Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
INDEX
-Introduction.
-
Neither with you nor without you the importance of tracking and
kerning.
Introduction.
Hello, friends of the fonts, I'm Fidel Lopez and if you are reading this is because you
want to fully immerse yourself in the fascinating world of the hand-drawn fonts design.
You will find 10 keys in this guide that will help you get started in lettering and to lose
fear of font designing.
What you will find here is not intended to be the typical text book, but more of a guide
with a pleasant language and far from piles of typographical technical terms that tend
to dispel everyone who wants to start in this field.
+ About me.
My name is Fidel Lopez and I have a degree on Technical Engineering in Industrial
Design in the Cardenal Herrera University (CEU), of Valencia, where I later took the
official Master in Design Engineering.
As a typography, calligraphy and lettering enthusiast, I founded Lettering Time, in 2010,
a blog dedicated for these fields and which nowadays is the largest community about
fonts of the Spanish language.
I currently work and collaborate with clients, advertising agencies and design studies
from around the world on calligraphy, lettering and typography projects for any
purpose and implementation of my research Lettering Shop. My work has been
rewarded with a number or awards and prizes, both, nationally and internationally
and my projects have been displayed in halls and museums around the world.
You can contact me by this email or by my Facebook profiles, or
Twitter.
What is lettering?
Discovering the designing of hand-drawn fonts.
We cannot not begin with the keys that will make our lettering look good and work
correctly without posing the question, What is lettering? This can seem really basic, but
trust me that during my years in charge of the Lettering Time blog and after years
dedicating my profession to the font world, I have seen that even though it is a term
used with some easiness, its real meaning is not entirely clear.
Mauro Andrs.
If we had to translate the term "Lettering" into Spanish, it would be something like
this "letras dibujadas a mano", which is why Lettering can be comprehended, in a
clear and brief way, as those font works that have been drawn. Normally, the outline
of the font is built with one or several forms which combined will form the entire
character, and said outlines are then filled.
Fidel Lpez.
It is worth saying that in lettering "only" the characters of the concerned word or
phrase are designed and these have to "only" work in that design and order of
appearance. It is due to this feature that we can let our imagination run free in
lettering design when it comes to ligatures, Swashes and all of the resources we will
see in the "Give it the finishing touch" section.
Martin Schmetzer.
Gustavo Mancini.
Calligraphy.
They are all those works which have been written with any type of
calligraphic tool, whether pens, felt tip pens, paint brushes.
Jackson Alves
Pokras Lampas.
Joan Quirs.
Not all calligraphic work has to depend on a historical time or region as we would be
talking there about the definition of "calligraphic style", and therefore a calligraphic
work can show our handwriting or more gestural strokes.
It is important to highlight that in calligraphy every stroke and every element are made
out of one single natural gesture, directly and impossible to modify, whilst in lettering
we can erase, retouch and modify as many times as we consider necessary.
Aln Guzmn
Pokras Lampas.
Calligraphy is more random and captures the freedom of movement from the author
whilst lettering is a more rational method where you have all the time you want and
therefore you can decide the exact form of a curve or a letter.
Typography.
Even though the term "typography" is normally used, we should actually define the
concept of "digital typography" or "typographical font" which is the improper use
given nowadays to the word typography, as the typography term comes from the
printing technique where forms in relief which have the characters are inked and
pressed on paper to achieve printing.
At this point you might think that the differences between lettering, calligraphy and
typography is clear and that there is not much reason to confuse these concepts, but,
actually there are factors that can lead to error:
- As I mentioned earlier, it is difficult to find a person who is not related to the
typographical design or graphic design in general that knows what typography is as
to pretend understanding the difference between the three terms.
- Since they are not incompatible terms and as we said at the beginning of this
section, lettering, calligraphy and typography are familiar concepts that often
complement each other. As an example, during the process of designing a font,
sometimes, the three methods can take place, first we begin making strokes through
calligraphy as with this one we get more natural and creative results, then we draw
(lettering) to refine strokes, auctions, unions, etc., and then we digitize it, turning
these drawings into a digital typography ready to be used.
- The explosion that the usage of Opentype program has suffered. Though this
program has been used for some years now, this last years we have seen how its
usage has increased in different applications, being the one of typographical font
design one of them. Opentype allows, among other things, that a typographical font
to be modified by the user as this one sees fit, sometimes achieving results that are
very similar to those achieved by a lettering on request.
