Spotlight on Typography

Common Terminology

• Kerning: The space between individual letters.

• Tracking: The space between multiple letters.

• Leading: The space between lines of text.

• Baseline: The line upon which most letters sit, and descenders and tails extend past.

• Cap Height: The height of capital letters, one of the tallest points of a font.

• Serif: A font with "feet" at the ends of the stroke.

• Sans Serif: A font without "feet" at the ends.

• Script: A calligraphy or handwriting inspired font.

Tracking, Leading, and Kerning

Tracking: The space between multiple letters, for example: in an entire word, sentence, or paragraph.

Leading: The space between lines of text, measured from baseline to baseline.

Kerning: The space between individual letters. Kerning is particularly helpful when finessing irregular tracking.

Kerning (Continued)

Kerning is particularly helpful when finessing script fonts, which frequently have punctuation that is too cramped or too spaced out.

The example to the left demonstrates kerning of apostrophes and parentheses using two script fonts.

Every font has different spacing quirks and DAs should be careful to adjust as necessary based on individual fonts and orders.

Baseline and Cap Height

Baseline: The line upon which most letters sit, and descenders and tails extend past.

Cap Height: The height of capital letters, one of the tallest points of a font.

Consistent baseline and cap heights are common in serif and sans serif fonts. This lends itself to clean and easily legible blocks of text.

Staggered baselines and cap heights are more commonly (though not exclusively) used in modern script fonts. Staggered letters help create a playful and decorative flourish to lines of text. It can also make larger areas of text more difficult to read.

Font Styles

Serif: A font with "feet" at the ends of the stroke. Serif fonts are most commonly used in print media.

Slab Serif: A serif font with block-like, squared off serifs. Feet can be blunt and angular or rounded.

Sans Serif: A font without "feet." Sans Serif fonts are most commonly used in digital media.

Script: Script fonts are derived from classical writing styles. Common script styles include:

1. Formal

2. Calligraphic

3. Casual

4. Modern

Display Fonts: Decorative fonts intended for use as titles and headings, usually printed at larger sizes.

Legibility

Minted has minimum font size requirements, and for some fonts, weight requirements, to ensure text is legible when printed.

Our Minted Master Font List includes font requirements for every Minted font.

If a customer has chosen specific casing, fonts, or colors DAs should honor the customers' font selections.

If the font, casing, or colors are difficult to read, DAs can make a second option and adjust the text attributes for legibility.

When making second options it's always important to explain the differences between options, so the customer knows what they are looking at. We will review notes to the customer in more detail in later lessons.

Line Breaks

Line Breaks are used in typography to balance areas of text and create a smooth reading experience. DAs can create a cleaner proof by adjusting widows, orphans, and margins (referred to as the “rag”) with manual line breaks.

Widow: A paragraph-ending line that falls at the beginning of the following page or column, thus separated from the rest of the text. Mnemonically, a widow is "alone at the top”.

Orphan: A paragraph-opening line that appears by itself at the bottom of a page or column, thus separated from the rest of the text. Mnemonically, an orphan is "alone at the bottom".

Rag: refers to the uneven margin in a block of text. An uneven margin can break the flow of text and create a more difficult reading experience.

Casing

There are four common types of casing:

1. ALL CAPS

2. lowercase

3. Title Casing

4. Sentence casing.

DAs are required to keep text attributes, such as casing, consistent throughout a suite. Depending on the casing used, the DA may need to change the tracking as well.

• ALL CAPS text looks best with increased tracking.

• Mixed Case (Lowercase, Title, and Sentence) looks best with decreased tracking.

• Script looks best with all lowercase, title case, or sentence case letters. Very rarely does script look good with all uppercase letters. Tracking should always be set to zero, so letters connect evenly unless the customer specifically asks to change it.

Casing and Tracking (Continued)

Occasionally, customers choose casing that is different from the original design. When this happens, DAs should adjust the tracking so the type is visually pleasing and easier to read.

Tip: Lowercase looks better tracked in.

Font Finesse (Script Fonts)

In addition to the usual quirks of non script fonts, script fonts frequently have more robust swash and glyph selections than other fonts.

When alternate glyphs and swashes are used inconsistently in proofs, it can cause confusion for customers. Alternate swashes and glyphs are also called Alternate Characters.

Swashes: Decorative sweeping accents added before or after a letter.

Glyphs: An individual character in an alphabet. Glyphs can be letters, numbers, or punctuation. Most script fonts have a minimum of 1-3 options for each glyph, some have more.

Tracking: Should always be set to 0, so glyphs cleanly connect to one another.

Font Finesse (Stroke)

Minted Master Font List: Each Minted font has a guideline for minimum point size and stroke weight. If these guidelines are not followed, printed text will likely be illegible.

Consistency: If stroke is used anywhere on an item it should be applied consistently (to individual fonts) across a suite. If the stroke is applied inconsistently it can result in reprints where text prints too heavy on one item, and too thin on another.

Knockout Text: When light text is printed on a dark background it’s important to add a stroke, so the light text is still easily read over the dark background.

CFT: Extra stroke is not encouraged for CFT, as it can cause bleeding (spread) when the foil is pressed. Instead, text should be increased by 1-2 points.

Note: We will learn more about CFT, or Custom Foil Text, in a later training.