Typography for Lawyers

Though it could be an obscure indie band, TFL is actually a website that follows through on the promise (or threat) of its title. America's lawyers produce gargantuan piles of poorly formatted documents and in the process communicate rather poorly. Matthew Butterick makes a persuasive argument for the importance of the considered use of type and page layout (especially using Word or Excel). His website and book are rich in practical examples and of course apply to anyone producing documents, not just the legal set.

Archer Hits Typeface Bullseye

In combining prettiness and practicality, Archer is a rare typeface. With idiosyncratic letterforms and cute little ball terminals, this friendly slab serif has been spotted all over the web and and in hundreds of publications. As with other HF&J typefaces (especially Gotham), it has been (over)used, but in the right caring hands, it still has the capacity to give shine and personality to many kinds of print and web design. 

Em and En Dashes

The typographically aware know that em dashes are preferable to hyphens in text, and en dashes are handy as range separators, but how to access them when emailing or posting to the web? Fortunately there is a handy shortcut. Instead of using -- or --- in lieu of the correct symbols, for em dashes paste &#151 in the appropriate spot in your html editor or key in alt 0151 (on the numerical keyboard) in emails. En dashes are &#150 for html or Alt 0150 for emails. Much more comprehensive discussions to be found here and here.

Typefaces in the Wild

Looking through online type libraries is easy enough, but making a selection is somewhat harder. Some typefaces may look promising in preview, but unsuitable when actually put into action. Fonts in Use bridges that gap, showing both designers (and clients) high quality design examples, and explaining why the particular typeface (or combination of typefaces) works in that specific context. The site features some of the workhorses of the type world: Franklin Gothic, Chapparal, Futura, Verlag and Trade Gothic, but no doubt the authors will add a deeper selection over time.

No Times for Us

Why we do not use Times New Roman for (virtually) anything:

  • TNR was designed for newspaper use, not modern offset print work or websites
  • Its preeminent position as a system font on all PCs arose by historical accident (installed by corporate fiat), not through its superior virtues
  • It is everywhere, like Arial. As such, it lacks a distinctive voice. Why not choose from a host of fine serif faces (Caslon, Fairfield, Garamond, Arno, Palatino, Warnock and so on) ?

Writers Resources from AWM

A very useful list of resources originally found here: http://www.awmonline.com.au/

Industry blogs for Australian Writers: AWMonline Guide

Industry News and Views

Australian Book Review

http://australianbookreviewblog.blogspot.com/
Contributors include editor Peter Rose and other ABR staff, and guest bloggers from the world of letters.

Barista
http://barista.media2.org/
A personal blog by screenwriter David Tiley, featuring filmmaking and culture news and views.

Booksller and Publisher
http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/
Bookseller and Publisher magazine's online news covering the Australian book industry.
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An Enlightened Book Cover

enlightened-eccentrics_cover1Our client wanted a cover that encapsulated the iconoclastic spirit of the Enlightenment -- the birth of skepticism, secularism and the full flowering of the scientific method. The natural candidates for this were Voltaire, the great French thinker and Emile du Chatelet, his intellectual equal and lover. We selected three period-appropriate typefaces for the title: p22 Declaration, based on the penmanship on the American Declaration of Independence, Bodoni, designed in 1798 and Requiem Text, based on the humanist typefaces of Renaissance Italy. The typefaces and painting formed a harmonious combination, and Voltaire stares out at the viewer with a frank air of challenge.
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Give Me Your Hand (writing)

'Handwritten' typefaces are a popular area of computer-based typography. The too-perfect edges and shapes created by layout and design packages often seem to need humanising, softening, a touch of variety and irregularity. The OpenType format has enabled the emergence of a new generation of typefaces with hundreds or even thousands of alternate characters, ligatures and other typographic goodies. For example, Liza Pro inserts a variety of different ligatures and alternate characters as the user types, giving text a warm and idiosyncratic feel. If you'd like to go a step further and personalise a document with your very own inimitable handwriting, www.fontcapture.com allows users to print out a special form, then pen an instance of each letter of the alphabet, numbers and other special characters. When scanned in and uploaded, Font Capture uses the sheet to automatically digitise your handwriting and save the result as a typeface. If you like what you see (and the results can be somewhat erratic), the typeface can then be installed.
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Type Radio

