those of
the two-story g are
thinned to maintain
even color.
The top bowl
of the g is more
rounded and
narrower than
its lower loop.
The balance of proportions among its three
counter spaces denes the gs appearance. Even
though their shapes differ, the color and enclosed
areas of the two bowls roughly correspond.
Fonts
with long
descenders
frequently
have gs with
larger loops.
A slightly thinner
stroke weight
differentiates
Franklin Gothics
lowercase l from
its capital I.
Many designers further differentiate the l by extending its ascender
above the cap height or by adding a humanist angle to its peak.
Serifed ls mimic
the design of the
hs stem.
Rounded dots usually
overshoot the stem
width to compensate
for the softness of their
circular form.
The dots of typefaces
with large x-heights,
like Franklin Gothic, are
generally closer to the is
stem. Faces with short
x-heights benet from
more generous space
around the dot.
The is stem is a
shortened version
of the l.
The js curved
descender
distinguishes
it from the
similar i.
The tail of
the j is often
(although
not always)
similar to the ys
descender.
Type designers take
many different
approaches to the
js tailvarious
terminals, angles,
curves, and lengths
are common.
The narrow widths of the f, t, and r help reduce these
asymmetrical characters spacing problems.
The crossbars of the f and t are disproportionately to the
right of the stem, to balance the letters negative space and
emphasize their forward motion. This asymmetry is even
more pronounced in serif typefaces.
In most fonts,
the top stroke
of the f extends
slightly (or
in some cases
drastically)
beyond the
crossbar.
The tail of the t is slightly
longer than its crossbar.
The top of the t is
usually shorter than
the cap height.
Serif faces often connect
the ts crossbar to the
top of its stem, forming
a triangular or cupped
wedge shape. Even in
some sans serif fonts like
Franklin Gothic, subtle
angles pay homage to
this calligraphic legacy.
The rs join
is generally
lower than
the join of
the n.
In lieu of a terminal, the rs stroke ares out
to add mass to the right side of the letter. In
serif faces, terminals are usually held close to
the stem or tucked below the stroke to reduce
the characters awkward negative space.
Uppercase
Maintaining the relationship of proportions between uppercase and lowercase usually
means that a fonts capitals, customarily taller than the lowercase, are also wider and
occupy more space than their shorter counterparts. To compensate for this additional
area and white space, the stroke weight of most capital letters is slightly heavier
than that of the lowercase. Uppercase characters with the same stroke thickness as
their lowercase counterparts often feel light by comparison. Type designers typically
condense the uppercase characters slightly, to prevent the capitals from dominating
the smaller lowercase alphabet and to maintain more consistent widths throughout
the font. The lowercase ascenders do not necessarily dene the cap heightthe
uppercase of many fonts is shorter than the height of the ascenders.
The H is a control character
for the uppercase, and its
attributes set the standard for
all of the square capitals.
The H is narrower
than the round O.
The Hs crossbar
in most typefaces
is placed slightly
higher than half
of the cap height.
Horizontal strokes are thinner than
verticals. Even in typefaces with no apparent
contrast, a slight emphasis on the verticals
is necessary to counter the illusion that
horizontal strokes are thicker than stems.
Like the crossbar
of the H, the Es
middle arm is
slightly above the
center line.
The center arm of the E
is noticeably shorter and
somewhat thinner than the
top and bottom arms.
The bottom arm of the E usually
extends beyond the top two arms.
The E is narrower
than the H,
compensating for
its open right side.
Serif typefaces often reduce the awkward spacing of
the E, F, T, and L with enlarged and heavy serifs that
ll some of the space within each character.
The center arm of
the F is slightly
lower than that of
the E, to balance
the negative space.
A narrow width and slightly
heavier stroke weight help offset
the Fs irregular shape.
The T is
narrower than
the H.
The stroke weight of the stem is increased to
balance the Ts overall lightness.
The L is a problematic character for
type designers because of its large,
asymmetrical open space. Making the L
signicantly narrower improves (but does
not eliminate) spacing issues.
A thicker stroke
weight compensates
for the Ls light color.
The I in some sans
serif fonts has a short
crossbar or slab serifs
to distinguish it from
the lowercase l.
Slightly increased
stem thickness
differentiates the I
from the l.
In serif fonts the Is serifs mimic the top of
the L and bottom of the T.
As a rounded
character, the
O is wider than
the H, especially
in faces with
a circular,
geometric O.
Like other rounded
characters, the O, C, Q,
and G overshoot the cap
height and baseline.
Like its lowercase counterpart,
the C is narrower than the O.
The overhang or terminal
of the C does not extend
beyond the lower stroke.
The bowl of the
Q is typically
similar to that of
the O, although not
always identical.
The style and design of the Qs tail is .
often a distinctive feature of a typeface. .
Designers approach the tail in a variety of ways, especially in
serif fonts. Unlike Franklin Gothic, many other transitional
sans serifs have a straight stroke that extends into the bowl.
The G is wider than the C.
To maintain legibility and
color, the Gs crossbar is
thinned and does not extend
past the middle of the letter.
