Be forewarned, this posting is not for the faint of heart, nor those who despise work of art.
Or for that matter, those who live/have lived with graphic design/graphic communication/print technology/packaging/typography/etc. majors/professionals/etc. Those of you who have, have probably heard this stuff a thousand times and would be best served ignoring it and moving on.
As an avid reader, and someone who makes their business doing design and print work, I have an unnatural fondness for printed objects when they're well executed. Looking at a book that has been well-designed, printed on nice paper, and abides by all of the rules that my design teachers drilled into me in college (proper balance, good use of whitespace, never ever fake small caps), I literally get shivers of joy. It's like the beginning of a relationship where the love is still new and you still get that exciting little thrill every time you see the person. The heat pooling in your stomach, the constricting of the lungs, the sudden independence of your extremities...you understand what I mean.
I have that love too, of course, I'm not completely abnormal. But give me a book, or a box, or a magazine that has been so completely thought out that it just begs for you to touch it...well, you get the picture.
I save packaging that inspires me. I have a clutter of boxes under my bed (prime packaging real estate) that I drag out whenever I'm really stumped on a project.
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| I adore Stila's packaging. |
I spend full price on books that make me drool — whether or not they're in a genre I like. I purchased The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo when it first came out (you know: spot varnish, slick paper, good color...) and that was like two or three years ago and I still haven't gotten through it.
I grin like an idiot every time I see Humboldt State University's "new" signs as they're in my absolute favorite typeface...
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| Hypatia Sans Pro, my absolute favorite typeface. |
The downside of this fetish is that I get the horrors and am physically ill when presented with something less than beautiful. And by less than beautiful, I mean screwy margins, poor alignment, giant font with not enough leading.
I see I'm speaking Greek.
This is now a mini lesson on the beauty of good design. I am going to attempt the first two years of my degree and countless lectures, lab hours, and projects into a few paragraphs. Wish me luck.
If you Google "history of font," the first site to come up is kind of a bizarre site, but it has a decent blurb about fonts.
"What is a font? A font is all the letters, numbers, punctuation and other symbols which compose a typeface. Fonts were first developed as cast lead type for printing presses, and were later digitized as typefaces for use on computers." (vletter.com/aboutfonts.htm)
Another quick definition. Typeface. Typeface is similar to font, but the terms are not interchangeable.
"A typeface is a set of characters of the same design. These characters include letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and symbols." (techterms.com/definition/typeface)
A font is composed of a typeface. Font is technically a specific size and style of a typeface. For example, "Arial" is a typeface, and "Arial 12 pt black" is a font.
Font (and thus, "typeface") was developed technically by monks before the printing press was even dreamed up. Calligraphy is stylistically considered a font, but of course, back then it was the only font and they didn't call it that. They called it "calligraphy." Duh.
The first typeface was designed by a man named Johannes Gutenberg, who is the man who "invented" the printing press. The Chinese technically beat him to it about five hundred years before, but at that point it was our European fore-fathers who were recording history and they hadn't yet found Asia, so the Chinese get shafted for credit.
Gutenberg's first press was in operation by 1450. He developed a typeface for the press - heavily based on calligraphic styles of the era - and proceeded to print a 42-line Bible, popularly known as the Gutenberg Bible, for the common man in 1452. About 180 were printed.
Of the 47 known remaining copies, a whopping 21 are complete. Most of the complete originals are in Europe, but The Morgan Library & Museum in New York and the Library of Congress in D.C. among a few other locations in the U.S. boast copies on vellum and paper.
So that's the beginning of fonts. Today, you can find a bazillion crappy free fonts online at sites like 1000freefonts.com and dafont.com. A true, excellent typeface takes thousands of hours to complete. Each character has to be adjusted with specifications set for how close it stands next to another, baseline, x-height, special characters.
Any low-grade typeface has at least 54 characters. That's your standard alphabet in caps and lower case. Any standard font has at least six times that many, if not more. Small caps, special characters, punctuation, numbers, Greek letters...and there's options like "oldstyle" and "tabular" for numbers, alternate glyphs for each letter, etc., etc.
Zapfino, created by renowned typeface designer Hermann Zapf — Zapf dingbats, Palatino, among others can be credited to him — in 1998, is a nearly-overused font that I guarantee you have seen at some point. It is a script font that is extremely popular on wedding invitations, advertisements, they're even using it in movies now for titles and such. Zapfino is a pretty extensive font, but is by no means the largest. It has only one weight — weight is regular, bold, italic, etc. — and its character total is still nearly 1500 characters.
I think you get my point. Moving on.
Style and design is not just font. Font can add to it, but it can also detract from it. A common design error is "the more the better" which is never true. Amateurs think that the more fonts used the better. Not true.
When designing anything stick to a maximum of two fonts. Three if you really really really really have to, but the standard is two. However, watch out. Even if you only use two typefaces, if you use all of the weights of each you have the same problem as using a bazillion. When in doubt, K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Whitespace whitespace whitespace is next. Or rather:
Whitespace is beautiful. We love whitespace. Whitespace occurs in several places, but the two most important are margins and leading.
Everyone knows what margins are, right? Margins are the space between what's on the paper (as far as text, images, etc.) and the edge of the paper. Leading is a bit more challenging.
Leading is defined as the amount of vertical spacing between lines of type. When you "double space" something in Microsoft word, you are adding leading. Doubling it, in fact. When you "single space" text, you're subtracting leading. It's really quite simple. The challenge is setting the appropriate amount of lead in regards to the type. But that's a lesson for another day.
Those are just a few elements of design, and I've left you with giant gaps in your design education, but I feel as though I've rambled on and on for days. I'd like to finish up with a couple of my favorite books in terms solely of design quality.
Kushiel's Mercy (Hardcover) by Jacqueline Carey. Her paperbacks are a little lacking in whitespace, but this hardcover novel is fantastic - and the paper is epic.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (also hardcover) by Stieg Larson: There are two copies of the hardback version of this book. I'm attracted to the one with the sleek cover with the spot varnish (shiny ink on the lettering), but the innards of both are equally elegant.
Hope and Hard Times by Ted Bernard. A dreary, dull, dud of a read by an author who thinks quite a lot of himself (more than necessary), but when my editor handed me the paperback book, I spent a full twenty minutes just flipping through the pages, reveling in the elegance of it. Not only is the text in Adobe Garamond Pro, my all-time most adored typeface (classic that is, use-all. Hypatia isn't really something you can use for everything, Garamond on the other hand, you totally can), but it is printed entirely on FSC Certified paper. FSC is Forest Stewardship Council, which is "an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests." (fsc.org) Can you say "orgasm"? I think I'm in love.
Also, my current read, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. Beautiful margins, love love love the mod-classic placement/design of the header and footer on each page...sigh.
Excuse me, I need to go ogle my books.
WEDNESDAY: 3.5 miles (up a really big hill)
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