Font Design & Typography OnDemand

Book Typography Part 6: The reality of picking fonts

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:21:00 +0000

The basic parts of type

Again, we need some more basic language definitions.

You can see above how the point size of the type relates to the ascender, cap height, x-height, baseline, and descender. More importantly, you get a glimpse of things that are important in the world of typography.
This illustration is from my font design books, Practical Font Design: Third Edition, and Fontographer: Practical font Design for Graphic Designers which are available in print at Lulu (for better printing) and Amazon — as well as ebooks at iBookstore, NookBooks, Scribd, and Kindle. For an introduction to typography in publishing read Appendices A & B in my new revised and expanded, Writing in InDesign 2nd Edition, due out this spring.

Other good books on typography

InDesign Type by Nigel French: This is the best basic book I have seen on setting up type in InDesign
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst: This is the industry classic. It's pretty heavy-duty but an excellent read (a bit dated & anal, though).
Stop Stealing Sheep by Speikermann & Ginger: The title comes from an old quote by Frederic Goudy who said that anyone who would letterspace lowercase would steal sheep. It's a very entertaining yet highly informative read.

Not surprisingly, because book designers are typographers, there are many books on the subject. The sad thing is that most of them are very dry, ridiculously technical, and full of strong opinions stated as facts (been guilty of that m'self). As you grow in skill as book designer, you'll probably read several of them. Check out your local library.

What fonts should you use?

One of the goals of all my writings is to teach you good stewardship. You can spend a lot of money on fonts. The good news is that the Creative Suite comes with some excellent fonts for book design. Caslon [131], Garamond [152], Chaparrel, and Minion [2] are four good fonts for body copy. The links are to different versions in MyFonts. The numbers in brackets are the number of different versions found in a quick search there.

The Mac OSX software gives you several more—including those used on the iPad (we talk about what's available on the iPad in Appendix E about ePUB design in Writing in InDesign 2nd Edition). Baskerville [75], Cochin [11], Hoefler Text, and Optima [42] are quite pretty.

Many of you will also have others installed by various hardware and software you have purchased over the years.
What you are looking for is a professional quality serif font face. Check Font Book on the Mac. It is a free piece of software that comes with OSX to install and view the fonts you have installed on your computer. You may be surprised at some of the gems. A couple you probably have are Adobe Jenson Pro [42] and Palatino [17].

Any of these font families will work for you as you get into the industry and learn your craft. Eventually you will probably buy something special for your taste and style—but it certainly not necessary. If you like the fonts I am using in my current books, click here to buy now for only $50. I will sell you the 12 Fonts used: Contenu Book (4), Contenu (4), and Buddy (4) for $50. List price is $25 each for the twelve fonts and that's below average.

Special blog package only $50

Typography is probably the major skill set you will be adding as you learn to publish your own books. For today you need to remember that good fonts purchased from a reputable supplier are essential. All of these fonts mentioned will work well for you in print. For your ePUBs and Kindle versions there is another whole set of problems.
As mentioned, InDesign naturally tends to produce good typography—unlike Word. In Word it is very difficult to do excellent typography. In fact, many of the things you need are impossible in Word.
I do not use Word processors unless forced to do so. Their documents were a horror when I received them as raw copy when I was working full-time as a graphic designer. In fact, I developed a relatively extensive list of steps to completely strip out word processor formatting to enable good typography to be added within InDesign. I cannot state it too forcefully.

Word processors cannot do what we need to do as book designers!

We will cover many more of these things as we continue in this weekly series. If there is anything you want me to cover mention it in the comments.

Book Typography: Part 5: What is a Humanist sans?

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:15:00 +0000

This week I want to talk about a term that is thrown around (often by me) that is at the heart of readability. It has become a common descriptive adjective of a readable type of sans serif. The problem is that most people no longer know what it means.

What is a humanist font?

Originally the term was given to a style of fonts that were designed as a reaction to the original Blackletter fonts used by Gutenberg and others when printing in Europe took off in the later 15th century. Gutenberg's Blackletter was virtually unreadable to our modern eyes in America.
These fonts are more commonly referred to as Old English or Gothic fonts these days. but they are very hard to read, whatever you call them.
This time in our history is during the beginning of the Renaissance when mankind turned away from the so-called superstitions of religion toward a humanistic faith which holds that we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and build a glorious civilization.
In Italy during this period were a large group of writers and book publishers who were called humanists. Among them was a type designer who changed font design forever. His name was Nicholas Jenson. To quote from Wikiedia:

Nicolas Jenson began printing in Venice with his original roman font from 1470. Jenson's design and the very similar roman types cut by Francesco Griffo c. 1499 are acknowledged as the definitive and archetypal roman faces that set the pattern for the majority of western text faces that followed.

