Chapter 2 Response - Allison Nolden

Chapter 2: The Anatomy of Typography

Chapter two is about the anatomy of typography and covers the basic language of typography and the evolution of letterforms and typographic design.  It reviews and defines the parts and proportions of letterforms.   To begin with the book describes the beginning of typography as basic handwriting.   The brush, reed pen, and stone engraver’s chisel greatly influenced the early form of the alphabet but lacked important proportions, design properties, legibility, and readability that now makeup modern typographic design.  Different styles and proportions, like stroke-to-height ratio, stroke weight, expanded and condensed styles, and x-height, are important variables to typography.  The letterform height to stroke width, the variation between the thickest and thinnest strokes of the letterform, the width of the letters, and the relationship of the x-height to the height of capitals, ascenders, and descenders, are major variables of letterform proportion.  After reviewing the adaptations that can be made to make typographic design in better proportions, properties, legibility, and readability, the chapter continues to show optical relations between letters and different fonts.  The development of digital typography has given visual characteristics to new typefaces that demonstrate visual relationships of letterforms that share similar parts.   Repetition of curves, horizontals, diagonals, and serifs are combined to give unity to typefaces.  The chapter then discusses type measurement.   Measurements for typography were originally developed for the handset metal type.  The American measurement system used now has two basic units: the point and the pica.  The depth of type is measured in points and is referred to as point size.  Spatial measurements in between typographic elements are interletter spacing, interword spacing, and interline spacing.  Weight changes, proportions, and angles play an important part in spatial measurements of typefaces as well.  Chapter two finishes by reviewing the typefaces Goudy Handtooled, the Cheltenham family, and the Univers family.

I thought that this chapter was jam-packed with information.  Typography is a new concept to me and I found reading this chapter to be a good place to start.  Reviewing the different parts of letterforms and the correct vocabulary helped me better understand what I was reading and what I will be working on.  I also found that reading the definitions of the language of typography helped reiterate the terms I studied for the vocabulary test.

I chose this image from the internet to accompany my response to chapter two because it takes the title of the chapter and explains the different parts of letterforms.