Some Gs replace
the crossbar with
short serifs or
even do without
any horizontal
element.
The crossbar
or serif height
falls below
the letters
centerline.
Some Gs have a spur at
their lower right corner.
O is the second uppercase control character.
The curvature and width of the O inuence
the design of other round capitals.
The O possesses a rounded, modulated stroke. At its heaviest,
the Os stroke is wider than the stem of the H, while at its
narrowest, the stroke is thinner than the Hs crossbar.
The counter
shape and the
axis of stroke
emphasis of the
O, like those of
the o, are critical
manifestations
of the typefaces
system.
The D is usually
wider than the
H but narrower
than the O.
Although D and O are similar,
the Ds curve and counter shape
differ from those of the O.
The lower bowl of the B is slightly wider
and taller than the top bowl, placing the
letters crossbar above the centerline.
Stroke thinning keeps the Bs
interior from becoming too dark.
The curved
strokes taper at
the Bs waist,
where they
meet above the
centerline.
The bowl of the P
is usually larger
than that of the
R or B so that it
occupies more
of the negative
space below it.
The P is
narrower
than the R.
On some old style and transitional
typefaces, the bottom of the Ps bowl
does not connect to the stem.
The Rs bowl
occupies
slightly more
than half of the
cap height.
The crossbar
of the R thins
to maintain
even color.
In most fonts, the Rs leg extends past the
letters bowl. Franklin Gothics compact
R is an exception to this custom.
The Rs leg tapers into the
bowl. The location of this
join varies from font to
font, but it is rarely at the
intersection of the stem.
The As outer angles are similar, to
maintain a sense of symmetry and to
approximate the angles of the V.
The crossbar of
a typical A falls
well below the
centerline.
The right diagonal is slightly
thicker than the left diagonal. This
difference is more pronounced in
typefaces with greater contrast.
The amount of negative
space within the A is
balanced between the two
counters to keep the upper
counter from becoming
tight and pinched.
A thinned crossbar
and strokes that taper
toward the apex
maintain the upper
counters open space.
The V is slightly
narrower than the A.
Mimicking the
As pattern
of axis and
emphasis, the Vs
left diagonal is
thicker than its
right.
The Vs strokes taper as they approach
the join. Bolder weights often employ
ink traps where the strokes meet.
Although this is
rarely the case,
the X gives the
impression of two
diagonal strokes
crossing in the
center.
To maintain
the illusion of
symmetry, type
designers offset
the Xs strokes.
As stroke contrast
between the two diagonals
increases, greater offsetting
is necessary.
The top half of the
X is shorter and
narrower than the
bottom half.
Stroke tapering
keeps the center of
the character from
becoming too heavy.
Unlike the lowercase w and m, the capital W is often wider than the M.
The two inner diagonals may
be drawn at different angles
from the outer strokes.
Prominent thinning and tapering,
especially on the inner strokes,
keep the Ws color consistent.
Some designers add ink traps to
relieve heaviness at the Ws joins.
The Ks three counter spaces are
made relatively equal in area, to
maintain visual balance.
The Ks
diagonal
strokes meet
above the
centerline.
Signicant
thinning and
a subtle ink
trap reduce the
darkness where
the diagonal joins
the stem.
The leg of the K extends farther than
its arm and is noticeably heavier.
Like other diagonal characters, the Y has a left
diagonal that is slightly heavier than its right
one, maintaining proper stroke emphasis.
The two diagonals
taper into the join.
The Ys stem is shorter
than the diagonal strokes.
This wide H has a
too-heavy crossbar.
This symmetrical
E has arms of equal
length, making it look
awkward.
The lower arm of the F
is too high and wide.
This Ts stem is light, and
its crossbar is too wide.
This Ls broadness
accentuates its uneven
negative space.
This Gs crossbar is wide
and placed too high; its
top curve extends past
its base.
This C is too wide, and
the top stroke hangs
beyond its base.
This symmetrical B
has bowls of equal
size, giving it a
top-heavy look.
This Ps bowl is too high
and pinched.
The long leg and
small bowl of this R
distribute the negative
space unevenly while
darkening the join.
rogues gallery
Because of their diagonal strokes and thick
joins, the N and M present challenges to creating
characters of a consistent stroke weight.
Type designers
frequently
introduce ink
traps to reduce
heaviness at the
joins of the N
and M.
The stems of the N and M are often narrower than their apices,
to allow increased negative space within these letters.
The Ns
diagonal
stroke is
heavier than
its thinned
verticals.
The Ms diagonals meet at a similar
angle to those of the V, but with subtle
attenuation of the strokes.
The vertex of the M is narrow, and
even pointed in some typefaces.
Like the Ns stems, those of the M are
signicantly thinnedin some fonts
the stems also taper into the joins.
Inverted emphasis
makes this A
appear backward,
while a too-high
crossbar pinches its
upper counter.
Diagonals of equal
length and lack of
tapering make this K
dark and top-heavy.
Overextended
serifs cause spacing
problems.