The Jenson roman was an explicitly typographic letter designed on its own terms that declined to imitate the appearance of hand-lettering. Its effect is one of a unified cohesive whole, a seamless fusion of style with structure, and the successful convergence of the long progression of preceding letter styles. Jenson adapted the structural unity and component-based modular integration of Roman capitals to humanistic minuscule forms by masterful abstract stylization.

Here's a look at his roman font:

Nicholas Jenson's roman serif font from 1472

So, Humanist originally was a descriptive term for people of a certain religious persuasion. There were many people working in this new style of writing as printing moved from its origin in Germany to Italy—specifically Rome. By 1472 Jenson was printing in Venice. Hence the other name for this original bit of creative genius was and is Venetian.

What are its characteristics?

Wikipedia has a good description of the transition to humanist in its classical revival section on typography. Our modern versions of his font called Jenson are radically redesigned to our modern tastes. Robert Slimback did this variation for Adobe.

Here we can see in this design what is currently used for defining humanist fonts:

A sloping crossbar on the lowercase e
A humanist axis: This is the common angle of right-handed writers
A relatively small x-height: down to about half the ascender height or a third of the point size
Little modulation: in other words there is little difference between the thicks and thins of the individual letter designs
A relatively dark type color: that means pages set with humanist faces have relatively dark blocks of body copy
Relatively wide caps
Small counters on the a & e: counters are the open white spaces contained in these letters and others like ABDPQRbdgopq
Slightly flared stems: Stems are the vertical lines in a character
Slightly inclined serifs: showing their calligraphic roots (a little)

But you can see that there is virtually no remains of what we call calligraphy and what they called handwriting in Venice in the 1470s.

So then: what is a humanist sans?

I would expect it to have the same basic characteristics as a humanist serif with no serifs—right? But in common usage, nothing could be further from the truth. Let's look at three fonts called Humanist from Bitstream:

Humanist 521: which is their version of Gill Sans
Humanist 777: which is their version of Frutiger
Humanist 531: which is their version of Syntax by Meier

This is considered "that most humanist of sanserifs" by MyFonts.

But why do I say they are not really humanist?

What are the humanist traits that would apply to a sans serif typeface? How do they apply to the 3 fonts mentioned above?

A sloping crossbar on the lowercase e: None of them
A humanist axis: Syntax vaguely, Gill Sans maybe, Frutiger nope
A relatively small x-height: Only Gill Sans
Little modulation: Only Gill Sans
A relatively dark type color: Only Gill Sans
Relatively wide caps: Only Gill Sans & maybe Syntax
Small counters on the a & e: None of them
Slightly flared stems: None of them

Here are two fonts which do have these characteristics: Brinar & Optima

My contention is that these are truly examples of humanist fonts which are actually readable and which therefore make excellent choices for book fonts as body copy. Be careful of what the font foundries call humanist sans. Many of them are not even as readable as Gill Sans or Frutiger—and these will simply not do for body copy in book design.
The keys are: a humanist axis, light modulation, flared stems, and so on. A smaller x-height would also help. There are many of these fonts on the market today. Here's a search page on Myfonts full of them over 3000 of them. I've done three myself.

Amazon's new KF8 plugin for InDesign

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:58:00 +0000

As a writer in InDesign, and publisher of all my tech books in many formats, the tools we have to make ePUBs and Kindle books are really limited unless you are a good coder. Designers are rarely good coders, and writers even less so. InDesign is the best tool we have at present, but there’s still a long way to go until some of the typographic niceties we rely on in print are actually available in an PUB without a lot of hand-coding.

