Stundziaite - Chapter 2 Reflection

Chapter 2 – The Anatomy of Typography

Chapter 2 of “Typographic Design: Form and Communication”, acts as a basic reference chapter for the book and typographers in general. I feel like chapter 2 holds a vast amount of critical information for a typographer to know and understand. While reading chapter 2, I learned many hidden basic key points to typography. For example, letters that are pointed at one end like “V” or “A” are designed so that the pointed end barely hangs over the baseline or capline to assure that the letters visually do not look too small. The same is done with the letter “O” which hangs over both cap and baseline to assure visual balance. There are many acute adjustments to the text that the reader will probably not notice, but the overall effect of these changes is to create a more visually harmonious text.

This chapter also went over the basic history of typography and how our modern day letters came to be. The book explained how and why letters look the way they do (based off handwriting and easy to distinguish for each letter/symbol).  The chapter also went over the development of picas and points.  One key point that I found very interesting is that text sizes 12 and below are called “text type” and are used for large bodies of words. While on the other hand anything above 12 point font is considered to be “display type” which is used for titles, headlines, signage, etc.

The chapter continued to talk about letter spacing, letter weight, proportions of the letters, angles at which the letters sit at, etc. Overall, chapter 2 talked about the basic knowledge of typographic and went over key terms a typographer and designer should know in order to be able to communicate with a professional vocabulary.