We tell you who a typeface designer is, what typeface pairings are for, and whose typeface work is a must-see.
Every day we encounter a lot of information – on the Internet, on billboards, or on street posters. Teams of marketers and designers work to get our attention. Often a designer’s work with type is invisible to the viewer and type is taken for granted. But typography is a very important part of design. A poorly chosen font can ruin any idea, even the most interesting one. Well-chosen fonts make the design harmonious and set the mood.
You can make a good ad without good typography, but you can’t make a great ad without good typography.
What is typography
The word “typography” comes from the Greek τύπος “imprint” and γράφω “writing” and means the artistic design of text with fonts, symbols and signs. Moreover, typography refers to both work with large amounts of text – for example, the composition of magazines and books, and the creation of fonts – the design of all its characters.
In today’s world, typography is used to create logos, advertising and city navigation.
Typography is the art of giving human language a strong visual form.
Before the advent of digital technology, typography was restricted to professionals – in the Middle Ages they rewrote books by hand, repeating the forms of letters, and then their work moved on to book printing. Today almost everyone is familiar with typography, whether for presentations or social media posts.
Working with typography in the layout, the designer:
- selects fonts, their shapes and densities;
- works with the compatibility of fonts and size ratio;
- distributes the text in the layout, selects the size;
- forms the positioning of text blocks and freestanding font elements;
- makes up font compositions;
- The designer may also develop a font by himself.
Who is a font designer
In addition to working with the design of text information in layouts, there is another direction in typography – font design.
First, good typography makes words easy to read. But ideally, it does more than that: it helps convey the inspiring spirit of the ideas behind the words.
A type designer develops new character designs – letters, numbers, punctuation and special characters. Such designers work mainly in font studios (sometimes they are also called by the beautiful word “slovoletni”) whose main specialization is the production of new fonts. They can be fonts of wide application as well as corporate fonts. They are ordered by brands who want to use a unique font in their image that is associated only with their company.
History of typography
The art of typography became an independent field approximately in the XI century with the appearance of Gothic writing and Blackletter font on the basis of calligraphy. At that time books were copied by hand, there were quite few of them and they were considered a luxury item. The lettering was richly decorated and the shapes of the letters of the main text in Gothic script were dictated by the way the pen was driven across the paper.
What is typography: medieval writing
Everything changed in the mid-15th century when the German printer Johannes Gutenberg invented the mechanical method of typography and created the first printing press. The text began to be typed from lead letters – letters, which were placed in typesetting forms. Since books at the time were mostly religious, the first printed book was the Bible.
In the 20th century, with the advent of personal computers and the first desktop publishing systems, typography became digital, which completely changed the industry. Typography became much more accessible, and the development of fonts could not only be done by specialists in the workshops. Fonts themselves have also changed – they must now be readable on a screen. Typographic forms are a thing of the past – in the new era, pages of printed text are generated entirely on the computer.
As the Internet developed, typographers encountered a problem – when creating web pages, they could not predict the type and size of the font that would be installed on the reader’s computer. Different operating systems and browsers used different headsets, and their size depended on screen resolution and system settings. It wasn’t until the tens that technology made it possible to integrate arbitrary fonts into websites, setting the tone of the entire web page. You are now reading an article typed in Graphik font, even though it is not preinstalled on your computer.
Font Classification
For convenience, fonts are divided into groups. This classification helps you to understand which font is best to use, and describes its main characteristics.
Typographic fonts
These fonts are designed to display large amounts of text – they are often used in books, longreads and articles. Typefaces need to be legible and neutral as their primary aim is to make the text easy and pleasant to read. There is a separate group of typesetting fonts called text fonts. Their peculiarity is the legibility even in a small size.
Antique fonts
Antique scripts, or antiqua, is the common name for a group of serif fonts. They are based on Roman fonts, although in the antiquity they had only uppercase letters. Sagittarius typefaces appeared in the Renaissance.
At the end of the XVIII century French and Italian typographers – Bodoni and Dido – created an updated version of antiqua, which became the basis of many modern typefaces. During the development of book printing, antiqua became the main typeface for typesetting.
One of the most popular antiquarian fonts is Times New Roman. It was developed in 1931 by English typographer Stanley Morison of Monotype and Victor Landert, designer of Times magazine. The typeface was originally created just for the magazine, but it was later released on the market. In the nineties Microsoft created its own version of the typeface, embedding it in the Windows operating systems, and then in Microsoft Word, which made the Times New Roman particularly popular.
What is typography: antique fonts and antiqua (grotesque fonts)
Grotesque fonts
Grotesque fonts, or grotesques, are a group of fonts without serifs. The first grotesque was developed in 1816 by the type designer William Ceslon IV. However, they were named after another typeface, Seven Lines Grotesque. It was produced by the designer William Thorogood in 1832.
At the end of the century, the Berthold foundry introduced its new typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk, which was the basis of many modern grotesques. She suggested its use for the design of advertising headlines. Smooth, even letters contrasted strongly with the sophistication of the antique. But today grotesques are used as typefaces, for titles and navigation.