Ron Bilodeau (@biladew) is one of the coders (a very good one, I think). In an email from him this morning, he gave the following advice about Amazon's new KF8 plugin for InDesign:

As usual, formatting ebooks has no good tool yet

They all require coding strength

The Mobi format is a Kindle/Amazon proprietary product, and therefore, it is not Adobe's responsibility to build around it. It is entirely Amazon's responsibility to provide any necessary plugins to work with InDesign (which they have done).
The Kindle plugin for InDesign works well for what it does, but it is only useful if you are using ID to build a document with the single purpose of exporting that file to Mobi for use on the Kindle (Legacy e-ink and Fire).
The plugin only recognizes the most basic of text formatting and anchored images. (again, still need to test the limitations).
It does do a good job of creating working hyperlinks based on properly built cross-refs, hyperlinks, ID-generated TOC, and footnotes.
The plugin will add eBook section breaks based on separate InDesign files only. It does not recognize InDesign's ability to add breaks via. Para style.
The plugin will also only recognize content order based on the old-school way of ordering: single text thread with inline images or order by placement on page (top-down, left-right). It does not recognize the use of the Articles Panel. (Not sure yet about XML structure order. Still need to test).

Bottom line for kindle plugin use:

If you are hoping for the ability to export directly to Mobi from a project using your normal workflow, it's not gonna happen!
The InDesign to ePub to Kindlegen to Mobi is still a far better workflow. And it also allows you to control much better formatting (especially for the Fire).
The Kindle plugin for InDesign is ONLY useful if your document/project is intended for Kindle only. For that purpose, it works well.
But for anything else, it will be useless.

This is type of thing we have to deal with all the time. This is the appeal of iBook Author (as flawed as that offering may be) though it is limited to textbooks and make huge iBook2 documents. As Dave Bricker said this morning, we're still waiting for the game changer.

Book Typography: Part Zero: The new book publishing paradigm

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:54:00 +0000

This week I have decided to do a prequel—something I normally dislike. But things have changed so much in book publishing, that you must understand the new paradigm and why this means you must understand typography. Self-published authors must learn the art of communication with type. This is an excerpt from Writing In InDesign 2nd Edition which will be released as soon as possible. Here's a link to the 1st edition
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Writing within InDesign

Here I am again recommending a road less traveled by—not unusual in my life and work. Before the choruses rise up in defense of other workflows, let me tell you my reasonings. I fully recognize that most people write in Word. What these people do not realize [in most cases] is this simple fact starts their book under a great handicap. If they are publishing their own book, they are missing out on the best tools for communicating with readers.

Books are not entirely about words

Of course as a writer this may not make much sense to you. But hear me out. For years I have taught graphic designers that the content is all that matters. This has been a major fight because many designers never read the copy they design into books. This is still true now that graphic designers are responsible for laying out Websites, blogs, ebooks, and more. In the publishing world there is a real disconnect between the writers and the book designers. They are treated as two entirely separate skill sets. Most designers are of little help dealing with book design as a method of improving communication.

Most designers do not deal well with words,
many rarely read, few read for enjoyment

However, it is equally true to say that most wordsmiths do not deal well with design. Many do not have any idea how essential design and typography is to their efforts to communicate with their readers. Graphic designers [and this includes most book designers] are visual people, focused on how things look. Writers are verbal people and tend to be unaware of how the formatting and typography choices affect communication.
One of my major concerns as I started to write books in the mid-1990s was my experience in my classes of using published textbooks as examples of poor communication—both from the written side and the visual side. The examples are endless.
My pursuit of functional, reader-centered books has been fraught with trials. I was constantly bumping up against standardized procedures of traditional publishers which really made their books hard to read or use effectively. This reader-centered goal is so far outside the norm in publishing today that there is no room at all for an author who even cares about these things (except in this brand new world of on-demand self-publishing).
Let's talk about some simple examples of this lack of concern for the reader

