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{ Activist Design }

Article | How to Choose the Perfect Font for Your Needs - 0 views

www.1stwebdesigner.com/...choose-perfect-font

Articles Design Reference Tips Typography Fonts Choosing Fonts

shared by { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Comic Sans! I remember the days when I used to go with Comic Sans whenever I was confused about what font would suit my requirements. It looked like it was handwritten yet it was a font. You realize how wrong you were when people start criticizing your work. I was a kid back then so it was alright on my part to make mistakes and learn. But, once we enter the professional field we have to think twice before finalizing a decision
    • { Activist Design }
      { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
       
      Please. Please. Stop with the comic sans. There are so many long time non-profit professionals who race to the comic sans when they want to look hip. I promise you - it is not hip. Really.
  • The design of a font matters a lot in every format of text. It takes years of experience and plenty of intuition to develop that gut feeling required to analyze a font for a respective situation.
    • { Activist Design }
      { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
       
      You have the experience, you do not have to be a professional designer to know exactly the right font. You have seen flyers and event invites that made you want to go, and those that didn't make you want to go. Use your experience in your own professional arena. Pick what you want your message to make someone FEEL and find a font that matches that feeling.
  • Analyze Your End Result Isn’t that obvious? You can’t start searching for the best font unless you are sure of the end market for that font. Jot down the kind of viewers that you are expecting. Will the readers of your website be night life lovers or white collar employees? All this depends on the type of content and your niche. See, it is very easy to just decide on a font and go with it when your readership isn’t huge and you’re just starting out. It is later on that you will understand how much the wrong font selection can effect your site (after you’ve finished this article, there will be no reason for you to make bad font decisions). Once you understand your goals these tips will be more meaningful.
    • { Activist Design }
      { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
       
      What is it that you want the person to feel? Angry about a certain injustice? Passion for what they want the world to look like in the future (possibly due in part to a little donation from themselves...*cough, cough*) Before you start designing, identify what you want to accomplish. Identify the ACTION you want a person to take.
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  • The White Space Those who smiled after reading “The White Space” know exactly what I mean. A font that does not care about the spacing between two letters can mess it up big time for you. Tightly placed letters can confuse an eye and result in visuals that aren’t actually there. Properly calculated white space helps the eye to run as fast as the mental skills of the reader permits. I don’t mean that white spacing must be taken care of all the time. There will be niches where the abrupt spacing of letters will give a high to its readers. But, such cases are rare.
    • { Activist Design }
      { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
       
      The mind sees a massive amount of text and sees WORK. In a fast-paced world, a world where we pop in a search query and instantly get results of what we want, we want the same thing from visual text. A lot of text all at once - worse a lot of text that is not easily read - says "I am going to be here all day reading this." Break it up with space.
  • Headline Fonts aren’t Meant to be Paragraph Fonts Get it? C’mon! Wasn’t that simple to understand? There are fonts that are designed for a specific purpose. Fonts that are specifically designed for headings. You use them for headings and the reader will be in awe of your choice of font. But, just because a font looks good as a header or paragraph font, that doesn’t mean the opposite is true.
    • { Activist Design }
      { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
       
      The author provides a great example....
  • Don’t Over Experiment It will be weird if you opt for a font with uneven shapes and sizes just because they provide the artsy look you want for your text. If you end up with fonts that have artistic deformations then the reader’s brain will take more time to process the information. Like, the below image I tried to over experiment with fonts and you can see the end result. Total confusion!
  • The Classic Choices Times New Roman might not provide your design with an over-the-top edge but it also won’t look terrible. These good old fonts have been around for ages and they have been used over and over whenever designers were confused about the right font. It might not give you the high that you are looking for but sometimes these fonts are just enough (like the font selection in New York Times). Perhaps, they are the high quality font that will complete your design. You just don’t know yet!
    • { Activist Design }
      { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
       
      Ok, here I am a little bit of a hipster. I can't stomach New Times Roman. *shrug* There are just toooooo many good fonts out there that are simple, effective, and yet do not bore me to tears.
  • Avoid High Contrast So, how does contrast apply into the world of fonts? Wasn’t this supposed to be inclined towards the world of photography? Enough kidding! By contrast I mean the difference in design of two fonts. It is suggested that you don’t use two completely different fonts on the same page and, moreover, next to each other. Please understand that it is the gradual change which is soothing for the reader’s eye. If you end up confusing the reader’s mind by drastically changing fonts at short intervals then it might just kill the purpose. Designers have to choose fonts that merge with their design and not fonts that pop out and kill the design. Make sure you help the reader save time instead of wasting their time while they try to understand what is happening.
    • { Activist Design }
      { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
       
