Typography is the study and process of typefaces; how to select, size, arrange, and use them in general. Traditionally, typography was the use of metal types with raised letterforms that were inked and then pressed onto paper. In modern terms, typography today also includes computer display and output.
Typefaces are designs like Baskerville, Gill Sans or Papyrus. Type designers create typefaces. Today they use software programs like Fontographer or Font Lab to create the individual letters. A few still draw the letters by hand and then scan them into a type design application. Fonts are the things that enable the printing of typefaces. Type foundries produce fonts. Sometimes designers and foundries are one and the same, but creating a typeface and producing a font are two separate functions.
Haley, Allan. AIGA (2002). Design>Typography
If you want professional-looking type, avoid these 13 telltale signs.
Williams, Robin. Adobe Magazine (1995). Design>Typography
Toward a Standard Font Size Interval System
This document discusses the strengths and weaknesses of various deployed and recommended methods of specifying font sizes in Web documents and application interfaces, and proposes a harmonization. This scheme will enhance the legibility, clarity, and aesthetics of documents presented on screen, and help retire less elegant alternatives that are hurtful to the Web as a dynamic information resource - one that is accessible to users with widely varying needs and purposes. It is intended for Web browser and stylesheet implementors of all religions, but may be of interest to Web authors and digital typography and/or CSS enthusiasts at large.
Fahrner, Todd. Cleverchimp (1999). Design>Web Design>Typography>CSS
Toward Identifying the Font Used in the Bush Memos
The following evidence from a forensic examination of the Bush memos indicates that they were typed on a typewriter: 1. The specific font used is from a typewriter family in common use since 1905 and a typewriter capable of producing the spacing has been available since 1944. 2. The characters “e,” “t,” “s,” and “a” show indications of physical damage and/or wear consistent with a well used typewriter. 3. The characters that are seldom used show no signs of damage or wear. 4. The quality of individual characters is inconsistent throughout the memos beyond expectations from photocopying and/or digitizing but quality is consistent with worn platen and variations in paper quality. 5. Overlapping characters occasionally indicate paper deformation consistent with hammered impressions. 6. Critical indicators of digital production or cut and paste production are missing. Implications are that there is nothing in this evidence that would indicate the memos are inauthentic. Furthermore, from the point of view of the physical evidence in the documents (excluding any rhetorical evidence or external evidence, which is not examined in this study) no amount of additional research on the part of CBS would have lead them to exclude the documents from their 60 Minutes report.
Hailey, David E. Utah State University (2004). Design>Typography>Journalism
More than you ever wanted to know about dashes, spaces, curly quotes, and other vagaries of online typography. HTML specs, grammatical rules, browser bugs and character encoding—it’s all here.
Sheering, Peter K. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Web Design>CSS>Typography
A catalogue of examples of typographic designs with particular typefaces/fonts, indexed by category and alphabetically.
Wakeman, Robert. Type Director's Wall, The (2007). Design>Typography
Al Ward, author of 'Photoshop for Right Brainers' walks you through an extensive tutorial using layers and layer masks for a rather striking image. More than 30 illustrations and Al's competent guidance will show you how to put type in your face!
Ward, Al. Design, Typography and Graphics (2004). Design>Graphic Design>Typography
A Silicon Valley revolution in type design has spawned typefaces mimicking everything from the Renaissance to celebrity handwriting. Behind every particle that fills a page, an unseen artist has worked countless hours to make it letter perfect.
Sine, Richard. Metroactive (1996). Design>Typography>Online
What’s the point of a point system in which 24 points doesn’t always equal 24 points? It’s not pointless, but it does require some explanation!
Strizver, Ilene. Upper and lowercase Magazine (2003). Design>Typography>Standards
Type is to a publication as a speaker is to an audience -- they both have to work coherently to capture and keep your attention. Type defines a publication's personality; since it's a common element on every page, it should work to achieve a visual unity throughout. Crisp, consistent, readable typography will help propel the reader through your pages.
Disparages the loss of real typesetters. If you weren't around to know what they did, or how they did it, Gary tells you what you missed.
Priester, Gary. Typofile (2003). Design>Typography
Typography is the balance and interplay of letterforms on the page, a verbal and visual equation that helps the reader understand the form and absorb the substance of the page content. Typography plays a dual role as both verbal and visual communication. As readers scan a page they are subconsciously aware of both functions: first they survey the overall graphic patterns of the page, then they parse the language, or read. Good typography establishes a visual hierarchy for rendering prose on the page by providing visual punctuation and graphic accents that help readers understand relations between prose and pictures, headlines and subordinate blocks of text.
Lynch, Patrick J. and Sarah Horton. Yale University (1999). Design>Typography>Web Design
TypeTalk: Information, Activation, Matching Feet, and Style Sheets
One of the best ways to stay current is to sign up for the free e-mail newsletters offered by many type foundries and resellers. Not only do the newsletters show and tell you about new releases, but they also offer free fonts, special discounts, interviews with designers, and other informative and entertaining articles.
Strizver, Ilene. Creative Pro (2007). Design>Typography
Almost everything we know in the world can be described in just 26 letters--isn't that amazing? Yet this most visible art--which we all see all around us each day--has long been invisible in most people's minds. Part of this was intentional-- because the content, not the type, is the message. With type, the media is not the message. But type also adds to everything we read in subliminal and powerful ways, and Typofile is about people who love type, and why.
Will-Harris, Daniel. Typofile. Design>Typography>Graphic Design>Blogs
An interactive experience informed by type and typography, which aims to illustrate the depth and import of type, and to raise relevant questions about how typography is treated in the digital media, specifically online.
typographic. Design>Typography>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
The more components a brand identity contains, the more onerous it can be. Logo, pictogram, texture, color scheme, wordmark: each must be laboriously created, launched, and cared for, and each of these stages has its own substantial costs. For many companies today, these costs are becoming prohibitive. An increasingly popular alternative is a hard-working, purely typographic wordmark that speaks clearly for the brand, all by itself.
Fishel, Catherine. Upper and lowercase Magazine (2002). Design>Typography>Graphic Design
The Typographic Circle was formed about thirty years ago by a group of advertising typographers as the Type Directors Club, to bring together anyone with an interest in type.
Typographic Circle, The. Organizations>Graphic Design>Typography>United Kingdom
Typographic Dimensions and Conventional Wisdom: A Discrepancy?

