Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Chapter 2 Summary - Stephanie Tatoiu

Chapter 2 Summary: The Anatomy of Typography
Chapter two’s main focus is on the anatomy of Typography. Typographic forms started out through the evolution of our handwriting, and hand writing typography all has to do with the marks. Because of this, the element that is essential to making a letterform is a linear stroke. The section continues to talk about the major components of a letterform. Imaginary guidelines are important for a letterform. Examples of these are the baseline, beard line, capline, meanline, and x-height. There are also specific pieces of a letterform that can be adjusted. These are made up of the apex, arm, ascender, bowl, counter, crossbar, descender, ear, eye, fillet, hairline, leg, link, loop, spine, spur, stem, tail, and terminal. Serif can also contribute to the overall letterform, which consists of tiny strokes that extend from at an angel to the upper or lower ends of a major stroke.
I particularly liked this chapter because it explained every piece of a letterform in a very clear and specific way. The proportions of a letterform can also be changed. Factors to consider are the stroke-to-height ratio, the contrast in stroke weight, the potential of expanded or condensed styles, and especially its x-height and proportion. All of these elements can influence the look of a letterform and give some sort of overall message to the reader. Certain fonts can also include particular types of characters, like Capitals, lowercase, small caps, old style figures, lining figures, ligatures, and more. The rest of the chapter goes into detail about the large variety of type styles. For example, Old Style, Italic, and Transitional type are all very different in comparison. Italic is slanted to the right, Old Style has many of its serifs bracketed, and Transitional has a sharp contrast between its thick and thin strokes.
Measurement is also brought up in this section of the book, which talks specifically about word spacing such as spatial measurement and metal type measurement. This reminds me of the exercise we did in class where we relied heavily on the type gauge to recreate a page from our book.


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