For a long time, grotesques were not very popular, but after the Second World War they received a second birth. Designers wanted to find a new visual language, different from the wartime and pre-war. So appeared Swiss typography, its other name – international style. Its main features are universality, legibility, clarity and functionality.
One of the most famous and popular grotesque typefaces is Helvetica. It was designed by the type designer Max Miedinger in 1957 for the owner of the Haas type company, Edward Hoffman, based on the early grotesques. The typeface proved so versatile that it was used everywhere: in typesetting, logos, elements of city navigation.
Adrian Frutiger is another important typographer and representative of the Swiss school which greatly contributed to the development of typography. He designed fonts such as Frutiger and Univers which also became grotesque classics.
Accidental fonts
This group of fonts is not mentioned in any of the above categories: its other name is the ornamental typefaces. They are used for volumes with a small amount of text, to which you want to draw attention. Accidental fonts are often used for logos, too. In the same category fall stylizations – under the handwritten fonts or letters that look like typewriter fonts.
Accidental fonts are not suitable for typing solid text and are readable only in large sizes.
Lettering
Lettering differs from type design in that each of these lettering is unique. The characters are drawn by hand, which brings this technique closer to calligraphy. Lettering is not usually used to create fonts, but it is often used for posters, beautiful lettering and in logos.
Some of the accented fonts imitate lettering, but what gives them away is that the letters in them are the same – it would be impossible to reproduce them so precisely by hand.
The combination of fonts
Knowing how to combine fonts is essential to creating a good design project with multiple fonts. Usually in the design is recommended to use no more than two, maximum three fonts in one layout. A well-chosen combination of two fonts is called a pair of fonts.
The most successful combinations of fonts are formed on the principle of similarity or, conversely, contrast. This means that two fonts should have either some common features, or, conversely, radically differ. The easiest way to combine fonts is by likeness, i.e. to use different styles of one typeface. For example, the main typeface – with bold or italics.
Much harder to pair on the contrast. It can work well, for example, when combining an antique font with a sans serif font. But in this case, fonts must be in harmony, not in conflict. In order to make a successful combination, it is necessary to know the properties of fonts. Beginning designers can use the ready-made Internet service, selecting the successful combinations.
How to use the font without copyright infringement
Most of the fonts that designers use are paid. To use them in projects you need to buy a license – just “download” the font and install it on your computer can’t.
Fonts are purchased in specialized stores, on the websites of independent design studios and developers. When buying carefully read the license. Its type determines the scope of the font – for example, the license allows you to use the Desktop font almost anywhere, except sites. However, different vendors have different licenses for the same type – for example, most companies allow the use of fonts under the Desktop license for logos, but there are also those for which it is necessary to buy a separate license for logos.
There are also free fonts. These include system fonts installed with operating systems or from specialized libraries. The largest library of free fonts is Google Fonts. The advantage of fonts from this library can be attributed to the fact that they can be used freely without paying.
But there is a serious drawback: these fonts are chosen to save and use more often, so that the uniqueness of their use is almost impossible, and the work will not look solid. Partly to save the situation can be the use of the latest, just released free fonts.
Main types of licenses:
Desktop – suitable for many programs, documents, logos, and social media. Webfont – allows you to embed fonts on the site, its cost depends on the attendance of the resource.
App – designed to use fonts in mobile applications, the cost of the license affects the number of downloads.
Digital Ads – for using fonts on banner ads on the Internet; the more displays, the more expensive the license. Server – gives the right to place the file on the server and use the purchased font on many computers.
Where to look fonts
Adobe Fonts
Large font store from Adobe. Here you can find very high quality fonts and many are accompanied by a story about the font or the studio that created it. All the designers of the project have personal pages on the site, where you can see their other fonts and read their biographies. In the Typography studios section we have a full alphabetical list of the companies that are partners of the store, and a list of the most interesting font producers, according to Adobe.
Pangram Pangram
Canadian wordpress company Pangram Pangram employs just eight people. Every typeface in Pangram has a specially designed page with description, history, glyphs and recommendations on how to use the font. An interesting section is Font in Use, where the company collects design examples using its fonts. All the fonts can be downloaded for free for personal use, the license should be purchased only for commercial and public works.
OH no Type
California-based OH no Type is made up of only one designer, its founder James Edmondson. He says he started the company to do things he likes in fonts that aren’t on MyFonts.com. James’s store is full of experimental and variant fonts, which are presented in impressive animations. For some fonts there are photos with examples of how they work “in real life”, others have a detailed description of the creation process. The fonts can be used free of charge for personal use and some non-commercial projects.
Conclusion
Working with fonts is one of the basic skills of a designer. Good typography makes a design stand out and understandable. Bad typography can ruin everything. To master this science, you should follow trends, have a good eye and develop a sense of style. Our articles will help with that, too.
