Typography

Typography is a technique that involves arranging types in order to make the language visible. This arrangement involves the selection of typefaces, line length, point size, line spacing, tracking and kerning. Tracking is the space between groups of letters, and kerning is adjusting spacing between pairs of letters. Colour in typography is the overall density of an ink on a page. Typography is used to convey an overall theme, tone or message to an audience, using a layout, grid or colour scheme.

The principle of typography was first introduced in Phaistos Disc, a Minoan print item from Crete, Greece dating from 1850 and 1600 BC.

Typography is a vital part of advertising and marketing. Typography has also been put in to motion, in things such as films and television broadcasts. 

Elements of Typography

·        Typefaces and fonts – Typefaces are a family of fonts such as Arial, and fonts are a style or weight within the typeface, such as Arial Bold.

·        Typeface Classifications – A large group of typefaces, based on generic classifications such as serif, sans-serif, mono-spaced, cursive, fantasy and script.

·        Typeface anatomy – A typeface is made up of different elements, which often distinguish it from other typefaces.

·        Hyphenation – The insertion of a hyphen (-) at the end of lines etc to make it easily readable, and to make justification look better.

·        Rag – Uneven, vertical block of text.

·        Widows and Orphans – A single word at the end of a column is a widow, and a single word at the top of a new column is an orphan.

Below are a few examples of typography that I created using Macromedia Fireworks MX...