Illustrations listed by number with no connection to the copy which talks about what is illustrated: Most traditional non-fiction publishers require this typographic horror. In many cases, authors are not allowed to even pick out the images because they are not considered professional enough to understand what is required of a graphic. But the result is illustrations, maps, charts, and photos—listed by number—which are often not on the same page (or even in the same chapter) as the content they illustrate.
Why bother to even have them?
Few readers will find them or take the time to look for them. The result is frustrated readership and readers who simply quit reading in disgust.
For fiction, it is equally bad to have an illustration or map which cannot be easily referenced by the reader. In my poor attempts at writing novels, I added maps where they were needed in the copy to help the reader understand what was going on a little better.
Heads and subheads generated by designers: In many cases over the years I spent as a graphic designer, I wrote all the subheads, developed all the lists, wrote all the captions, and even wrote most of the headlines.
I developed them out of a need to help direct the reader through the copy I was formatting. The author commonly had no clue that they were desirable or necessary. I wrote them as a service to the reader. But I was a real minority as mentioned. Many designers [and it may well be most designers] do not even read the copy they layout, as I said.
As a writer, you must be aware of these issues and realize that they are a primary method of clearing up communication with the reader. Heads, subheads, list design, and all the rest of the typographic tools are key elements of reader support.
Page layout determined by fashion and visual concerns: Fonts are chosen because they look good. Layouts are determined by fashion. Columns, margins, sidebars and the like are chosen to stimulate visual interest and provoke excitement. Rarely are they use to help communicate the content more effectively, clearly, and accessibly. Clarity and accuracy are rarely considered by a book designer.
The most glaring example of this is seen in the books where content is broken up into small pieces—supposedly to help people with short attention spans. We recently bought a book on creationism that is virtually unreadable. The gorgeous, fancy illustrations push the copy into bits and pieces that randomly appear out of the visual clutter of the pages' backgrounds. My wife gave up on it.

But it goes much further than that. Here's a quote from Wikipedia about the normal traditional editorial process (please force yourself to read it, I realize it is difficult to read):

"(Once) a decision is taken to publish a work, and the technical legal issues resolved, the author may be asked to improve the quality of the work through rewriting or smaller changes, and the staff will edit the work. Publishers may maintain a house style, and staff will copy edit to ensure that the work matches the style and grammatical requirements of each market. Editors often choose or refine titles and headlines. Editing may also involve structural changes and requests for more information. Some publishers employ fact checkers, particularly regarding non-fiction works."

Notice that there is nothing in this process
about serving the readers.

The readers' needs are not part of the process. It's all about sales and the marketing decisions of the publisher. Textbooks are some of the worst examples of this editorial damage by traditional publishers.
In most cases they will not even talk to you unless you can convince them that you have a large enough following to guarantee enough sales to cover the costs. Once you've passed that hurdle, they will normally insist that you fit your content into their style—even if that style hinders your book.
In Writing In InDesign, I then take a brief look at this world of traditional publishing—that relic of the pre-digital, pre-desktop information age in which we live. In general, these traditionalists are extremely confused by what is taking place in the new digital publishing world.
As an on-demand, self-publisher you have a wonderful opportunity to break out of this trap and truly work on helping your readers.

What you need to have clear in your mind is simple
As an author it is your job
to enable your book to communicate well

In this day and age, readers need all the help they can get to understand what you are trying to say. Excellent typography is one of your most powerful tools to aid in this process.
Word cannot do typography—no word processor can.

You truly need to learn typography!

Dave Bricker on Initial & drop caps

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:08:00 +0000

Dave's got an interesting posting on the subject this morning:

Though initial caps, large caps, drop caps and all of the variations on that thems are not used as commonly as they used to be, you need to have this understood so you can use it when it will really help your readers.

Book Typography Part 4: Readability

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:37:00 +0000

If you ever took one of my classes, you know how much I harped on readability—especially the importance of aperture and other page layout factors concerning readability. Aside from the kindness issue (blessing your readers), this is governed by the realities of modern living.

Everyone has too much to read. If you give them any excuse, they will quit reading your work and go on to the next piece in their long list of things they have to read.

I seen my wife throw novels away because they were too hard to read. People cancel magazine and newspaper subscriptions because of reading issues (even if they are not conscious of what is bothering them). Difficult to read books have become commonplace. One of the attractions of ebooks is the ability to fix some of the worst designs because you can change the type style and size to make it more comfortable to read.

Here’s a little graphic to show you some of the things in the physical design of fonts which influence how easily you can read a font.

Some font design characteristics which might help readability

I’m convinced that aperture is much more important than most people acknowledge. As you can see above in the table, I list seven design characteristics in a font which influence comfortable reading: humanist axis, moderate modulation, slanted crossbars, double story characters, ovals, and a hint of the calligraphic.

I can see now that I was still very ignorant at that time. In the years that have followed I have greatly increased my experience. It’s not important that you understand these seven characteristics at this point. What matters is that you see that Jenson, Brinar, and Caslon (in that order) are the most readable out those six font choices.

