BASELINE GRID

A baseline grid is an imaginary grid, upon which type sits. On these two pages grid is 12 points. However to fit every font size on to this grid whould mean that some should have to have negative leading. The baseline grid alignment is used to mantain consistency across the page.

120pt Avenir Next Medium Tracking -25 / Kerning Optical

Some letterforms, such as the circular characters “o”, “c” and “e” extend over the baseline. These imperfections are important in typography to create optical illusions of letters having the same size.

Alternating alignment Variating anchor lines allows maintaining a degree of consistency while using preferable leading values according to the font size. In the first block down left, text sits ob every 3rd line (12pt+12pt+12pt). The second block aligns to every baseline grid, that is 12pt. Finally, 6 raws of captions, that have 8pt leading align with the 34pt text or every 3 raws align with 2 lines of 11pt text below.

34/36pt Avenir Next Medium

While metal letters could be made to any width and height, digital type has to conform to multiples of the smallest unit: the pixel.

11/12pt Avenir Next Medium

Every character has to be a certain number of pixels wide and high. This is not a problem when the letters are made up of 600 pixels per inch, as is the case with modern laser printers-those pixels are not discernible to our eyes, and we are happy to believe that we are looking at smooth curves. On screens, however, only 72 pixels make up one inch. instead of little squares fitted into tight grids. We could see each and every one of them if engineers hadn’t already found ways around that.

8/8pt Avenir Next Medium Most screen displays are small and simple, which means black on greenish gray. And the type unmistakably consists of bitmaps: this means that an 8-point letter is actually made up of eight pixels.