Design Skills

Typography

A typeface a collection of an artists interpretation of alphanumerical symbols. This may include letters, numerals and punctuation and various other symbols, this is known as glyphs. When grouped together in a family, a typeface contains individual fonts such as italics and bold.

Fonts are a collection of letters, punctuation, numbers or other symbols to create text.

Lettering is the illustration of letters, words and phrases in which it is positioned to spell a word rather than it being rearranged into something un-readable.

Anatomy of type:

Cap height - The height from the baseline to the top of the uppercase letters.

x-height - The height of the lower case letters (disregarding the ascendants and descendants).

Baseline - Imaginary line upon where the letters in a font appear to rest.

Serif - Slight stroke/flick on a typeface.
Sans serif - No stroke on the typeface.
Bracket - A curve or a wedge-like connection between the serif and the stem.
Terminal - The end of a stoke on the type where it does not have a serif but a clean finish.
Italics - A cursive type which is matched with a roman font and is used mainly for emphasis.
Oblique -  Very similar to italics as it is also a cursive type but are normally found in sans serif fonts.
Descender - A part of a letter that extends below the baseline such as the letter 'q'.
Ascender - An upward vertical stoke on a lowercase letter that extends above the typefaces x-height .
Diacritic - An accent mark or sign added to a letter.
Uppercase - Capital letters.
Lowercase - Lower case letters.
Superscript - A number, letter or symbol that is smaller that the normal line of type and is placed slightly higher above.
Subscript - Similar to the superscript but is instead placed slightly lower.
Underline - A line under the lettering font usually to make letters and out.
Strikethrough - A strike/line through the letter usually to show something has been completed or is a mistake.
Counter - An open space in an fully or partly closed letter.
Eye - Similar to a counter but is specifically meant for the letter 'e'.
Bowl - The fully closed or rounded part of a letter.
Aperture - A partly enclosed or negative space in some letters.
Crossbar - The horizontal stokes in some letters.
Ear - A small stroke extending from a letter, usually found on the letter 'g' or 'r'.
Link/neck - The top and bottom of what connects the top and bottom of lowercase double-story g's.
Tail - A descending stroke.
Kerning - Is the spacing between lettering whether it is the reduction or addition to space.
Tracking - Involves adjusting the spacing throughout the entire word.

TED x UCLA - Andrew Byrom  - If h is a chair
An inspiring video on how anything and everything can inspire you to create type by looking at even the most basic things. He talks about how he was looking at a chair and thought that it looked like the letter 'h' and decided on creating a whole alphabet inspired by chairs. He also looked at how he could make type from using venetian blinds and started experimenting with that idea.

I think that my weakest part of Graphic Design is typography. This lecture has helped me to analyse and learn about how type works and parts of lettering. I previously did not know about the terminology of type so I feel like I have acknowledged the importance and importance of it.