      I love this example. My whole brain got confused.
  • The Magic Formula to Wrap this up I guess we have already done plenty of reading over here so I thought why not submerge my traditional conclusion with the last (and the most obvious) tip. See, at the end of the day it will be your choice that will prevail so instead of thinking too much just follow the basic steps that you would follow in any situation (which is nowhere related to fonts): Look for familiar fonts and create a list. Look out for fonts that you haven’t seen before. You will have to dive into forums and various typography websites but the research will be worth the time spent. Start playing with each font in your end result and see which suits your design the most. Increase/Decrease the size of font and make them uppercase occasionally. See how they look. Choose with your gut feeling. Remember, if you like it then you will be able to represent it too. But, if you aren’t confident with your choice then you will find 10 critics killing your hard work. Be confident (and vigilant)!
  • { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
     
    This article is fantastic. While it focuses on designers, it is sorely needed in the nonprofit community.
  • { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
     
    Siddiqui, Salman. "How to Choose the Perfect Font for Your Needs." 1stwebdesigner, February 21, 2012. http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/choose-perfect-font/.
{ Activist Design }

Guide | Elements of a Font - 1 views

finearts.fontbonne.edu/...type_font.html

Design Reference Guides Typography Typeface Typeface Anatomy

shared by { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Elements of a Font At its most basic, a font is a collection of letterforms. A very large distinction is that these letterforms are designed to be used and to work together. The design is such that many letterforms are actually composed of the same, or repeating elements—stroke weight, serif brackets, counter spaces. With digital font design, a font also includes things such as kerning tables, which help determine how letters ‘fit’, or are spaced. (See measurements). A font most often refers to a digital typeface, which can be used at nearly any size, where a typeface, or face, refers to a single size, weight and style of a font.
  • Uppercase All capital letters, some accented vowels, some special (tilde, cedilla) characters.
  • Lowercase All lowercse (small) letters, some accented vowels, some special (tilde, cedilla) characters.
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  • Uppercase Numerals Also called lining numerals, all have the same height as uppercase letters. On the left is the proportional set, which are kerned (notice the alignment in the decimal places), and on the right is the tabular set, which are monospaced, for use in columns and tables.
  • Lowercase Numerals Lowercase numerals are also called old style, and are designed to the x-height with ascenders and descenders. Less common than lining numerals, old style numerals are generally more elegant. Again, the proportional set is on the left, and the tabular on the right.
  • Punctuation and Misc. Characters All fonts generally contain standard punctuation, but some have quite a bit more. There are also ‘expert’ sets, which are an extended set of miscellaneous characters.
  • The particular font used, Adobe® Garamond Pro, is of a new type technology called Open Type, which can contain thousands of characters in a single font file, and which is also platform independent, so you don’t need a different version for Windows and Mac.
  • { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
     
    Citation: Fontbonne University. "Elements of a Font." Department of Fine Arts at Fontbonne University, February 8, 2013. http://finearts.fontbonne.edu/tech/type/type_font.html.
{ Activist Design }

Typedia: A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces - 0 views

typedia.com

Typography Reference Guides Encyclopedia Design Design Sites Typography Sites

shared by { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13 - Cached
  • { Activist Design } on 17 Feb 13
     
    "Typedia is a brilliant resource for anyone who's interested in Typography but doesn't know where to start. The site is run by many leading designers who simply love type, including Jason Santa Maria, Dan Mall and Liz Danzico. Typedia describes itself 'like a mix between IMDb and Wikipedia, just for type. Anyone can join, add and edit pages for typefaces or for the people behind the type."
{ Activist Design }