This Ys stem is
too tall, and its
stroke emphasis is
backward.
Four similar diagonals
increase the Ws width
and create dark areas at
the joins.
The Zs top is
narrower than
its base.
Like the lowercase zs diagonal, the capital Zs does not conform
to the rules of stroke emphasis and axis visible in other diagonal
characters. The Zs diagonal is similar in stroke weight to the
right diagonal of the A, referencing a change in axis of the
broad-nibbed pen. This adjustment maintains the Zs color.
rogues gallery
In typefaces with high stroke contrast,
the right stem of the U is thinner than
the left. In Franklin Gothic there is
only moderate differentiation.
To reduce its
large counter, the
U is narrower
than the H.
Like other characters, the Us stroke weight lightens
in the horizontal portions of the stroke.
The J is one of the narrowest capital letters. As its
tail gets wider and more hooked, the Js left side
become less balanced and more difcult to space.
The lowercase j and
y and the capital Ss
lower bowl provide
models for the Js tail.
On serif faces, the
tail often ends with a
terminal or are.
The tails of humanist Js sometimes
descend below the baseline.
The design of
the uppercase
S is similar
to that of the
lowercase.
Stroke thinning is
applied to the top
and bottom bowls
but less drasti-
cally than on the
lowercase form.
The bottom bowl of the S
is wider and taller than
the top bowl, preserving
the letters stability.
Like its lowercase counterpart,
the S is not two joined semicircles.
Its straight spine connects the
distinct curves of the two bowls.
Lack of thinning
and of ink traps
causes the N to
become too dark.
This Z lacks an
adjusted stroke axis,
and its base is too
narrow.
Reversed stroke
emphasis on this
too-wide U makes
it seem backward.
This Js wide hook
creates spacing
problems.
This symmetrical S
with a horizontal spine
appears top-heavy and
disjointed.
rogues gallery
Numerals
Like their architectural counterpart, a buildings street number, the numerals of
more than a few typefaces are underdeveloped afterthoughts. However, numerals can
strongly shape a fonts personality or make an otherwise reserved typeface distinctive.
A well-designed set of numerals can be justication enough for a typographer to
employ a font. Unlike letters, which must combine as words to have meaning,
numbers have concrete denitions and signicance on their own. A type designer can
safely assume that a g will rarely be used outside the context of other letters, yet it is
not uncommon to see a 6, 1, or 5 working solo as a page number, price tag, or street
sign. Type designers must consider this expanded end use when developing numerals
for their typefaces.
Early fonts included only a single set of text gures or old style numerals of
varying heights and baselines. These deviating heights correspond to the lowercase
characters ascenders, descenders, and calligraphic origins and are meant for use
among text. Accompanying the proliferation of commercial typography in the
eighteenth century, numbers began to play a more prominent role in the printed
world, appearing in numerical tables, charts, dates, and lists. Reecting these new
uses, type foundries introduced alternate styles of numerals to their fonts. Lining
numerals sit on the baseline and all have the same height, often equivalent to the cap
height or slightly shorter. Tabular gures have equal widths and spacing to create
well-aligned and uniform tables, columns, and charts. These two developments
proved so useful and popular that by the twentieth century many fonts were released
with only a single set of lining, tabular numbers, at the expense of the traditional,
text-friendly old style gures.
While lining and tabular gures are perfect for mathematical and numerical
applications, they tend to look out of place when used among lowercase text.
Contemporary type designers have revived the practice of releasing multiple sets of
numerals with their typefaces, to address the widest possible variety of applications.
Like any other aspect of a typeface, end use should guide design of numberstext
gures are the natural and useful numeral style for a book typeface, while a display
family usually features lining numerals.
tabular, lining gures
text (old style) gures
When numbers appear in
body copy, text gures like
90,825 are used to match the
proportions and rhythm of the
lowercase alphabet.
dtl eischmann
intimo two
ultura birra stout greyton script
agency wide
maple bold
antenna regular
bello script
!!!
Album artwork, 2004
Ray Hearn, Shinya Horiuchi
Original !!! logo by
Daniel Gorman
Punctuation and Accents
Punctuation organizes, claries, and modies written language. It does? Absolutely!
Letters may form the core of a font, but the secondary characterspunctuation
marks, symbols, and accented charactersplay an important and sometimes
overlooked role in typography. A fonts punctuation and diacritics should quickly and
clearly communicate their intended meaning or modication. Poorly sized, spaced, or
drawn punctuation marks and accents look out of place within their font and can even
corrupt a words meaning or pronunciation. Well-designed symbols effectively convey
their modications and meaning without breaking the ow of text, working purpose-
fully yet comfortably among the alphabet letters. Type designers treat punctuation
and symbols with the same care as any other character, unifying the traits of each
secondary mark with the typefaces overall system.
ring
grave
cedilla
acute
circumex
tilde
umlaut or
diaeresis
caron
Over the years, various writers,
linguists, and typographers
have introduced and attempted
to popularize new punctuation
marks. These three proposed
symbolsthe interrobang (a
combination of ? and !), the
irony mark, and the rhetorical
question markhave not found
widespread recognition or use.