Europe is the mecca of print design. In countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy and France, typography and the practice of design is a topic for serious discussion. And serious discussion is what you will get with Type Radio. Their motto conveys something of the air of endearing earnestness that surrounds them: "Type is speech on paper. Typeradio is speech on type." With over 400 episodes available for downloading through Itunes, or directly through their site, a great deal of information awaits potential listeners. The members of the Dutch based collective spend a lot of time attending design conferences and talking to established and emerging designers, so their show is an excellent way of tapping into the design Zeitgeist.
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Build it, and they will kern

fontstructYou've visited all the type vendors and searched in vain. There's nothing that quite matches up with the search image in your head. 'I could do a better job myself!' you cry. Fortunately for you. Fontshop has recently added an interesting functionality to their website: a typeface constructor. The FontStruct site equips you with an array of basic font shapes that can be moved arround lego-like on an underlying grid to form letters. Although the basic shapes are simple, when used in concert, the results are quite sophisticated. A gallery shows the variety of effects achieved by contributors.  Once you have put together your masterpiece (and that might just be an uppercase set of letters, or an extended character set), your typeface can be saved as a truetype font and used out in the 'real' world. Over 160,000 people have signed up with FontStruct and 7,000 typefaces have been saved for public use. At the very least, the site is a worthy educational tool for those interested in typefaces, and reinforces the notion of an underlying grid over which the letterforms are arranged/organised.  Oh, and it is completely free.
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The Colour of Type

type set well
At the simplest level, readability is about not getting between the reader and the content. According to Robert Bringhurst, "Typography with anything to say ... aspires to a kind of statuesque transparency."  While magazine and advertising design is often about display typefaces, novelty and high impact, book design is much more self-effacing. Book designers aim for an intelligent understanding of the content they are typesetting, and type selection that aids that content. There are a few rough rules of thumb for creating readable text. Serifed typefaces are generally easier to read than unserifed faces. Ornate, fussy typefaces should be reserved for headings/display type only. Generous interline spacing (120% of type height is often cited as an ideal) makes type easier to read, but only up to a point. 'Rivers' of white space running vertically through a poorly set body of text make it harder to read. Judicious hyphenation gives text a more even 'tone', but excessive hyphenation is distracting. Line lengths of approximately 10-15 words are ideal. A type size of between 10 and 12 points will work for most readers, ranging up to 16pts for those with some vision impairment. Narrow margins leave no space for a reader's hands, and  paper thickness and colour also play a role in enhancing readability, not to mention lighting conditions. On monitors, screen contrast and brightness, refresh rates, type size and distance from the screen are factors. Once the key factors are satisfied, fine-tuning readability is sometimes more a matter of aesthetics than any strict metric. Some typefaces just 'feel' better with a certain kind of content, and it is difficult to spell out the exact reason. Taste is a notoriously difficult concept to explain. Professional level typesetting packages such as Quark or InDesign are much better at setting blocks of text than word processing packages. That said, observing the basic rules of readability will always yield a better result, whatever the package. Every word processing program gives its users some access to type controls, both at a character and a paragraph level. The typesetting program InDesign calculates the placement of words and hyphenation on a whole of paragraph basis, attempting to create an even type 'tone'. The apparently simple act of reading is anything but. Letters are human constructions with a complex and conditional history. They are not necessarily optimal, and are subject to continuous reinvention, for aesthetic as well as functional purposes. Changes in printing technology and the advent of computers and the Internet have all precipitated waves of type innovation. Type designers spend a great deal of time designing letter forms, harmonising those forms through a whole family of weights and styles, then setting every possible combination of kerning pairs, ligatures, special characters and letters from other alphabets. All through this exacting process they exercise their informed judgement, and their knowledge of related and historical typefaces, and current developments in the field. It is very far from being a science, as precise as their measurements might be. There are so many variables in setting type for readability that there are probably infinite variations that will both satisfy the basic demands of readability and those of proportions and aesthetics. There will never be a utopian 'perfect' typeface, as one could always posit an improvement, or a circumstance might arise that demands a different approach. Summary of Points to consider:
  • type size
  • type colour
  • type clarity and contrast
  • the ratio of the x-height to the overall letter height
  • letterspacing
  • kerning
  • line length
  • average word length
  • frequency of hyphenation
  • justified or set ragged left
  • number of and space between columns
  • leading (interline spacing)
  • paper colour and thickness
  • margins
  • paper dimensions
Paying some attention to at least some of these parameters is bound to make a body of text much more readable. Bucking the tyranny of Arial, Times New Roman, document templates and unnecessary layout embellishment can be a rewarding path to take. At a much more complex level, readability collides with psychology and neuro-anatomy. Scientists are interested in the way we read, whether a letter at a time, in clusters of letters, words, whole sentences or skimming whole paragraphs or pages. They look at culturally specific aspects of reading, and universal issues of cognition and meaning. Those apparently quotidian pages of text are moments away from being consumed and comprehended by the biggest mystery of all: consciousness. They are a way of one mind accessing the contents of another mind. That's one of the reasons that type design and typesetting is so endlessly interesting.
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