While you don’t necessarily have to remember all of these technical terms, you should be familiar with the actual concepts, especially if you want to master part 3 of this series (in which we create our own color schemes). To that end, here’s a cheat sheet to jog your memory:Hue is color (blue, green, red, etc.).Chroma is the purity of a color (a high chroma has no added black, white or gray).Saturation refers to how strong or weak a color is (high saturation being strong).Value refers to how light or dark a color is (light having a high value).Tones are created by adding gray to a color, making it duller than the original.Shades are created by adding black to a color, making it darker than the original.Tints are created by adding white to a color, making it lighter than the original.
htmlslicemate.com on 10 Jun 13I recently finished reading Tim Brown's new book "Combining Typefaces." It's 63 pages. You can buy it for less than $5 on FiveSimpleSteps, as a pdf or epub. Combining Typefaces is a dense book. It goes through a lot of concepts very quickly, but I'm a fan of that. The book may be primarily about combining types, but I think it serves as a great introduction to typography as a whole. It goes over anatomy and general terminology, but the book primarily approaches typography as a form of artistic communication, instead of just a set of guidelines and formulas. This is important, because that means it accepts subjectivity. There is no one answer to type, no winning approach; all we have are the techniques and patterns observed and used by of artists and designers throughout centuries. It challenges you to think about typography in your own way: how will you create what you want to communicate? What will you use? How will you use it?