What I have discovered I need in a font design are the following attributes

A humanist axis, but not rigid: We need to believe it was produced by a human
A wide open aperture: The white space within the character shapes help us see those shapes better
Moderate modulation: This softens the look increasing the hints of human production
Slightly slanted crossbars, for the e, A, and H especially: This is just me. I think it makes the fonts look a little "happy" (whatever that means)
Double-story a & g: These are much more distinctive letter shapes
Slightly oval bowls: Rigid geometric circles tend to confuse glyph shapes
A slight homage to calligraphic writing: Again we want indications that a person was involved—not a machine
An x-height at about 40% of the point size: This increases the white space a little
Built-in leading at about 5% of the point size

This should give readability and reading comfort that is very good.

More white space considerations

Yet another area I was not familiar with and therefore didn’t take care of in my early years is the whole issue of white space—both within the font design and in the page layout. As mentioned, this is why an open aperture is important, but it goes beyond that. We recognize word shapes by the distinctive outline of the top half of the type. This is why a slightly smaller x-height helps.

But we need to look at the page as a whole. Professional type should have an even color. When your book is seen from far enough away so that the body copy can no longer be read, it must blend into smooth gray shapes. You will come to see that this even type color is imperative. It is what allows the control of the reader’s eye which you need for clear and comfortable communication. You will learn to keep your type as smooth as possible, stepping outside of that only to make important points that the reader really needs and wants to know.

Again, part of this is produced by the design of the fonts you choose. Excellent, consistent letterspacing is one of the major considerations in font choice. InDesign can really help here also. If you have a font that is looking blotchy, you might try to use Optical Kerning. InDesign does a good job of spacing letters optically and evenly. Of course, it is usually better to use and buy fonts which are spaced specifically for text work and which have good metric kerning built in.

Smooth type color needs to become one of your major concerns.

This attribute of excellent typography has a strong influence on readability. That might surprise you. This smoothness is what makes headlines, subheads, and our specialized paragraph styles work. The white space surrounding specialized paragraphs stands out from smooth type color. This white space attracts the eye and leads it to that statement. Without smooth type color, you are forced to make your headers much stronger and the reader often feels like you are shouting at him or her. That is definitely not a comfortable reading experience. Smooth type color needs to become one of your major concerns.

Column width is a major concern

If your column is too wide, readers will have a difficult time finding the beginning of the next line. Basically you are shooting for nine to eleven words per line—this can be stretched with a good font to thirteen words wide. Short line lengths break up too much of the phrasing which makes the reading choppy and comprehension more difficult.

The formula I use for column width is very simple and gives you a good starting point for readability. It’s a practical rule of thumb that’s less complex than most:

40% of the body copy point size in inches
or the point size in centimeters

So, 10 point type works well in a column that is four inches or 10 cm wide. 12-point type may need nearly five inches (40% is 4.8”). This assumes a normal x-height of about 50% of the cap height or a third of point size. If the x-height or width of the letters is radically different than the norm you will need to make adjustments to keep the word count good.

The same is true with leading (or line spacing). We need to give the reader all the help we can to easily find the beginning of the next line of type. Adding a bit of built-in leading in the actual font design helps here. The norm for body text in publishing is 10/12—or ten point type with twelve points of leading.

This is a mere beginning point, though. It all depends on the x-height, glyph width, letterspacing, and line length. Adjust if from there to make it comfortable both on screen and in your hand. You need to set a full page of nothing but body copy and see if it is actually comfortable to read. If you find your mind wandering after a paragraph or two, you've got some issues. If you find yourself thinking about something else before you finish the first paragraph, you have real trouble.
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Next week, I'll probably talk about the readable fonts: traditional oldstyle and humanist sans

ePUB3: no real solutions yet

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:31:00 +0000

Amazon has finally released some Format 8 tools for Kindle Fire. But most of the expanded HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities are ignored for now. Dave Bricker has an excellent article with links to all Amazon has done so far. But it really isn't much.

Liz Castro has written an article stating that as far as she can tell, the new tools for KF8 turn the Mobi files into a snarl as bad as the code Blogger uses for this blog. It's a horrible mess. She finally states that KF8 simply makes a code container for the original ePUB.

