TYPESETTING

Typesetting : Rules, theories and practical uses 

REFER BACK TO PPT ON ESTUDIO AS GUIDE

Typography has loads of different subsections within the topic. We are looking at :

• intro to typesetting
• basic principles and essential rules
• theories in practicce
• context of typesetting / designers

GOOGLE DEFINITION OF TYPESETTING

Typesetting all to do with reading, there is a lot of science and technical theory to do with typesetting. As you read your eyes spring jerkily along the lines. These movements are known as saccades. Only part of the word is processed when you read it. 

Typography has 3 main areas :

• The Letter form - each character or glyph
• The Word - how these glyphs fit together
• The Line - combination and arrangement of words in a body or sequence

Typesetting Principles

Hiarchy - different type sizes, styles, weights can be used to denote the degree of importance of each individual line

Alignment

• Left aligned / ragged edge
• Justified text
• Centred
• Right aligned

last two points are hard to work with n hard to read so not that commonly used

In type ‘rag’ refers to the irregular or uneven vertical margin of a block of type - often on right edge. Each line alternates in a small way to create an uneven rag.

Paragraphs

Indented - first para does not have an indentation, the successive paragraphs do have indents.

Full line breaks - full leading space between lines

Letter spacing

Leading : refers to the difference between the baselines of successive lines of type. The term originated from hand typesetting, in which strips of lead were used to increase vertical distance between the lines. Can come in - leading, automatic leading and + leading. Leading should be a little bit higher than point size.

Tracking : refers to amount of space between group of letters to affect density in a line or block of copy. Readability decreased when negative tracking is applied. Wide tracking opens up the type giving it more airy feel. Don't go about +40 and below -40.

Kerning and Pairs : Kerning is process of adjusting spaces between the letters in proportion to the font. There are some letter pairing often with letter overhang that may need attention e.g. v or y. 

Hidden Characters : invisible characters such as returns or spaces. They shows how type is formed and shows you the body of the type and how it is set. V useful is trying to find double spaces.

Line length : anywhere from 7 -12 words in a line ( 40-75 characters ) An overly short line length causes a more extreme and ugly rag in a body of text or you have to hyphenate a lot of words thus decreasing legibility. 

Dashes and Spaces 

Never use a hyphen in a place of a dash. (-) hyphen

An en dash is used for a range (–) (alt and hyphen)

Also have an em dash is used for an interrupted speech. (—) (shift alt hyphen)

Never use a hyphen as a dash !

Grids

Grids are considered by some, the most important and yet most invisible part of design and typography. This is a fundamental part of the classic Swiss style and modernist typography. The Raster Systeme presents a grid in 8-32 grid fields, which can be adaptable according to the design. Type is often set to grids to keep it organised in the design process as well as controlling the appearance. 

Rivers or rivers of white are gaps in typesetting which appear to run though a paragraph of text due to a coincidental alignment of spaces. The rivers are most noticeable with wide inter word spaces caused by full text justification or monospaced fonts. You can test for rivers by turning a proof sheet upside down. 

Baseline Grid is a technique used in modernist typesetting. Essentially it aligns all your text to a vertical grid. A lot like writing on lined paper. 

Theres a lot of subjectiveness to typography. 

Typesetting exercise : 

Typeset this –

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens — Chapter 1, Page 1

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), myrst fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To ve little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of ve little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get

a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. 

Existing examples :

People to look at for examples:

Anthony Burrill 

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy - more modern 

Initial Ideas :

- Family Tree - different family memebers

- River - could do something with typesetting to run a river throughout the type to mimic what said in the chapter.

- 'Lost in Translation' - We noticed that in the email there were a lot of mistakes and spelling errord that had occured in the translation of the text. After subconciously ignoring these, it came to our attention that perhaps a number of mistakes had been made. After identifying all of the errors :

The next step was then to see how we could utilise this to our advantage. We thought something interesting to do would be to type our some words in the text wrong, by changing altering the order of the internal glyphs and see if it was noticeable to the viewer. We tested it our and found that most people did not notice unless we told them which was the result we were aiming for.  We added the text we were emailed to Illustrator and began. Below is the finished product :

If we have more time we would look into the psychology of the way that the individual interprets layout of text and how this affects the relationship between reader and writer. There are at least 15 mistakes in the passage.