Eli Rebillet - ART 222 Typography Zine

by

Eli Rebillet

Aperture: The opening of a counter to the exterior of a glyph.

Bracket: A curved or diagonal transition between a serif and main stroke.

Character: The basic unit of written language. Can be a letter, a number, a punctuation mark, or another symbol.

Counter: Any interior shape of a glyph. It can be completely enclosed by strokes, such as the eye of an ‘e,’ or have an opening to the exterior, such as the lower counter of an ‘e.’

Cursive: A style associated with handwriting, typified by slanted stems with curved tails.

Font: A collection of glyphs. The font is the delivery mechanism, represented by a digital file or a set of metal pieces, for a typeface.

Foundry: A company that designs, manufactures, and/or distributes fonts.

Glyph: The graphical representation of a character. A font can contain several glyphs for each letter—a lowercase ‘a’ and small cap ‘A’ for example—and can also have alternate forms, such as single—and double—story ‘a’s or an ‘a’ with a swash tail. In this way, a single character can be represented by different glyphs.

Humanist: A method of letter construction tied to handwritten strokes made with a pen or brush.

Apex

Bowl Bracket

Serif

Ligature: A single glyph made of multiple characters. The most common examples are functional (Standard), such as ‘fi,’ which is designed to resolve excessive spacing or an unpleasant overlap of two letters. There are also ornamental (discretionary) ligatures, such as ‘st.’ that are primarily a stylistic option.

Rational: A method of letter construction using shapes that are drawn as opposed to written.

Sans serif: A character or typeface without serifs.

Serif: A small mark or foot at the end of a stroke. Serifs are lighter than their associated strokes.

Slab serif: A heavy serif, typically rectangular in shape, with a blunt end. It is also a typeface classification.

Stroke: An essential line or structural element of a glyph. The term derives from the stroke of a pen.

Stroke contrast: The weight difference between light and heavy strokes.

Style: A stylistic member (e.g. bold, italic, condensed) of a typeface family, typically represented by a separate font.

Substrate: The surface material on which type appears. For hundreds of years, type was printed on paper. Now it is increasingly rendered on the digital screens of desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones.

Swash: The extension of a stroke or prominent ornamental addition to a glyph, typically used for decorative purposes.

Typeface: The design of a set of characters. In simple terms, the typeface is what you see and the font is what you use.

Weight: The thickness of a stroke. In type design, the geometry of a line (or shape) is usually described using the terminology of weight.

Horizontal stroke

Stroke contrast

Stem or vertical stroke

Tail

Sans Rga

The digital era gave birth to new sans serifs that share characteristics with other classifications but are individual enough to deserve a label of their own. Many of these have a dynamic structure that could be considered an evolution of the Humanist sans, but stroke contrast is reduced and apertures are even more open. The round shapes of typefaces in this category tend to be more square than their predecessors and x-heights are larger on the whole.

Neo-Grotesque Sans

Typeface shown: Acumin Variable Concept

Neo-Grotesques (Neo-Grotesk in German-speaking parts of Europe) are even more rationalised extensions of the Grotesque style. These typefaces, pioneered by Helvetica and Univers, have very little stroke contrast, horizontal terminals and quite closed apertures. Their homogenized forms are graphically appealing at large sizes, so they often fare better in Display settings.

Rga

Gothic Sans Rga

Typeface shown: Source Sans Variable

Grotesque Sans Rga

Typeface shown: Gira Sans

When sans serif printing type first appeared in the early to mid-1800s, some found the style so strange they called it grotesque. These typefaces kept the nickname even after they gained popularity and Grotesque (or Grotesk in German-speakers) is now associated with any sans serif in this early style. The characteristics of Grotesque typefaces are similar to those of the Transitional and Rational serifs: regular proportions, relatively static forms based on the oval and fairly closed apertures, with some strokes turning inward.

Some English and American variants of the Grotesque style are known as Gothics. While the differences are sometimes in name alone, there are a few distinctions that can be drawn. These include a large x-height, forms that are simpler and more static, very low contrast, and often a condensed width with an upright stance derived from flat-sided rounds. Typefaces like DIN— designed by engineers for industrial use—could be considered Geometric sans serifs but also share many traits with these Gothics.

Simple double-storey ‘a’ with diagonally orientated bowl and no tail

Typeface shown: Cronos Pro

Humanist Sans Rga

Like their serif counterparts, Humanist sans serifs have roots in calligraphy. Their round, dynamic, open forms have higher stroke contrast than the other sans serif classifications (though not as much as most serifs). These typefaces sometimes share the binocular ‘g’ and variable letter widths of their serif sisters. Their italics are true italics with cursive forms of ‘a,’ ‘g,’ ‘e,’ and sometimes a descending ‘f.’