A basic set of accent marks is
required for English and most
European languages. Additional
accents and phonetic characters
can adapt the roman alphabet
to even more languages.
Type Families
Much like running a small business, typography can be made easier (and sometimes
messier) by getting the family involved. The power to harness multiple weights
and styles of a typeface gives typographers an arsenal of tools and extra choices if
a particular font weight refuses to work. While many display typefaces, especially
the more unusual or ornamental varieties, may consist of a single font, typical uses
demand that text faces include at least three or four styles: regular (roman), italic
(oblique), bold (demi), and small caps.
The idea of a family of fonts was not fully developed until well after movable
type became widespread. Italic, a scriptlike, more condensed typeface style, was rst
introduced in Italy in 1500 as an informal face for smaller, less expensive books. Later,
printers began to combine italic and regular faces on the same page, and by the seven-
teenth century it had become a standard practice to mix roman and italics together,
often on the same line. Today, typographers use families to easily create a cohesive
page, precluding the need to intermingle many unrelated fonts. Toward this end, type
designers usually conceive a typeface family to function as a multifaceted system,
with a variety of weights, alternates, and italics working in tandem.
A true italic font is an original design, not merely a sloped version of the
regular style. Since italics are more closely related to handwriting than roman type is,
designers often give their italics scriptlike characteristics, such as replacing a romans
Interstate Condensed
Type designers usually shrink
the counters and correspond-
ingly tighten the letterspacing
of heavier weights in a
family. Some bold fonts have
slightly taller x-heights than
their roman counterparts
to compensate for their
voluptuousness.
Auto
Type family, 2004
Underware
The slope angle of italics can vary: anything between three and twenty degrees is fair game, while ten
to fourteen degrees is average. The Auto family contains three different italics, set apart by each fonts
unique style, angle, and level of calligraphic inuence. All three accomplish the italics primary job of
standing out amid roman characters.
two-story a with a single-story letter. These subtle variations in drawing style often
distinguish an italic more than its degree of slant. While true italics are approached
as separately drawn fonts, some typefaces with a machinelike or geometric system,
such as Futura or Univers, may not lend themselves to the cursive characteristics of an
italic. For those, the designer may opt to draw an oblique, taking care to preserve the
stroke weight, color, and curve attributes of the original roman.
Like italics, the lighter and heavier weights of a face are more than just thinned
or thickened romans. Type designers compensate for a bold fonts added heaviness
by increasing the tapers and adding ink traps where two strokes meet. Maintaining
similar curves, structure, and height ensures that additional weights speak the same
language as the rest of the type family while accommodating their stylistic variations.
As the name implies, small caps are shorter versions of a typefaces capital
letters. Most well-designed fonts, especially book fonts, include at least one weight
of small caps similar to or slightly taller than the romans x-height. Typographers
typically use small caps for setting uppercase text within body copy, making the
relationships between small caps and lowercase an important concern for type
designers. Such relationships dene a good type family and allow it to work together
cohesively. Font family members that ght among themselves are just as dysfunc-
tional as any feuding clan.
United
Type family of 105 fonts, 2006
Tal Leming, House Industries
Unlike the average human family, typeface families keep getting bigger. Some of todays megafamilies
have hundreds of weights and styles, from ultra thins, inlines, and hairlines to ornaments, foreign
languages, and alternate characters. Software interpolation provides shortcuts for creating intermediate
weights without having to draw completely new character sets for each font.
small caps or mid caps
are not just shrunken versions
of regular-size capitals. Type
designers draw a set of small
caps separately to maintain
the stroke weight, color, and
width of the corresponding
roman. Small caps are typically
more extended and have
greater letterspacing than their
full-size counterparts.
Spacing and Kerning
Type designers consider the space between letters as important as the forms of the
letters themselves. Like a sculptor extracting a human gure from a block of marble,
a type designer sees letters in terms of counterforms and the spaces around each
character. A page of text is not only black lines on a white eld but also a white space
punctuated by black forms. Adjusting the side bearings of each letter orchestrates
this interplay between positive and negative space, ultimately dening how a font
looks, feels, and works.
Spacing a font is an art unto itself. Poor spacing can ruin an exquisitely drawn
typeface, while great spacing can give a lackluster font new life. The shape of a letter
works in concert with its side bearings, left and right. Small alterations to a charac-
ters form can vastly improve its spacing, while a previously troublesome letter may
become cooperative through careful calibration of its side bearings. A properly drawn
and spaced typeface should have an even color, exhibiting no distracting gaps or
heavy spots within words. Once a font has been correctly spaced, each character will
t comfortably and evenly within its surrounding negative space.
A well-spaced and -drawn font requires less kerning, the compensation
required to balance unwieldy visual spaces between specic combinations of letters.