Different Opentype options for the lower case "g in "Love Script" typography by Positype.
THE WEIGHT.
When we talk about weight in the design of letters we talk about the thickness of
their strokes and therefore the color of the print. Depending on the width of their
strokes the letter will have a color spot or another one, for example, in the designing
of fonts these weights can range from an ultralight or light version to a bold, black or
UltraBlack weight.
When we design XS fonts, we can have two very contradicting sensations, on one
hand, we can have the impression that everything we do is fine; as we cannot worry
about the thickness forming well designed counter shapes. On the other hand, there
is the feeling that everything we do is wrong, this is due to, as we previously said, the
structure of the letter is in plain sight and any designing error can be noticed
instantly.
In order to avoid these two situations we have to pay special attention to the design
of this type of letters. This type of letters are usually designed when we try to copy
handwritten styles where we have to pay attention to the linking of the letters to
one another and respect the readability of the lettering.
In the completely opposite case, we find the situation of having to design the XXL letters,
these heavy weight letters, or well, as my grandma would say "they are not fat, they
have thick bones." In these black letters we set off from the same structure of the XS
and we will continue adding thickness to the shapes, and in this process we
irretrievably find the problem of designing the counter shapes.
As we continue the structure will be lost and the design of the counter shapes will be
the one giving the final touch of these XXL letters, and this is why, personalizing and
wanting to create eccentricities is a bit more complicated with this type of letters.
An exercise that many font designers do when drawing this type of letters, is to invert
the colors, meaning, making the counter shapes black and the shapes white. This
exercise helps our eye perceive the volumes in a special way, try it out, it'd be fun.
AXIS OR MODULATION.
When we talk about modulation in the design of fonts we are talking about the
imaginary axis of a character, which is imposed by the position of the slim and
thick strokes,
We can find two types of axis, the vertical one and the oblique one.
The vertical one is the one placed at 90 degrees from the base line and it is usually used
with two types of modern style fonts. On the other hand, the oblique axis is
that one with an inclined axis and it is usually used with styles more similar to
handwriting.
When drawing handwritten letters we will have to understand that all the characters
that are part of our lettering belong to a same modulation.
Leo Caldern.
THE
WIDTH
As in the design of fonts, the width of the characters is an aspect to keep in mind in
lettering, as all the characters we draw will have to have a certain width. Now, the
creation of condensed letters, of "normal" width or extended, depends on you and on
what the design in question demands.
THE HEIGHT OF X
This is one of the aspects that personally obsesses me the most when beginning a
new lettering. The height of X, also known as middle point or nucleus of the character,
is the height of the lower case (small letter) from the base line to the highest point of
the letter, not counting ascendants. The X letter is picked as reference as, in most of the
cases, its both inferior supports clearly mark the base line and the superior ones gives
us its exact height.
Not to mistake the height of X with the body of the letter, as this last one does include
ascendants and descendants.
The "height of X" affects the readability of our lettering directly, as big heights of X
are usually more readable letters, especially in small bodies.
The Garamond font is on the left as an example of Renaissance design in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, with a contrast between thick and thin strokes and moderate
oblique modulation. In the center and as a font example of the Romantic period, we
have Didot, which has a great contrast between strokes and a vertical axis. Helvetica is
shown on the right, with homogeneous strokes, belonging to the Grotesque type of
fonts which arose in the late nineteenth century.
If we choose to design a font with high contrast between thick and thin strokes
consequently we obtain a more dynamic lettering, which gets more attention from the
viewer.
If on the contrary, we choose a font with little or no contrast between strokes we will
have a more homogeneous and uniform composition, but also more monotonous as
result.
Fidel Lpez.
character pitch would have a direct effect over the readability of the group. Some
characters with a Excessively reduced character pitch will make its reading difficult as
our eye will not easily determine where a character ends and the other one begins,
likewise, an excessive character pitch will also have a negative effect over the
readability, making it difficult to link a character to another even forming new words in
our reading.
When talking about the character pitch among our letter we have to talk about two
Anglicisms which you must have probably heard at some point in the design of fonts or
you have seen them in our favorite design software, such as tracking and kerning, but
what are these terms exactly?
