Spencer - Chapter 2 Reflection - The Anatomy of Typography

As the title would indicate, Chapter 2 focuses on the anatomy of typography. The chapter explores andd explains the “basic language of typography”.

The chapter opens with a historical brief on how typography evolved from handwriting. I found it interesting how they explained that any basic shape of any capital letter could be formed within the structural shape of Figure 2, which contains a bisected square, a circle, a triangle, an inverted triangle, and two smaller circles.

The chapter goes on to explain the vocabulary has evolved amongst designer and typographers. I found this section very informative in the sense that I was unaware of all the different anatomical pieces of letterform. The book does a thorough job at visually explaining each different major component of letterform construction.

The section I found most noteworthy was the section on proportions of the letterforms. The four variables that the book introduces that describe the visual appearance of a typeface as far as proportions were completely new to me. Although I feel like I can visually see differences between certain type, this section gives me a new way to describe and correctly analyze type far better. I was particularly intrigued by the contrast in stroke weight section, and how the stress of letters plays such a crucial role in giving a typeface an identity.

The section on optical relationships within a font was really interesting as well. To see how typefaces make up for spatial problems with simple solutions such as a longer serif on the bottom stroke of a letter is awesome. It was also great to read the section on unity of type design.

The closing parts of the chapter regarding measurements was a great read as well, and reminded me much of the activity we did in class. Although I’ve always obviously been aware of the different sizes of type, I was never fully understanding of the importance of having a properly scaled and spatial type. Simple things such as slightly increasing a weight of a typeface makes for just enough of a change to give the typeface a whole different meaning or purpose.