Studio Practice: Typesetting - Rules, theories and practical uses

Typesetting is the arraignment of letters. This includes 3 elements such as the word, the letter, the line.

The letter - design of the individual characters / glyphs and anatomy

The word- how these glyphs fit together

The line - Combination and arrangement of words in a body or sequence

Typesetting principles ...

Hierarchy - To show some messages are more vital than others. Type size, weight, colour and treatment can all emphasise this.

Alignment -

LEFT ALIGNMENT - Arranged left with ragged right edges. This is common as allows easy reading and typesetting.

JUSTIFIED TEXT - Can look clean and classic. However, when it's carelessly set, justified type can make your text look distorted and hard to read. Proper justification is a

tricky technique to master.

CENTRED AND RIGHT ALIGNED - Centred and right aligned text is not commonly used as it is difficult to read.

Paragraphs -

INDENTED - The first paragraph does not have an indentation. In successive para- graphs the first line is indented.

FULL LINE BREAK - An alternative to indenting is using a full line break to separate paragraphs of text.

Letter spacing: Leading / Tracking

LEADING - refers to the distance between the baselines of successive lines of type. The term originates from hand typesetting, in which strips of lead were used to increase vertical distane between lines.

Text that is set with bad leading appears cramped with ascenders and descenders almost touching. Lack of white space also impairs reading as the eye struggles to track from one line to another. For body copy, leading should be slightly greater than the font pt size and increased / decreased proportionally.

TRACKING - Tracking refers to the amount of space between a group of letters to affect density in a line or block of copy. Readability decreases when negative tracking is applied.

Wide tracking opens up the type, giving it more airy feel with white space. This can also become less legible if used in extremes.

As a rule, below -40 and above +40 tracking are not advised.

Kerning and Pairs

Kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between individual char- acters/letter forms in a proportional font, to achieve a visually pleasing result.

There are some letter pairings, often letter with overhang, that may need particular attention when kerning.

Hidden Characters - How text is formatted in characters

These invisible characters such as returns, spaces, tabs, etc, only appear when you have “Show Hidden Characters” turned on. The indicate the structure of your body of text and show how the type is set. This can be incredibly useful for finding double spaces and unintentional line breaks.

Line length

Windows and Orphans

Windows and Orphans are lines or words left hanging or separated from a complete block of text. The should be avoided as much as possible as look awkward.

This includes single/ 2 short words left at ends of paragraphs. They appear alone at the top of the next column. Tracking and line spacing is used to remove any windows and Orphans.