Tracking, which could be translated into Spanish as "prosa", is the letter-spacing added
systematically between two characters depending on its aesthetics and aiming for a
good readability.
There are certain characters in our Latin/Spanish alphabet that create certain optical
problems when combined with other ones which cannot be solved with general
tracking, and this is when kerning comes in In spite of having tried to translate
"kerning" into Spanish in several occasions, there is no translation that would entirely
fit, as kerning is the value applied between two pair of characters to optically
compensate their different shapes and so it does not look like they are closer or
further from the other ones.
There is no a math formula to tell us which is the perfect letter-spacing for a group of
characters, this will depend on how trained each one has their typographic eye. There are
designers who are more comfortable with tighter compositions and there are others who
prefer the spacing between characters to "breathe" a bit more.
In 1986, font designer and director of the department of design of the typographic font
Linotype, Walter Tracy, decided to settle the basis for a correct letter-spacing in a chapter
of his book Letters of credit, a view of type design. In this chapter, Walter tells about the
system that Linotype had used for more than 30 years to adjust the tracking of the new
fonts out in the market. Though this method is a good start, it is always advised to review
that it works correctly.
We adjust the tracking and kerning in the design of fonts through number values,
both, positive and negative, which we add to our font creation and edition
software, but in the hand-drawing of letter we must add these aspects to our
design through a the sketching.
Fidel Lpez.
Before sketching.
- If the lettering is a request from a client.
In this case, we must have a good briefing before starting our design, where certain
criteria are determined, such as, what the company does, the type of products, market,
competitors, target audience, what they want to transmit with this design.
- If it is a personal work or self-request.
We must keep in mind that though the lettering we are going to make does not have a
real client or we are the very client, it is still advisable to imagine a hypothetical
briefing, as this will help us clear some ideas before starting sketching, improving our
abilities with the different lettering stylers and getting more professional works.
When sketching.
At this point, we already have the style we will give to our lettering clear, the target
audience and all the aspects we have seen in previous paragraphs, thus, now it is time
to work and start sketching. Whilst making a sketch after sketch, we will apply all of the
guidelines from this book, but here are some little advises that will turn out very helpful
in the sketching process:
- Depending on where our lettering will be used, we can try out more linear,
square, round styles, among others. This will result in more creative and
customized designs.
Fidel Lpez.
- Adding different sizes to the elements that form the lettering will make our designs
more dynamic and will help keep certain hierarchy in the reading.
Mauro Andrs.
- You don't have to always repeat the entire design. You can focus on repeating, for
example, only one letter or some retouching or shape whose result does not please
you.
With this exercise we will get more practice when sketching and we will be able to
quickly view different options to choose from.
- Show the lettering to other people. Sometimes we are so into sketching, (curving this,
retouching that, this is thicker, this goes more separated...) that we have no global vision
of it and we could easily apply that old saying "Do not let the tree prevent you from
seeing the forest." Find a partner, friend, family member to whom show it, even if that
person does not know about this subject, they can offer you brilliant advice, I, for
instance, ask my partner most of the times without explaining anything about the
lettering I'm designing, I ask "What do you read here?". This helps me see if the
lettering I am designing fulfills the minimum of readability, or which parts of it cannot
be correctly read.
Mauro Andrs.
THINK NEGATIVELY.
Drawing with the blanks.
Easy, I do not want you to become a pessimist. In this chapter, we will talk about the
importance of the negative side in font design.
The negative side is a concept used in many artistic disciplines, such as photography,
painting, architecture or graphic design. In the Gestalt psychology, from the early XX
century in Germany, this concept was discussed within its "Principle of background and
shape", confirming that the human brain cannot see an object as figure and background
at the same time.
which is why the image will be one thing or another depending on the perception
each person has of the object.
We surely remember all of this famous examples where the relation between shape
and background is clearly understood, because if we see the white stain we will see
two faces in front of each others, but if we look closer to the black stain we will
discover a cup in an almost magical way.
If we move these concepts to font designing we will find that it is fundamental to
keep in mind the negative aspect when creating letters, as this one will always be
the combination between the shape of the letter and the background it appears on,
or said differently, between the shape and its counter shape.