Article | The Classification of Fonts - 0 views

speckyboy.com/...the-classification-of-fonts

Design Articles Reference Guides Typography Typeface Classification Typeface

shared by { Activist Design } on 16 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The Structure of a Letter Let’s start by having a look at the structure of a letter: 1. Baseline … is the imaginary line that is the base of all letters, they “sit” on it. 2. Cap height … is the imaginary line that is determined by the top edge of uppercase letters. It can have the same height with the ascender but it can also be different, depending on the font. 3. Meanline … is the horizontal line determined by the top extremities of the majority of lowercase letters as “a”,”c”, “e”, “x”. 4. Descender … is the part of the “g”, “j”, “p”, “q”, “y” letters that is situated bellow the baseline. 5. Ascender … is the opposite of descender. It is determined by the top of “b”, “d”, “f”, “h”, “k”, “l”, “t” lowercase. We may all discuss the classification of serif fonts and sans serif. Unfortunately, not many know what the true distinctions are: 6. Serif … is the extra stroke of the letters. Sans serif, as you must have figured out, is the lack of those strokes; the characters have a prominent cut. 7. “x” height … is the height of lowercase letter “x”. This might seem kind of unimportant at first glance, but it is used in CSS as a measuring unit (mostly because the lowercase letter “x” has no ascenders or descenders).
  • Old style or Garalde This type of font was designed by the printers of the Renaissance and it takes up many Roman elements. Some specialists consider Old style to be a synonym of Garalde, other consider Garalde as being a category of Old style (together with Venetian). It is characterized by the low/moderate contrast between thick and thin strokes and the serifs are usually rounded. It is defined by excellent readability. Some of the most used fonts in this category are: Garamond, Minion Pro, Palatino, Centaur & Bembo.
  • Modern or Didone These fonts have very strong features: thin horizontal strokes but thick vertical ones, extreme contrast between strokes, serifs aren’t rounded and joined vertically. The Modern fonts have appeared in the eighteen century, the creators being the Didone group which was based in France and the Italian printer Giambattista Bodoni. Some of the most important exponents of this kind of types are: Century, Bodoni, Didot & Bookman.
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  • Transitional As the name states it is a transition element between Old style and Modern fonts. This type of fonts can be recognized by its characteristics: the majuscules and the ascenders of the lower case are on the same line, breaks are oblique or horizontal, and the axis is slightly oblique or horizontal. Rounded serifs are more formal than Old Style, but less formal than Modern. By far the most used font from this family is Times New Roman.
  • Sans serif This font was created at the beginning of the nineteen century, but it took almost a hundred years to gain the popularity it deserved. The main feature of the sans serif is the lack of any serif (in French “sans” means without). These fonts impress with their simplicity and large usability. It is considered as the most abstract form of the letter-alphabet. The most important fonts are: Helvetica, Arial, Futura, Century Gothic & Gill Sans.
  • Dingbats or ornamental fonts A cool idea was to replace the alpha numeric characters with symbols, drawings, pictures… and so ornamental fonts appeared. Dingbats usually have no real purpose, but are very useful and times visually beatiful.
  • Gothic Scripts These fonts look like they had been handwritten in the Europe of Gutenberg age and because of that it is very easy to determine their origin. Gothic Scripts is characterized by the elaborated and complicated shape of the letters and it is used mostly on diplomas, invitations and other formal occasions. It is highly recommended to use them only in lowercase and avoid uppercase. Other names for this category are Black Letter or Old English. The most prominent fonts are: Cloister Black Lite, Black Forest & Linotext.
  • Handwritten These are the fonts that look like they have been handwritten. They have a natural look and letters have a cursive, current aspect and are highly rounded. These fonts are not very legible. Good examples are: Rage Italic & Cristopherhand.
  • Decorative or novelty Decorative fonts are easier to classify. They are the fonts that can’t be included within any of the above categories. The main purpose of such letters is to create a mood or to try to be original and this is the reason why they are rarely used in print or web content.
  • Slab serif The influence of the Modern style is powerful, but these fonts have other features that make them stand out. The serifs are square and larger; the same line weight and the serifs are usually perpendicular on rectangular ends. There are five different subcategories: Egyptienne, Clarendon, Italienne, Latin & Tuscan. Some examples of slab serif are: Rockwell, Memphis, Figaro & Excelsior.
  • About the Author: Daniel Pintillie (4 Articles) Daniel Pintilie is a talented designer from Romania, available for hire, who really loves to create interesting projects. You can follow him on Twitter to get in touch and share your opinions about his articles!
    • { Activist Design }
      { Activist Design } on 16 Feb 13
       
      Citation: Pintillie, Daniel. "The Classification of Fonts." Speckyboy Design Magazine, November 2, 2010. http://speckyboy.com/2010/11/02/the-classification-of-fonts/.
  • { Activist Design } on 16 Feb 13
     
    Intro note from the author: "The classification of fonts is still unclear, even with the various classes and categories that have been created by some of great type lovers of the years. Some may consider categorizing fonts separately, others may think of it is a common division… I honestly believe that this debate will go on forever. The classification is not what is the most important aspect, the way designers work with each individual and unique font should be."
  • { Activist Design } on 16 Feb 13
     
    This is a fantastic article discussing the various types of typeface classification!
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