Since many characters in a typeface are irregularly shaped, some letter combinations,
such as AV or Ya, inevitably produce unsightly gaps. Kerning addresses these specic
issues case by case. A properly spaced T and h may feel balanced next to each other,
but when the T sits next to the y it creates a distracting Ty gap (shown here without
kerning). Fonts generally include anywhere from several hundred to tens of thousands
of kerns to rein in the worst offenders. While it is possible to go overboard, most
type designers do not feel obliged to create kerning pairs for incongruous or rarely
deployed combinations such as ?A.
Like drawing the characters, spacing a typeface begins incrementally with
square and round letters like the H and the O. Since most Hs and Os are fairly
symmetrical, these characters will typically have equal side bearings on the left and
right, providing fewer variables for the initial spacing values. Once the designer
feels comfortable with these characters side bearings, he or she can set the side
bearings for the rest of the case, attempting to maintain a consistent optical space
between each pair of letters. Side bearings vary from character to character. Rounded
characters like the o or irregular characters like the s require smaller side bearings
than straight-sided characters, to visually compensate for their softness or additional
open space. A typefaces system of shared attributes applies just as readily to the
spacing as to the drawing. If the ns left side is similar to the rs, then by default their
left side bearings should correlate.
Typically used for applica-
tions that mingle letters and
numerals, a xed-width or
monospace font keeps each
character the exact same width.
While no separate spacing
or kerning adjustments are
necessary in a monospace
typeface, maintaining even
color and optical spacing
when all characters must
occupy equal space presents
a type design challenge. Wide
characters such as the M and
W must be condensed, while
narrow characters like the i, 1,
and l must be modied to ll
out their space.
For more on spacing and
kerning, see Designing
Type by Karen Cheng
(New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2005).
consolas
courier
The goal of spacing is to achieve even rhythm and
color by eliminating white gaps and tight, dark
areas. A designer typically begins by determining
comfortable side bearings for control characters like H
and O. Then strings of the control characters are tested
with additional letters at various point sizes. If any
problems appear, spacing, or the character itself, must
be adjusted.
Without kerning, awkward gaps appear between
several pairs of these characters. Punctuation
and combinations of upper- and lowercase letters
frequently require kerning to maintain a fonts
even spacing.
Different fonts have different spacing requirements
depending on their end use and visual characteristics.
Type designers space some faces more generously to
maintain legibility at small sizes, while display faces
often benet from more compact spacing.
initial spacing (Side bearings set to 50 percent of each counter; feels too loose)
nal spacing (Side bearings slightly reduced)
A typical starting point for the spacing process is
to set a characters side bearings to approximately
50 percent of the optical width of its counter. By
looking at a string of a single character typed
repeatedly, a designer can decide if the spacing
should be looser or tighter. Most fonts side bearings
are optically between one half and one third of the
width of its average counter space. Serifs help bridge
the spaces between letters, and serif typefaces
often have slightly looser optical spacing than sans
serif fonts. However, uniform spacing between
letters serifs is less important than the optical
spacing between the main strokes of two adjoining
characters.
rogues gallery
Too-tight letterspacing causes the characters to run
together, reducing legibility and creating color problems.
Type spaced too loosely creates distracting gaps between
letter pairs and causes words to break apart.
some sample spacing strings using the
H, O, n, and o as control characters.
scala sans (More open spacing)
unkerned type with kerning
vag rounded (Very tight spacing)
Squinting ones eyes or blurring the text makes problem characters more apparent. Compared with
the overall alphabet, dark characters (g and a) and wide, light characters (m and r) are visible.
Patterns begin to emerge with specic characters over the course of the paragraph. Especially without
kerning, recurrent spacing problems appear with the l, f, and w. This specimens k is also too heavy.
The word spaces (spacebar taps) in this specimen are too wide,
increasing the gaps and rivers in the text.
With tighter word spacing, more even weight, and proper kerning, a nished typeface
exhibits a relatively consistent typographic color in most text combinations.
Setting Text
Type designers begin using their fonts to set words and sentences as soon as enough
characters and spacing information have been resolved. Setting lines of text is
helpful at every stage of the process, from drawing the initial characters to incorpo-
rating punctuation to spacing and kerning. Nothing reveals a typefaces problems
quicker than printed tests. The solutions to these problems, however, are not always
quick and straightforward; they may require multiple rounds of revisions. To see
how the complete alphabet looks in print, type designers set paragraphs of pangrams,
sentences containing every letter of the alphabet. By using each alphabet letter with
relatively equal frequency, pangrams like the familiar quick brown fox jumps over
the lazy dog make it easy to nd letters with weight problems, improper spacing,
and general issues that disrupt the ow and color of the text.
Below:
Cholla
Early version, 1996, and nal
typeface, 1999
Sibylle Hagmann, Emigre
Hagmanns rst font, designed
when she was a student at
CalArts, exhibits some typical
beginners spacing and color
errors. After redesigning some of
the more unorthodox characters
and resolving spacing issues,
Hagmann eventually evolved the
face into the Cholla type family.