There are rumors that Apple, this Thursday, will announce a new tool for K-12 teachers to publish ePUB3 documents to use in the classroom. It would supposedly be built on iWeb. iWeb is an intriguing toolset with limited application so far—because there is so little control of the typography. Apple's tool would have to add a lot to actually be a functional tool for the new group of self-publishers waiting for the tools they need.

The problem, of course, is there are really
no good tools to create ePUBs yet

These tools we need will probably have to come from Adobe, in InDesign, to do us much good. I've written elsewhere in InDesign On-Demand and Writing in InDesign that CS5.5 was a major step up in that ePUBs could now be exported that validate. But they are ePUB2 and InDesign does not give us any way to edit graphic placement by adding floating divs, no way to control borders and backgrounds of paragraphs, or any of the niceties which could be done.

Instead we are still forced to crack the ePUB code and get in there by hand to adjust the HTML and CSS code exported by InDesign. In Dave's article, he has placed a movie of the sneak peak Adobe gave us of Liquid Layout at the MAX 2011 Sneak Preview. It looks like some excellent tools for magazine development are on the way.

But being able to automatically add extra columns and resize magazine layouts to fit different devices does not help us at all with ePUBs.

What do we need for ePUB production?

Anchored object control: we must be able to design the div size and location to hold our graphics and sidebars, we must be able to control an object alignment and margins—on each side individually—so we can do useful, readable text wraps
We need control over lists like this: the CSS controls are good, but we have no access to them without using something as kludgy and manually unzipping the ePUB and editing the HTML and CSS with Dreamweaver or the like.
Background and border controls for paragraphs: This aspect of CSS has no comparable abilities in print production, but it is the only option for what we are now doing with sidebars.

The basic problem is that eBooks in general are all single-column works with all graphics and peripheral information inline. Adobe has wonderful inline controls and powerful anchored object controls, but we have no tools to convert these to something which can be used within the confines of existing tablets and ereaders.

My hope is that the rumors about iPad3, due out in March we hope, will give us the higher resolutions and ePUB3 compatibility we need. Then all we'll need is a good ePUB3 generator. I hope InDesign is ready to handle this soon. But so far it looks like Adobe is still designing upgrades for magazines.

Does book design really matter?

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:59:00 +0000

Of course it does! Joel Friedlander wrote an excellent post on the topic a while back and you should read it.

Does book design really matter?

Yes, it's basic stuff. No, most don't give it much thought.

Books vs. ereaders: a comparison

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:34:00 +0000

Interesting information (though it's a bit hard to read and a couple years old)
++ Click to Enlarge Image ++

Image Source:MastersinEducation.org

Book Typography Part 3 What makes good fonts for a book

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:11:00 +0000

Here's part 3 of my book typography series. This time we'll talk about what we need in a font family.
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Our needs are specific
As book designers, we need fonts that are easy to read, comfortable to read in large quantity, and without strong personality. Our font choices cannot get in the way of the content. If the reader notices the fonts used, that fact takes away from our writing. After all, we are writers. In addition, we need something else—variety for emphasis. What we need, to do what we do, are font families. These are sets of fonts with different styles and weights.
The typical font family
Ah ha! You think you know this one, right? Well, maybe. In the word processor world, especially on PCs, fonts come in regular, italic, bold, and bold italic. But you will discover that this is a modern word processor limitation. It is true that there are many four-font families. However, there are also many 2-font, 3-font, 5-font, 6-font, and 8-font families. There are even quite a few 30+ font families.

The body copy family I am using for the printed version of my Writing in InDesign book is Contenu (one of my most recent designs). It comes in eight fonts, as you can see. But font families can be much larger than this. Adobe Jenson Pro comes with 32 fonts. Helvetica and Helvetica Neue have a total of 86 fonts in the two families. The fonts that are installed with the Creative Suite that are designed for reading and books commonly have six fonts. This is true of Caslon, Garamond, and Minion (though there are 65 fonts in the entire family). But Chapparal has eight and Myriad has ten.
What you will find, is that the system fonts which come with your operating system, and fonts which were installed with Office usually only have four.
As writers and book designers, we need a minimum of three: regular, italic, and bold.
Italic is necessary for periodical names and emphasis. Bold is used for proper names and headers, As you saw at the start of this paragraph I used a bold sans to emphasize an important point. But regardless of which font family you choose it must satisfy several basic requirements of book design.
What do you need in a font family to make it exceptional for designing books?
That is what we need to cover here. Good font families for book design are relatively rare. I’m prejudiced toward my designs (after all I designed them to meet my needs), but you need to be aware of which fonts might work for you and why. These fonts are a careful choice. Let’s start with some basic criteria for book design fonts.

