09: Typography in Publications

Designing Publications for journalistic or commercial use combines all techniques and creative aspects of typography. (hierarchy, contrasting typefaces, leading, kerning) Readability and legibility are most important when designer larger publications.

An example of a nice newspaper spread by the Guardian.

Good Techniques for Publication and Web Design

Readability vs Legibility

Headline

Headlines should be put in the top level of one’s type hierarchy. Therefore bigger, bolder, and often sans-serif typefaces work well. Headline Text usually displays only a few words, so pay attention to ascenders, descenders, and counter-space. Pay utmost attention to kerning. Remember headlines are one’s visually dominant element on the page so make sure it looks good and reads well.

Body Copy

Choose body copy wisely. Body copy is what 85% of the text will be set in. Make sure the type is easy to read in large quantities. The body copy should contrast appropriately with the headline text, either in size or style.

Drop Caps

Drop Caps are essentially an ancient trick that has survived on into the Modern World. They are used as points of entry because they are an easy way to draw the reader’s eye into the text. Like in all design, be careful not to overdue it by adding too many drop caps.

Chunking

Chunking is a method of presenting information which splits concepts into small pieces or “chunks” of information to make reading and understanding faster and easier.

Chunking is especially useful for material presented on the web because readers tend to scan for specific information on a web page rather than read the page sequentially.

Chunked content usually consists of, bulleted lists, short subheadings, short sentences with one or two ideas per sentence, short paragraphs, even one-sentence paragraphs, easily scannable text, with bolding of key phrases, or inline graphics to guide the eyes or illustrate points which would normally require more words.

Visit themorningnews.org and adn.com to see examples of chunking, line height, and type hierarchy.

Things to Look for In Bodies of Type

Orphans and Widows

An orphan refers to the first line of a paragraph that appears by itself at the bottom of a page with the rest of the paragraph appearing on the following page.

A widow refers to the final line of a paragraph that falls at the top the following page of text.

Orphans and widows can be eliminated by adjusting the leading and kerning of type.

Rivers

Rivers are gaps or white space appearing to run down through the body of text. Rivers occur most often when text is force justified.

Baseline Shift

Baseline Shift occurs when two columns of text sit on separate baselines.

Intro Into InDesign

Adobe InDesign is the ideal tool for designing multipage documents or documents that contain a great amount of text. InDesign offers similar types controls as Illustrator.

Margins and Columns

These options can be determined at the beginning when setting up a new document or later by going to Layout > Margins and Columns.

Margins are used to determine the amount of white space from the edge of the document to the text.

Columns are used to divide up text and make it more readable.

Within the options for columns, the number of columns and the space between the columns, the Gutter, can be determined.

Character Palette

InDesign’s character palette is identical to Illustrator’s character palette. To revisit the character palette options, go to 03: Rules and Controls of Type.

Paragraph Palette

InDesign’s paragraph palette is a useful tool when designing publication. Knowing the capabilities of the paragraph palette will decrease design time and, hopefully, make publication design easier.

Alignment

The alignment options are located at the top of the paragraph palette. These buttons should look familiar because they are often seen in word processing programs like Microsoft Word.
Left Align

Center Align

Right Align

Justification

The next group of buttons are for Justification. Justification is an alignment option that adjusts the kerning in a body of text so that the left and right margins are even.

Left Justify
The first button in the Justification group allows one to justify a body of text and Left Align the last line in the body of text.

Center Justify
The second button in the Justification group allows one to justify a body of text and Center Align the last line in the body of text.

Right Justify
The third button in the Justification group allows one to justify a body of text and Right Align the last line in the body of text.

Force Justify
The fourth button in the Justification group allows one to justify the entire body of text.

Align Towards Spine Align Away From Spine
The last group of buttons are two options that allow one to align the body of text flush with the spine or away from the spine. (The Spine is where the pages of the printed document are bound together.)

Other Options

Left and Right Indent
These two options are located directly below the alignment options. Left and Right Indent gives one the capability to indent multiple lines inward either the left or the right.

First Line Left Indent and Last Line Right Indent
These options allow one to do just as they say, either indent the first line of text from the left or indent the last line of text from the right.

Space Before and Space After
These two options create a defined amount of space either above or below a paragraph.

Drop Cap Number of Lines
This feature defines the number of lines a drop cap will extend.

Drop Cap One or More Characters
This feature defines the amount of characters that will be allocated within the Drop Cap.

Linking Text Boxes

To link one text box to another click on the lower right text box in the document. This box is usually identified by a red plus within the box which means that the amount of text exceeds the capacity of which the text box can hold.

After clicking the box with the red plus go directly to the desired text box that is wanting to be linked and click within that text box. The excess text from the first text box should flow directly into the new linked text box.

Anything that is edited within either of the text boxes will modify both text boxes accordingly.

Margins and Columns

These options can be determined at the beginning when setting up a new document or later by going to Layout > Margins and Columns.

Margins are used to determine the amount of white space from the edge of the document to the text.

Columns are used to divide up text and make it more readable.

Within the options for columns, the number of columns and the space between the columns, the Gutter, can be determined.

Last Updated 19 July 2007 by Kirby Evans

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08: Character Study |