1.2: Type Games & A Few Tips
I took a look through Adam’s list of typography games and selected three to cover in a bit more depth, including a bonus Photoshop and InDesign tip at the bottom for improving your typography, easily! As a note, I refer to everything as typefaces, rather than fonts, because I’ve studied typography extensively. A typeface, also called a font family, is actually a set of fonts. As Mary Ann Maestre explains on her blog, the word “font” originates from metal typesetting and traditionally refers to the size (e.g. 12 pt), weight (e.g. bold), and style (e.g. italic) of type. These days, people use typeface and font interchangeably, so it’s ultimately up to you what term you’re comfortable with.
On to the games!
First, I tacked Type Connection, a typeface mix and match game. The site’s typeface combo recommendations are solid, and it’s a good resource for beginning to understand some typography nuances, including cap height (the height of a typeface’s capital letters, and also what typeface size, like 12 pt, is based on), x-height (the height of lowercase letters), and baselines (the line the letters sit on). I’d like to note that it can be relatively difficult to determine what a good typeface pairing is, and it’s considered an intermediate to advanced design concept by most designers. Don’t worry too much about it, though! Sites like Type Genius, which focuses on a selection of popular designer fonts, and Beautiful Web Type, which shows examples of Google Fonts being used well, are both set up to help anyone who needs it. All else fails, find a nice designer-ly font and Google combinations.
I looked at Shoot the Serif next. This one is straightforward—can you identify serif vs. sans serif type? They do toss in some tough ones, but it’s fast-paced and you’ll need to play through a few times, anyway; you’ll probably get the hang of it. You could play this game without having ever learned about serifs and get the idea fairly quickly. Fortunately, most of the time, you probably won’t need to determine which is which on a time limit… then again, what do I know? Maybe Gaylord has some weird elimination challenges I’m unaware of. I don’t judge.
Lastly, I picked up Kern Type, which I’ve played in the past. This site gives you a legitimately tough type challenge, so don’t fret too much if you feel like you’re doing poorly. Kerning is the space between two individual letters, and the goal of good typography is partially about making sure these spaces are as visually equal as possible. What does it mean to be visually equal? Well, with computers, we can precisely measure how much space is between these letters and distribute it all evenly, but that doesn’t actually correlate to what we see. Manually kerning involves trusting what you see over what you know, and it certainly takes practice. This game does a great job at letting you try it out and, importantly, compare your solution to the accepted best solution.
When you start using InDesign and Photoshop, make sure you set the kerning to Optical. This option most closely simulates proper kerning techniques. Try making it a habit whenever you go to insert text. This will help keep your text looking as nice as possible without slaving over each tiny space.
Typography impacts how we interact with our environment all the time, but people usually don’t learn how to use type well. This class will give anyone who follows the lesson the upper hand when design comes up for years to come. If you’re really interested in typography, check out Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton on Kindle or in paperback.
Soon, I’ll be putting up a post demonstrating a real life example of each of the design concepts Adam posted. If you’re interested, check it out when it comes up! Also, if you missed my statement in the Google Hangout, I’m absolutely willing to help anyone who needs guidance using Photoshop and InDesign; just drop a comment or send an email via D2L and I’ll get back to you.
—Taylor, unofficial TA
Written for PR Publications course at the University of Oklahoma, Lesson 1.2
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