Readability: Body copy set with the fonts you choose must be exceptionally easy and comfortable to read. Reading comfort is imperative to help the reader enjoy your writing.
Extremely smooth type color: Type set with the font you choose must have excellent letterspacing and produce a smooth even texture when the type is set in paragraphs. That smooth, medium gray type color generated by the body copy is the background that you must have to easily contrast the headers—to make heads & subheads pop off the page, as it were.
Legibility: The fonts chosen need to be quickly absorbed when being used for headlines, subheads, captions, pull quotes, and the like. This is not the place for fancy scripts, or wild decorative typefaces. You need to be sure your readers can quickly comprehend your fonts.
Oldstyle figures: It would probably help if I called them what they are: lowercase numbers. 1234567890 They are essential for good type color—where lining figures [1234567890] are shouting just like all caps shout in an email.
Variety of weights: You will really need regular & bold weights, but light & black weights will help immensely.
True small caps: Small caps are capital letters that are the same size as the x-height but the same weight as regular capitals. Most fonts use caps reduced in size for small caps and they look very thin. In the book I show you true small caps. You should also choose a font which has small cap figures.
True, but readable, italics: Obliques [slanted letters] simply look wrong to an educated reader. Many italics are closer to a script with all of the attendant readability issues.

I could add more to this list, but that should be enough for now. In the 1980s and 1990s, fonts which could supply these things were not common. What I saw in the textbooks perpetrated on my students angered me. Most of the textbooks I was given to use were useful for little other than readily available examples of terrible typography. My students all complained how hard they were to read.
So, I made student reading comfort the primary focus of my textbook designs. I started hearing student comments like: “I started reading my assignment for the first week and read five chapters before I noticed how far I had read.” Actually, I’ve only heard that particular comment once—but it was (and is) really gratifying… It’s one of my motivations to write.

Next week we'll probably talk about readability
Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

Some type that grabbed my eye...

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:31:00 +0000

I never do this, but this one grabbed me on Christmas Eve. I think it's gorgeous!

It's just the back off an Old Dutch Potato Chip Box

Book typography: Part 2: Picking fonts

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:09:00 +0000

I decided that I needed to follow up on my post from yesterday and this morning. I want to give good information that will help you as you come to grips with the fact that you need to get control of your typography to do a professional book. ON the other hand, I want to make it clear that you can do this. It does not take a college degree in design. all you really need to do is learn to pay attention to type. Let's briefly begin to look at the fonts you use.

Picking fonts

Now that we have briefly discussed what typography is, it is time to look at type styles and the actual design of the fonts you use. In an attempt to get a handle on the different styles, many different classification systems have arisen. Most of these are of mere historical interest though, in truth, many of you will find these distinctions increasingly important as you grow further as a digital publisher.

One of the things you will discover early on is that traditional typographers really ought to get a life. I can say that because I are one. Even from the inside, I find most typographic wranglings to be far beyond nitpicking and well into anal and/or compulsive. Some of the lists and forums I have been on spend months wrangling over insignificant details that will never be noticed by the reader.

My goal in Writing In InDesign is to give you a quick handle on what you have available in our tools of choice: software and hardware. Plus, I want you to end up with the beginnings of a procedure to pick fonts on purpose to help with communication. Font choice is one of the prime determinants of your personal publishing style.

In the broad spectrum of available fonts, there are four general classifications: serif, sans serif, handwriting, and decorative. It would probably be acceptable to split handwriting into script and text; but these four have served well over the years. I will only be covering fonts that work well for book design.

So, for our purposes in book design, there are two classifications: serif and sans-serif

Font design books will give you many more classes. For example, they’ll break serif into three to nine subcategories; the same with sans serif. These breakdowns are mainly historical. The functional difference between fonts designed for book design are minimal. We’ll leave the more complete categorizing to those who care (you can see a synopsis with a reader’s focus in my Practical Font Design books).

