Typography

Question 1

1) What is typography?
2) What is a typeface?
3) What is a font?

Answer 1

1) Typography is the practice of arranging type and the study of type forms.
2) The style of text that you can use, for example: Times New Roman, Ariel, Comic Sans.
3) A specific letter type consisting of upper and lower case. You can change the style
of the typeface by using different fonts; for example Times New Roman can be used in regular, italic, bold, bold italic.

Question 2

1) What is the baseline of a letterform?
2) What is the cap height of a letterform?
3) What is the crossbar of a letterform?

Answer 2

1) Baseline. The baseline is the imaginary horizontal line on which most characters sit.
2) Cap height or capline is an imaginary line which is the height of a typeface’s uppercase letters.
3) A crossbar is a stroke that connects two lines in the capital letterforms of “A” and “H” is called a crossbar.

Question 3

1) What is a serif typeface?
2) What is a sans-serif typeface?
3) What is a script typeface?
4) What is a decorative/display typeface.

Answer 3

1) A serif is a decorative stroke on the end of the letters. This has a traditional appearance.
2) The word sans means “without” in French. Sans-serif is a typeface without decorative strokes on the end of each letter, the opposite to what serif is. This has a modern appearance.
3) Script typefaces and fonts are meant to look like they’ve been handwritten. Script is quite popular for headlines or advertising.
4) Decorative typefaces are mainly used for headlines. Decorative typefaces are meant to fit within a certain theme.

Question 4

1) What is typographical hierarchy?
2) What are points?
3) What is typographical arrangement, and what are the different type arrangements?

Answer 4

1) Typographic hierarchy shows the reader which information to focus on, which is most important, and which just supports the main points.
2) Type is measured in points. One point is 1/72nd of an inch, about 0.25mm.
3) Typographical arrangement is the layout or presentation of words. When text is written, it can be arranged in a variety of ways, such as: ranged left, ranged right, centred and justified.

Question 5

1) What is body text?
2) What are rivers?
3) What does ‘opposites attract’ mean?

Answer 5

1) The body text or body copy is the text forming the main content of a book, magazine, web page, or any other printed or digital work.
2) In typography, rivers are gaps in typesetting which appear to run through a paragraph of text due to the alignment when text is justified.
3) The combining of different type styles, fonts, weights to create interesting typography.

Question 6

1) What is kerning?
2) What is leading?
3) What is tracking?

Answer 6

1) Kerning typography is the spacing between individual letters or characters. Unlike tracking, which adjusts the amount of space between the letters of an entire word in equal increments, kerning is focused creating readable text that’s visually pleasing.
2) Leading is the space between multiple lines of type, which can be as few as two lines of type to as many lines as needed. Leading is measured from baseline (the imaginary line upon which a line of text rests) to baseline.
3) Tracking is a term used to identify the way you decrease or increase the horizontal spacing between a range of letters or characters. Usually, this technique is a method designers leverage to adjust and fine-tune the letter spacing of a logo, or font on a website.