There are designers who consider the negative side even more important than the
positive one. This is the case of Massimo Vignelli where, in the Helvetica Documentary
firmly says:
"We believe typography is black and white. Typography is actually white, it is not even
black. It is the space between blacks what forms the truth".
This is a very decisive statement, but it is certain that the negative side is, at least, as
important as the positive one when designing fonts, as all letter have a set counter
shape. The shape and the counter shape are values completely reciprocal which is why
we cannot conceive one without thinking of the other.
When making a lettering we find whether the font type has an excessively thin
stroke, its counter shape are too wide and open, even becoming difficult to find.
If, on the contrary, the type of font has a thick stroke, this one will offer some more
reduced counter shapes which will provide the feeling of being drawing with full
strokes.
When some letters are combined with others and get new "neighbors", this create in
a irremediable way new counter shapes among them. This is an aspect to think of as
in this new case, the letters interact with each other keeping a conversation. Blank
spaces will come up from this dialogue between the letters which will determine the
final aspect of our lettering. If the space among the letters is little, the counter
shapes in it will stand out, as if though the space between the letters is big the
individual counter shape of each shape will be more emphasized.
Sergey Shapiro
- Introducing ligatures.
The ligatures are the union between two or more characters which normally work
separately.
This is one of the most interesting resources when smartening up a text as with a
simple touch the aspect of our design can be changed, in a great way.
Positype.
- Adding Swashes.
This resource, which is normally translated into Spanish as florituras, consists of adding
ornamental details to our characters. Some of the most common word painting.
modified, but with a bit more of work we can find the correct way to alter any
character so it surpasses the base line.
- Exaggerating shapes:
This modification can give some good results, but it has to be made with lots of tact as
the line between what looks visually well and what is excessive is really thin, but relax,
we can always go back. This transformation consists on altering the logical proportion of
one of several shapes of our lettering.
SKETCH ME AGAIN.
The importance of sketching.
We live in a technological world nowadays, where we carry the computers in our
pockets and where the design-related professions cannot function without certain
informatics tools. I feel embarrassed when a I see said designers posting typographies,
logos or any type of graphic element that have not met a pencil, which have not been
created from a manual creative process and that have not seen a human hand during
their first steps. It is also hurtful when I hear that just by mastering an informatics
program one is already a great designer, and nothing further from reality, knowing how
to use all the options of Photoshop does not make you a designer. Software tools are
that, tools that help us present or prepare our designs to new formats, but are not to
design alone.
I strongly believe that many people with creative professions should hit "pause" and
take into account the manual creative process which are sometimes passed by. It is
important to recover the process that come from a sketch as there is where we can
be really creative.
The importance of the sketch is multiplied by ten when talking about letter
designing, as it is the only way to apply the aspects we see in this book.
In order to get a good lettering we must understand what sketching provides to us:
- It allows us to correct the mistakes as we go improving this way our sketch after
sketch.
- It makes us have a quick view of the idea we have in mind or of some change we
think could look good in our design. Do not tell, draw.
Claire Coullon.
- It helps us improve our perception of the volumes that form our design.
1- Less is more.
This famous phrase most be followed as a commandment if we want to get perfectly digitalized
letters. An excess of dot will cause our curves to not look clean and get dirty when finishing the
design.
With the experience we get know the number of necessary dots to design a shape
correctly, but a good exercise, especially at the beginning, can be reviewing our
design looking for unnecessary dots or surplus.
2- Orthogonality.
When one has no experience on digitalization of letter we go crazy looking for a way
to place the controllers so the design looks good but we can't just get it.
Something we learn over time is that if we place our controllers in an Orthogonal way,
meaning, that these are adjusted to the horizontal and vertical side, it will be easier to
find the visually correct shape.
With a little of practice we can digitize more complex shapes with orthogonal
controllers.
This is not something with a set rule that we must follow, it is more something our
typographical eye has to decide.
4- Compensated points.
This is an aspect marked by the previous guideline. If we place the dots correctly, our
controllers will have the same distance on both sides.
We can turn this criterion around for it to be really helpful, if we notice the
controllers have the same distance on one side and on the other one from the
point we will know for sure our dot is well placed and that said curve will look
good.
We find three types of different dots in these software, the one on the corner (1), on
the curve (2) and the tangential one (3). Depending on the selected dot the curve will
have an aspect or another one.