Empire State Building
Typeface, 2007
Designed with Paul Barnes
Above and right:
Stag and Stag Bold Dot
Magazine display typefaces,
20052008
Below:
Houston
Newspaper typeface, 2003
Right:
Farnham
Typeface, 2004
Left:
Stag Sans
Magazine display typeface, 2007
Above:
Publico
Newspaper typeface, 2007
Initial version designed
with Paul Barnes
Above:
Amplitude
Typeface, 2001, 2003
American type designer Christian Schwartz created and published his rst digital font when he was fourteen years old.
Since then he has designed well-known retail type families including Neutraface, Farnham, and Amplitude, along with
custom typefaces for publications such as Esquire, the Guardian, and the Houston Chronicle.
How do you, as a contemporary type designer, work within the constraints and historical context of book/text
type design? I got into type design because I love to readmagazines and newspapers as well as books.
This probably explains why my taste in type skews a little conservative and explains my love of historical
typefaces. Although these three kinds of media are all printed on paper, the text type for each has pretty
different needs. Newspapers are usually printed in narrow columns with very little leading, while book type
is typically in wide columns with generous leading, on much nicer paper, and so on. Ive enjoyed working
within and pushing against these constraints, and theres much more to explore.
What is the most crucial step in the development of a typeface? For me, deciding on or understanding a
typefaces purpose is the most crucial step. The typefaces for the Empire State Building referenced the
buildings existing lettering but also had to be legible for signage, while taking into account materials and
manufacturing processes. I like working with these kinds of constraints, because they usually force me to
be clever and use some lateral thinking. For self-initiated projects like Amplitude and Farnham, Ive come
up with strict guidelines for myself, because having a problem to solve keeps me focused. Out in the wild,
designers will use a typeface in unexpected ways, but it must do one thing really well before it can do other
random things well.
How does your type design process start? Before I start drawing something I spend a lot of time ruminating
on ideas and discussing things with my frequent collaborator, Paul Barnes. I also like to look at historical
examples of how problems have been solved beforeI may not follow what my predecessors did, but then
at least I know what Im disagreeing with and why.
In your opinion, what makes a good typeface? A good typeface is well crafted and useful, and sets up into
attractive-looking words. It also holds together as a complete system, where individual letters dont distract
the reader. A good typeface doesnt make you wonder what you might do with it, or why it exists.
What is the most important advice you received when you rst began designing type? Tobias Frere-Jones told
me to always space as I draw, which is obvious once you know it, but was a revelation at the time. Matthew
Carter told me that I didnt need to learn calligraphy to be a good type designer, unless I wanted to. That
opened up my eyes to the fact that there are many different, legitimate ways to create good typefaces.
Interview: Christian Schwartz
alternate characters Additional glyphs not part of a fonts
standard character set; typically, variants of existing letters
that can be substituted at the typographers discretion.
aperture The opening found in letters like a, c, e, and s.
axis The direction of stroke emphasis within a letter. Letters
with modulated strokes display thick and thin areas, based on
the angle of the writing tool used to create them.
book type or text type Typefaces designed to maintain
readability and be used to set longer bodies of text such as
books and periodicals.
broad-nibbed pen A at-tipped writing tool used for most
handwriting until the popularization of expandable nibs in the
eighteenth century.
character An elemental unit of written language, such as an
alphabet letter.
character set or glyph set The complete set of glyphs that
make up a font or alphabet.
color The overall lightness or darkness of a character, font,
or page of text.
contrast The amount of variation from thick to thin within
and between the strokes that form a character.
counter or counterform A partially or fully enclosed area
within a letter.
cursive Letters with a owing quality, often connected. (See
also italic and script.)
dark Describing characters or bodies of text with a low ratio
of negative space within and around them. Can also refer to
specic strokes or parts of characters.
diacritic or accent mark A small, simple mark added
above or below a character that generally signies a change in
pronunciation. Various languages employ different diacritics.
display type or display lettering As opposed to book or
text type, letters that are meant to be used at larger sizes for
shorter amounts of text.
expansion The thickening of a stroke caused by increased
pressure on a pen that has an expandable nib.
family A group of related fonts designed to work together,
such as a roman, italic, and bold weight of a single typeface.
font The character set of a single weight or style of a type
family, although the term is often used interchangeably with
typeface.
glyph A visual representation of a letter, numeral, symbol,
ligature, or other distinct written, lettered, or typographic
mark.
humanist A writing style developed in fteenth-century Italy
that inuenced early European type design. Humanist type
is informed by broad-nibbed pen handwriting and usually
possesses an angled axis.
incipit The opening lines or page of a book, chapter, or
poem. The incipit pages of medieval manuscripts are often
embellished or treated distinctly from the main text.
initial The rst letter of a page or chapter that is larger,
decorative, or otherwise called out from the body text.
ink trap An increased indentation that relieves some of the
darkness where two strokes meet. Ink traps are often found in
the diagonal joins of bold fonts.
italic A style of letters derived from cursive writing that
is typically more inclined and rounded than upright roman
characters.
kerning or kerning pair An additional spacing adjustment
that reduces cumbersome spaces between specic pairs of
letters or a letter and a punctuation mark within a typeface.
Latin alphabet See roman.