Typographic guidelines are based on a combination of legibility research and personal experience. Both of these approaches seem to ignore actual documents as a source of information. An inventory of the typographic dimensions of existing texts in different genres is required to investigate and discusscurrent typographic guidelines. In this study, three dimensions - x-height,linelength and linespace - of 106 brochures, 114 scientific journals and 110 novels were measured. The results show that the design of these documents does not reflect current typographic guidelines. The results also show that document developers specify the x-height, line length and linespace within clear boundaries andthat these boundaries differ per genre. There are preferences within these boundaries and these might be based on conventional wisdom.
van der Waarde, Karel. Technical Communication Online (1999). Design>Typography>Style Guides
Typographic Settings for Structured Abstracts

Structured abstracts contain more information, are of higher quality, and are easier to search and read than are traditional abstracts. However, there is a bewildering variety of ways in which structured abstracts can be printed and little is known about how the typography of structured abstracts can affect their clarity. The aim of this article is to delineate some of these major typographic variables and to comment on their effects upon the layouts of structured abstracts.
Hartley, James. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2000). Design>Document Design>Typography
The Typographic Texture of the News
The typefaces in which we read the daily news change, but do we notice? John D. Berry looks at a few of the newspaper typefaces in use today.
Berry, John D. Creative Pro (2004). Design>Typography
Typographical Design, Modernist Aesthetics, and Professional Communication

The technology of in-house publishing is radically shifting the responsibility for document design from the graphic specialist to the individual writer. To apply the new technology, professional communicators need to understand the principles underpinning typographical design and their origin in the functionalist aesthetics of modernism, particularly as articulated by the Bauhaus. While some of the key concepts of modernism--strict economy, universal objectivity, intuitive perception, and the unity of form and purpose--are well-suited to business and technical documents, these concepts are bound to an historical and intellectual milieu. By understanding the influence of modernism on typographical design, professional communicators equipped with the new technology can adapt design principles to the rhetorical context of specific documents.
Kostelnick, Charles. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (1990). Design>Typography>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric
Typographical Features of the Cocoa Text System
It is common, especially in technical writing, to mix languages with differing text direction, such as English and Hebrew, in the same line. Some writing systems even alternate layout direction in every other line (an arrangement called boustrophedonic writing). Some languages do not group glyphs into words separated by spaces. Moreover, some applications call for arbitrary arrangements of glyphs; a graphic layout may require glyphs to be arranged on a nonlinear path.
Apple Inc. (2006). Design>Typography>Programming>Macintosh
Typography is the rightful distribution of letters and spaces (historically, using lead type) on a surface (sometimes vellum, usually paper, and now -- apparently -- a monitor or screen) to convey information and facilitate understanding. Typographers are people who get excited by letters: their shapes and forms, their colour, their power when combined into words, their history and their future. While this is not the place for a discussion of language or literature, it is precisely those areas of our culture with which typography is concerned.
Typography and its Links to Technical Communication 
Typography is the often-ignored stepchild of graphic design. Yet few elements of design have as great of an impact on technical communication as typography. The typeface and style that one uses affects everything from reading speed to the audience’s overall perception of the content of the work. It is safe to say that typography often does not receive the attention that it deserves in the area of technical communication. There are over 10,000 digitized typefaces (Williams 1998, 21). With such a range of options available, it is no wonder that we as technical communicators at times tend to take typography and the process of creating typefaces for granted. Typefaces just seem to “magically” appear under the font index of our favorite publishing program.
Madison, Nicole. STC Proceedings (2003). Design>Typography
Typography and Page Layout: Classification of Type 
The number of type faces in use today runs into the thousands and as such presents difficulty in selecting the appropriate design for a particular job. Because there are so many type designs to choose from, it is easier to first choose a general type style or classification to suit your graphic design, and then, look for a particular type face that relates to that classification.
Magnik, John. Typography First. Design>Document Design>Typography
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