Typeface shown: Futura

Narrow ‘R’ from classical capital proportions

Minimal contrast

The most static and clinical of all the classifications. Geometric sans serifs are constructed out of geometric forms with round parts that are circular or square. It’s important to note that, while shapes like the ‘o’ appear to be exactly round, most proper typefaces do not contain perfect circles, but are optically corrected to appear as round as possible while harmonious with other letters. Geometrics have minimal stroke contrast, and italics are commonly slanted versions of the romans rather than cursive in form.

Round shapes are nearly circular

Single-story ‘a’ is common

Curves made of semi-circles

Geometric Sans Rga

As we move further away from type’s calligraphic roots, contrast increases and the stress axis turns more upright and variable within each typeface rather than staying consistent as it does in the Humanist serifs. Letters in these typefaces are more regular in shape and proportion and apertures are slightly smaller. Transitional serifs still have a gradual, bracketed transition from the stem, and terminals are often bulbous.

Transitional Serif Rga

Humanist Serif Rga

The first roman typefaces following centuries of handwritten forms. Humanist serifs have close ties to calligraphy. An oblique stress, gradually modulating from thick to thin, shows evidence of a pen held at a consistent angle. That angle is often echoed in letters topped with calligraphic terminals and finished with asymmetrical serifs that gently Ztransition from the stem.

Calligraphic terminals

Typeface shown: Garamond Premiere Pro

Organic serif with gradual bracket

Low to moderate contrast, angled stress

Typeface shown: Baskerville

Symetrical serif with abrupt bracket

Straight leg Moderate contrast, stress angle varies

Bulbous terminals

Typeface shown: Bodoni

At the opposite end of the spectrum from the Humanists. Rational serifs have a strong, vertical contrast between thick vertical stems and fine horizontal hairlines. Because these typefaces are not so much written as constructed, their letterforms are very even in proportion and structure. Serifs are generally symmetrical, and can be bracketed, like Melior and Miller, or thin and abrupt, like the Didones (Bodoni and Didot).

Curved leg

Moderate to high contrast, vertical stress

Rational Serif Rga

Ball terminals

Upturned tail

In the last forty years, type designe rs have borrowed the most pragmatic aspects of the previous styles to develop a new breed of highly functional Text faces, designed to solve the problems of various substrates and reading environments. These designs generally sport a much larger x-height and lower stroke contrast than traditional serif typefaces, but are otherwise not directly related. They range from the spatially economical Swift to the informal and energetic Doko.

Simplified details

Contemporary Serif Rga

Large apertures and counters

Thin, unbracketed serifs

Typeface shown: Spinoza Pro

Geometric Slab

Grotesque Slab

If one were to weigh the typical example of each classification, these bulky beasts would tip the scale furthest. Although they aren’t simply Grotesque sans serifs with slab serifs slapped on, these typefaces reflect the proportions, structure, and stroke contrast of their serif-less counterparts. Ball terminals are common among Grotesque slabs, as are heavy bracketed serifs and closed apertures. The effect of these attention grabbers can be decorative and eye-catching, and is usually very bold.

Rga

These slab serifs share the geometrically round or square shapes of their sans counterparts. Rectangular serifs are un bracketed and generally the same weight as the sterns. In fact, all strokes are essentially of the same weight, lacking any perceptible contrast. The ‘R’ leg is a straight diagonal and ‘g’ is normally of the monocular form.

Rga

Humanist Slab

Put simply, you could take a Humanist sans serif and add unbracketed, rectangular serifs and get pretty close to a Humanist slab. These typefaces often have less stroke contrast than their sans counterparts, and the serifs are sometimes wedge shaped.

Rga

Typeface shown: AppleMyungjo

Typeface shown: Mokoko VF

Typeface shown: Jubilat Variable

Script Rga

Traditionally, a script typeface emulates handwriting, whether its letters are a graceful, connected cursive or the staccato scribbles of a daily shopping list. Besides formal and informal categories. scripts can also be sorted by the writing tool, such as pen or brush. Script fonts have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years thanks to technical developments like OpenType. Discretionary ligatures and contextual alternatives yield a more convincing emulation of real handwriting and offer a variety of decorative options.

Most script are slanted. Slant can vary throughout the typeface. Formal scripts usually have a consistent angle.