Glossary
Terms describing the structure and features
of letters are illustrated on pages 3032.
legibility The recognizability of an individual letter; the
ease with which a character is read and distinguished. (See
also readability.)
lettering Characters that are built from multiple actions
or strokes, as opposed to type or writing.
letterspacing The amount and rhythm of space between
characters in a typeface, word, or lettering treatment.
light Describing letters or text of a paler typographic color
with a high ratio of negative space within and surrounding
them.
lining numerals Numerals of uniform height that
sit on the baseline and typically relate to the height and
proportions of the capital letters of a typeface.
logogram A single glyph that represents an entire word or
combinations of phonetic sounds. The Chinese alphabet and
our Arabic numerals are logographic.
minuscule A lowercase letter. The term comes from
medieval writing styles that were precursors to the roman
lowercase alphabet.
modulation Variation in stroke width.
negative space or white space The space around and
within a character.
oblique Sloped roman characters, as opposed to italic.
phoneme The smallest unit of speech. In a phonetically
based alphabet, each roman letter represents one or more
sounds.
readability Related to legibility, but more broadly the
overall ease with which words, sentences, and larger bodies
of text can be read and comprehended.
roman The upper- and lowercase alphabet originally derived
from ancient Rome, now widely used throughout the world.
Also refers to the upright, regular weight of a typeface.
Roman Of classical Romelettering styles used in the
Roman Empire.
rotation A change in the angle and orientation of a at-
tipped writing tool.
sans serif A letter or font that lacks serifs.
script Running cursive letters that usually join with a
connecting stroke.
serif A short nishing line or mark at the end of a stroke.
side bearing The space on either side of character within a
font.
stroke A single mark or motion of the writing implement.
When applied to type or built-up lettering, the term is more
metaphorical.
terminal An enlarged, rounded, or ornamental ending that
completes some (typically curved) strokes on serif letters like
the c, f, and r.
text gures or old style numerals Numerals with
ascenders and descenders, designed to complement the
proportions of the lowercase alphabet.
titling capitals A set of capitals created explicitly for
display use, generally as a companion font to a text typeface.
translation The variation in stroke width caused by changes
in stroke direction of a at-tipped writing tool held at a
relatively steady angle. (See the diagram on page 52.)
type Characters that can be uniformly reproduced through a
single action, as opposed to lettering or writing.
typeface A font or type family.
typographer A person who works with and is knowledgeable
about type. The term type designer more accurately describes
someone who creates type.
writing Letters that can be quickly produced by hand with a
minimal number of motions, as opposed to lettering or type.
127 glossary
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Barnes, Paul. The Story of the Guardian Typefaces 20032005.
Unpublished PDF document from the designers.
Benson, John Howard, and Arthur Graham Carey. The Elements of
Lettering. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1950.
Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. Version 2.5.
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Brown, Frank Chouteau. Letters & Lettering. Worcester, MA: Davis
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Carter, Harry. A View of Early Typography: Up to about 1600.
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Cheng, Karen. Designing Type. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2005.
Consuegra, David. American Type Design & Designers. New York:
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Conti, Gene, Carl Lehmann, Robert Rose, and George Sohn, eds.
Photo-Letterings One Line Manual of Styles. New York: Photo-
Lettering, Inc., 1988.
Cruz, Andy, Ken Barber, and Rich Roat. House Industries. Berlin: Die
Gestalten Verlag, 2004.
Drucker, Johanna. The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and
Imagination. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999.
Gray, Nicolete. A History of Lettering. Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1986.
Hagmann, Sibylle. Dwiggins Revisited. Bern, Switzerland: TM, 2007.
Hoi-Yin. Akiem Helmling Interview. Sketchblog, January 20, 2007,
sketchblog.guava.nl/2007/01/20/akiem-helmling-interview.
