Typographic Questions Nov. 30

Margin:space around text and columns and in between pages.

Column:area or field the text in a project is flowed to present in an organized fashion.

Alley:space between two columns of set type.

Module:spatial areas that support the textual and visual contents of a design

Gutter:inside margins (space between two pages)

Folio:page numbers

What are the advantages of a multiple column grid?

They allow for multiple compositional options and it's flexible for other visual elements. It creates a rhythm and movement and allows you to in an organized fashion.

Why is there only one space after a period?

Characters each take up a proportional amount of space.

What is a character in typography?

a symbol in writing such as a letter, punctuation, or figure

How many characters are optimal for line length? Words per line?

40 characters per line, 70 is max and 24 is the min, or 6 words of 6 characters.

Why is the baseline grid used in designing?

maintains cleanliness, lines up text, continutiy

What is a typographic river?

A series of inconsistent word spaces that create distracting open lines running vertically through the justified paragraph.

What does clotheslining, flow line, and hangline mean?

Flow lines support vertical columns by dividing a page into horizontal sections to provide additional alignment points in a grid.

How can you incorporate white spaces into your design?

create negative space and movement

What does type color/texture mean?

Type color - refers to the density of typographic elements and their perceived gray value -- the overall feel of light and dark on a page.

What is x-height and how does it effect text color?

The height of the lowercase letters without ascenders and descenders. Type color is affected by the thickness of the lines or leading.

What is tracking?

The typographic technique used to adjust the overall spacing of words, lines, and paragraphs to improve the readable appearance of text.

What is kerning? Why do characters need to be kerned? What are the most frequently kerned character combos?

kerning is removing the space between letters in words to make them appear visually consistent. this is important because it keeps words visually consistent, easy to read, and looks more professional. combinations that need to be kerned are letters that have a lot of white space between them. characters with curves tend to be able to get closer than other combinations such as characters with verticals that need to have more white space.

In justification or H&J terms what do the numbers: minimum, optimum, maximum mean?

h&j means hyphenatioin and justification. min., opt., and max. stand for minimum, optimum, and maximum concerning the minimum number of words before or after a hyphen, the optimum number of spaces and how you can adjust up or down, and the max number of words before and after a hyphen.

What is the optimum space between words?

en dash

What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules?

ways to show paragraphs include lines between paragraphs or indentation. Always use one never use both.

What are the rules associated with hyphenation?

only for words and line breaks. only used for hyphenated words. no more than 3 times in a row, or six of the eight lines in a paragraph. never hyphenate a word in a headline

What is a ligature?

a ligature is a combination of two glyphs or characters such as "fl"

What does CMYK and RGB mean?

CMYK is subtractive and it stands for cyan magenta yellow and key (black); RGB is additive and stands for red, green and blue

What does hanging punctuation mean?

It is a slight indent that is visually distracting. It applies to asterisks, apostrophes, commas, en dashes, hyphens, periods, and quotation marks.

What is the difference between a foot mark and an apostrophe? What is the difference between an inch mark and a quote mark (smart quote)?

Apostrophes and quote marks are curved and either open or closed, inch and foot marks are straight up.

What is a hyphen, en dash and em dashes, what are the differences and when are they used?

a hyphen is a punctuation mark used to separate words and line breaks, en dashes are dashes the size of a capital N or one half an em size and are used to punctuate duration and compound adjectives, and em dashes are punctuation marks the size of a capital M used to show changes of thought

What is a widow and an orphan?

a widow is the last line on a paragraph with less than seven characters
an orphan is the remaining remnants of a paragraph ended on the top of a new column