Unlike the other serif styles, derived from the stroke of a pen or brush, the typefaces in this category have a clo ser relationship to letters that are carved or chiselled from stone (also known as Glyphic), or engraved on a hard surface like copper or steel. These typefaces can end their strokes with long, graceful serifs (Trajan), sharp wedge serifs (Modesto) or no serif at all, but a thickening flare instead (Albertus).

Typeface shown: Snell Roundhand

Typeface shown: Friz Quadrata TT

Flared strokes

Shapes are chiselled

36 point type 48 point type

point type

leadingleadingleading

Line spacing, or leading, like word spacing and letter spacing, can be used to improve readability. Your choice of typeface, type size, line length, and copy will all affect the amount of linespacing. With so many factors involved, you can see why proper linespacing is more a matter of visual judgment than of mathamatics.

Line spacing, or leading, like word spacing and letter spacing, can be used to improve readability. Your choice of typeface, type size, line length, and copy will all affect the amount of linespacing. With so many factors involved, you can see why proper linespacing is more a matter of visual judgment than of mathamatics.

Letter spacing and wordspacing can drastically affect readability, the number of characters per line, and the “color” of the setting of text.

Letter spacing and wordspacing can drastically affect readability, the number of characters per line, and the “color” of the setting of text.

GOOD GOOD GOOD GOOD BADBADBADBAD 21”

:) );

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation

ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat

cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

line length

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

orphans widows

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Left

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Right

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Center

Centered text is overused. It’s the typographic equivalent of vanilla ice cream—safe but boring. It’s rare to see text centered in a book, newspaper, or magazine, except for the occasional headline or title. Asymmetry is nothing to fear. Whole text blocks should not be centered. Centering makes text blocks difficult to read because both edges of the text block are uneven. Centered text blocks are also difficult to align with other page elements

Justified

Justified text is spaced so the left and right sides of the text block both have a clean edge. The usual alternative to justified text is left-aligned text, which has a straight left edge and an uneven right edge. Compared to left-aligned text, justification gives text a cleaner, more formal look. Justification works by adding white space between the words in each line so all the lines are the same length. This alters the ideal spacing of the font, but in paragraphs of reasonable width it’s usually not distracting.

Claude Garamond

Garamond is a classic Old Style typeface. Claude Garamond, who died in 1561, was originally credited with the design of this elegant french typeface; however, it has recently been discovered that this typeface was designed by Jean Jannon in 1615. Many of the present-day versions of this elegant typeface may be either Garamond or Jannon designs, although they are all called Garamond. THIS IS A TYPICAL OLD STYLE FACE , having very little contrast between the thicks and thins, heavily bracketed serifs, and oblique stress. The capital letters are shorter than the ascenders of the lowercase letters. The letterforms are open and round, making the face extremely readable.

Sara Soskolne

Sara Soskolne is a Canadian designer born in 1970. She is best known for her work from Hoefler & Frere-Jones… type foundry on typefaces like Gotham. She worked for 10 years on graphic design in Toronto and after that attended Univesity of Reading where she recieved her MA in 2003. She has also taught design at many different institutions. Institutions such as Yale, Wells Collage New York’s School of Visual Arts, and the Cooper Type Certificate Program. Other typefaces she’s worked on have been Verlag, Chronicle, Sentinel, and Tungsten.

Tré Seals

Tré Seals is a type designer based out of Washington, D.C. Since his a young age, he would practice writing cursive until his handwriting looked like the sample sheets in school. In high school he began graffitiing people’s names onto index cards and selling them for $3.00. After graduating college, he founded and started his company. Then a year later, he started a type foundary called Vocal Type. Some of his typeface are VTC Spike, V TC Carrie, and VTC The Neue Black.

Project Portfolio Portfolio Portfolio Portfolio

Century CENTURY

Century, the first major American typeface, was designed in 1894 by Linn Boyd Benton for Theodore Lowe DeVinne, the printer of The Century Magazine. After Bodoni, type designers began to search for new forms of typographic expression.

Around 1815 a type style appeared that was characterized by thick slab serifs and thick main strokes with little contrast between the thicks and thins. This style was called Egyptian. Century Expanded is an excellent example of a refined Egyptian, or slab serif, typeface. The large x-height and simple forms combine to make this a very legible typeface.

TYPEFACES

This first project allowed me to explore letterspacing, wordspacing, linespacing, and to learn how these choices affect readability with five different typefaces. The work I did with Century was one of my favories of the five typefaces.