Kelly, Rob Roy. American Wood Type: 18281900. New York: Da Capo
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Bibliography
INDEX
A3 Design, 8081
Acadmie des Sciences, 21
Art Deco, 68
Art Nouveau, 13, 15, 8788
Art. Lebedev, 79
Arts and Crafts, 13, 87, 89
Avila, Cosmo, 29
Bantjes, Marian, vii, 9091
Barber, Ken, 7475
Barnes, Paul, 48, 124125
Baroque, 1213, 34
Baskerville, John, 11, 83
Bauhaus, 6, 13, 15, 21
Bayer, Herbert, 21
Bickham, George, 68
Bodoni, Giambattista, 11
Borsodi, Bela, 2223
Bringhurst, Robert, 21
Brody, Neville, 3
Buro Destruct, 8081
Byrom, Andrew, xiv, 1
Canada Type, 84
Carolingian, 912
Carter, Matthew, 45, 57, 65, 125
Caslon, William, 11
Champion, J., 68
Charlemagne, 910
Christianity (also
Catholicism), 6, 810, 87
Cindoruk, Ali, 8081
COMA, 3
Constantine, (Emperor), 9
Correll, Damien, 6869
Cruz, Andy, 6869
Dada, 13, 15
Darden, Joshua, 19, 44, 130
De Stijl, 13, 15
Di Edwardo, Cara, 5455
Didot, Firmin, 11
Downer, John, 45, 56, 6869
Drozdz, Maya, 8081
Drer, Albrecht, 21
Dwiggins, William Addison,
x, 97
Eadfrith, 67
Eisner, Will, 8687
Emigre, 29, 56, 6465, 69, 123
Ernstberger, Matthias, 2223
Essl, Mike, 3
Fella, Ed, 4
Fletcher, Alan, 8081
Flynn, Shaun, 9495
FontFont, 41
Fonts For Flash, 65
Foresti, Giacomo Filippo, 10
Fournier, Pierre Simon, 11
Frantzman, Sara, 36, 81
Frazer, Rowen, 2
Frere-Jones, Tobias, 100, 125
Futurism, 15
Fwis, 8081
Gerlach, Verena, 28
Gorman, Daniel, 117
Gorter, Folkert, 8081
Gothic, 2, 1013, 35
Goudy, Frederick, 73
Greek culture and alphabet,
6, 810, 12, 34
Grifn, Hayley, 2425
Grifn, Patrick, 84
Grifn, Rick, 8889
Guimard, Hector, 88
Gutenberg, Johannes, 35
Hagmann, Sibylle, 9697,
100, 123
Hall, Jamie, 90
Hannah, Jonny, 4
Hansen, Wyeth, 23, 5051
Harris Rouemy, Nancy, 8485
Hearn, Ray, 117
Hjrta Smrta, 18, 62
Hoeer & Frere-Jones, 100
Holy Roman Empire (see
Carolingian)
Horiuchi, Shinya, 117
House Industries, 6869, 71,
7475, 119
humanism, 1013, 34
Infahseng, Apirat, 6869
Insular, 67, 910
Islam, 87
Jenson, Nicholas, 1011, 40
Johnston, Edward, 13
Katrina, Ryan, 90
Kay, Justin Thomas, 8081, 83
Keller, Jonathan, 3, 2425
Kilgallen, Margaret, xiixiii
Kontour, 9697, 100
Langdon, John, 48
Leming, Tal, 67, 71, 119
Letman (Job Wouters), 28,
7071
Letterror, 98
Lewis, Edward M., 73
Licko, Zuzana, 29, 83
Lynam, Ian, 80
Majoor, Martin, 41
Mannerism, 1112
Manutius, Aldus, 1011
Marcinizyn, Eric, 6869
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso,
15
Maryland Institute College
of Art (mica), vivii, 63,
8081
McCoy, Mark, 72
McLachlan, Katie, 63
McQuade, Mike, 90
Mederos, Ren, 73
Mellier, Fannette, 1415
Microsoft Typography
Group, 65
Miedinger, Max, 3
Miller, Abbott, 91
modernism, 13, 15, 2021,
6061, 8788
Morgan, Kate, 63
Morris, William, 13, 89
Moscoso, Victor, 88
Munday, Oliver, 22, 4647,
7677, 8081
Neimann, Christoph, 9293
neoclassicism, 1213, 33
Okrasinski, Adam, 76
Olson, Eric, 78, 98
OurType, 4041, 56
Palladino, Tony, 7273
postmodernism, 13, 15
Post Typography, 3, 25, 48,
5051, 76, 7879, 8081
Powers, Steve, 44
Process Type Foundry, 6869,
78, 98
psychedelia, 5, 13, 15, 8889
punk culture and music, 5, 73
Purdy, A. J., 91
Ramsey, Luke, 91
Renaissance, 6, 1013, 15, 2122,
3334
Renner, Paul, 20
Rickner, Tom, 65
Roman Empire and its
alphabets 2, 612, 15, 21,
3435, 43
Romanesque, 1012
Sagmeister, Stefan, 2223
Sandstrom, Steve, 79
Sargsyan, Lusine, 1617
Schwartz, Christian, 29, 48, 67,
124125
scribes, 6, 9, 11, 38, 43, 87
Seripop, 44, 90
Shaw Jelveh Design, 79, 8081
sign painters, ii, 1213, 2627,
29, 31, 3435, 4344, 71, 100
Simonneau, Louis, 2021
Smeijers, Fred, 4041
Steingruber, Johann David, 91
Stout, Michael, 25
Strals, Nolen, vi, 42, 49, 73
Tagliente, Giovanni Antonio, 11
Terrasi, Tori, 62
Topos Graphics, 6869
Traci Jones Design, 8081
Trochut, Alex, 62, 93
Tschichold, Jan, 15, 21
Underware, 37, 65, 6869, 83,
118
VanderLans, Rudy, 29, 6465
Verheul, Peter, 56
Victore, James, 6667
Vigil, Carlos, 63
Wang, Eugenia, 63
Wang, Miao, 2223
Warde, Beatrice, 41
Wijdeveld, Hendrik
Theodorus, 6061
Willen, Bruce, vi, 19
people, groups, and movements
129 index
evolution of jubilats lowercase g, Typeface, 2008, Joshua Darden, Darden Studio

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