TYPE ARRANGEMENT

Bodoni is a Modern typeface, designed in the late 1700s by the Italian typographer Giambattista Bodoni. At the end of the eighteenth century, a fashion grew for faces with a stronger contrast between the thicks and thins, unbracketed serifs, and a strong vertical stress. These were called Modern typefaces. All the older faces became known as Old Style, while the more recent faces just prior to the changes were referred to as Transitional. Although Bodoni has a small x-height, it appears very wide and black. Because of the strong vertical stress, accentuated by its heavy thicks and hairline thins, Bodoni should be well leaded.

After getting the basics of type down, the next project covered the arrangment of said type. The work I did with the Bodoni type face was my favorite of the work that I did for the projects.

to a select few: clergymen, scholars, and wealthy individuals.

A relatively inexpensive means of producing multiple copies of books seems to have been developed just a little before Gutenberg began his experiments with printing. This was the so called block book whose pages had illustrations and minimal text cut together on the same block. The carved blocks were inked, and images were transferred onto paper in multiples by rubbing or by the use of the screw press. Block books were believed to have been made for semiliterate, preaching friars who brought the word of God to the urban working class and the poor.

Gutenberg’s genius was realizing that printing

Insight and Innovation

would be more efficient if, instead of using a single woodblock to print an entire page, the individual letters were cast as separate blocks and then assembled into pages. In this manner, pages could be made up faster, errors could be corrected more rapidly, and, after printing, the type could be cleaned and reused.

Using his knowledge of die making, Gutenberg created several pieces of type, not in wood but in metal. It was this process of printing from cast type and not the process of printing per se—which already existed—that

was Gutenberg’s great contribution to the graphic arts. Technically speaking, Gutenberg’s invention, the letterpress, was so well conceived that it remained the dominant printing process for almost five hundred years.

With his chief assistant, Peter Schoeffer, and his financial backer, Johann

For this third project I was tasked to create a couple of textbook formatted pages. The main focus of this assignment was to work with grids and understand how to use them. Above is a portion of a style I created as a part of the assignment.

Fust, Gutenberg was now ready to set up shop and embark on great masterpiece, the fortytwo-line Bible, so called because its columns were forty-two lines long. It is a great irony that just before the publication of the forty-two-line Bible around 1455, Gutenberg seems to have lost control of his establishment for the nonpayment of his debt to Fust. The operation was then taken over by Fust and Schoeffer and unfortunately, there is no evidence as to whether Gutenberg oversaw the completion of the job or gained any financial rewards for his efforts.

After the judgement, it is believed that Gutenberg set up another shop and continued printing books and other materials for another ten years. In 1465, he received a generous pension from the local archbishop but died three years later. According to an early source, he was buried in the Franciscan church at Mainz.

Creating a Legacy

After Fust and Schoeffer took over Gutenberg’s shop, the first book they printed and published was the Mainz Psalter of 1457. This psalter was notable for a number of reasons: it was the first book with a colophon showing the printer’s name, location, date of publication, and printer’s mark or device. It was also the first book in which the display

initials were printed in color rather than painted by hand. The partners printed a number of important books, two of which were the Latin Bible of 1462 and a Cicero of 1465.

While on a book-selling trip to Paris in 1466, Fust died of the plague. After Fust’s death, Schoeffer continued publishing until his own death in 1502.

ANATOMY OF TYPE POSTER

For this assignment the task was to format a poster that included Skefga, ABN, EQdpx, typographic terminology, and five type classifications. This was one of the more challenging assignments because formatting in a way that everything was readable and organized in a correct way.

HISTORICAL EVENT POSTER

For this assignment the goal was to create a poster about a historical event in history. However, the event couldn’t be an event that everybody knows about (i.e. the Beatles landing in America for the first time). It had to be an event that has meaning to you and that not everyone might know about. The event I designed my poster around was an event that happened in Granby, Colordo. A man made a bulldozer into a home-made tank and went on a rampage through the Colordo town in 2004.

RANSOM NOTE COLLAGE

This was one of the more fun assignments. For this assignment the task was to make a ransom note about whatever demand you wanted. I went with the demand of, “dismantle AI or reality will fade”. I choose the topic of AI because I’m not the biggest fan of it. While yes it’s a cool topic to think about, I just can’t help to think about all the bad things people would be able to do with it. It’s only going to get better from here.

designer

Eli Rebillet

type

included works

Helvetica Neue

Friz Quadrata TT

Mokoko VF

Bodoni 72

Papyrus

Garamond Premier Pro

Tahoma

All projects from Eli Rebillet - ART 222: Intro to Typography