Historical appropriateness is usually only important to historians: If it makes you happy, do it. However, readers are looking for comfort and ease while reading. Because design is often best when spontaneous rather than structured, this book avoids the legalistic approach as much as possible while still trying to make your choices clear. After all, they are your choices.

Bringing it into perspective

Out of the tens of thousands of typefaces mentioned earlier, only 1,000 or so are used all the time by many people. Out of those, there are a couple hundred or so fonts used by book designers. Plus, there are probably thousands of multiple-derivative, differently named copies of these popular fonts. So it isn’t as scary as it sounds — quite.

First, we must define a serif.

A serif is a flare, bump, line, or foot added to the beginning or end of a stroke in a letter. Originally, they were the finishing touches added to the end of strokes produced by pens in the hands of scribes. They have become very stylized. There are hundreds of different serif stylings, but do you know their importance?

They seem totally insignificant, but they certainly are not. They strongly influence how we react to type. In fact, on a subconscious level, serifs can be one of the most powerful influences on the reader’s reaction to your writing.

Reading has many habitual associations. The type read during or about an occasion takes on the flavor of those events. Many of these typographic reactions are very personal. For example, you may find that your favorite script font happens to be the font on the menu the night you became engaged. Your favorite serif probably comes from that book you read as a teenager which changed your life. Your favorite sans serif probably comes from marketing pieces from a great, well-loved product you bought.

“Reading has many habitual associations.”

In our homogeneous, franchised, marketing society, most of us see the same things every day. The result of all of this is that virtually every person in the United States has similar reactions to various type styles. However, there are large differences between the habitual viewers of CBS and Disney when compared to the habitual viewers of Hallmark and the History Channel. The fonts used to promote Ford pickups are very different from those used for Lexus and Cadillac touring sedans.

The dominance of serif

Almost every good book you have ever read was set in serif type. Virtually every textbook was also. Writing In InDesign is set in a font I designed called Contenu Book. Virtually all body copy before the 1950s was serif. Because of these things, serif typefaces are perceived as warm, friendly, nostalgic, and easy to read. Some of the more modern serif fonts have that edge that was in style in the 1990s, but most are beautiful, quiet, and comfortable. Designers began to use these connections consciously during the 1950s and 1960s. The marketing research boom in the 1970s simply reinforced this trend.

As a result, serif faces are used almost exclusively in ads promoting quality, stability, good value, integrity, and warmth. They are also used to reinforce family values, patriotism, and the emotional content of character traits considered positive by our culture. They are the main choice for the body copy of books—especially fiction.

Sans serif is relatively new

Even though sans serif faces (without a serif) have been around since at least the early nineteenth century, they were never popular until the 1950s. Up until the 1950s, sans serif faces were used extensively only by groups like the modernist, Bauhaus movement in Germany during the 1930s, where geometric type was promoted as modern. Futura, Bauhaus, and Kabel are classic examples of this style. Most people saw them as plain and unadorned or aggressively modern.

There was quite a bit of large extra-bold sans serif used in the wood typefaces cut for the Victorian explosion of advertising. But those connotations again had little to do with readable copy. Hucksters shouting at us like they did in those broadsides with that huge type usually do not bring pleasant memories except perhaps nostalgia.

In the 1950s, Helvetica became extremely popular. It was designed by Max Miedinger (I've seen dates of 1951, 1953, 1957 Linotype claims the later) and was quickly accepted as a new standard type style by many in the business, scientific, and advertising communities. Sans serif faces, in general, became de rigeur for scientific publishing.

Most of the reading associations of sans serif type are anything but warm and friendly. The only exception would be within the youth cultures like extreme jocks who, in cultivating rebellion and adrenaline rushes, have made sans serif their “normal” type classification. But recently, humanist sans serif faces have become quite popular. Books are rarely in sans serif—except non-fiction.

These usage normals were almost unanimous until very recently as desktop publishing brought in designers with no design education. So the reactions are predictable enough to be very useful. Sans serif faces are clean and modern. Serif faces, in general, are more elegant and beautiful. As mentioned, these distinctions are being greatly muddied by new trends toward very readable sans serif fonts designed for body copy. For my headers and sidebar copy, the sans serif fonts I am using are Buddy—a companion sans I designed to go with Contenu.

The Times/Helvetica problem

One of the more interesting phenomena of digital publishing is the use of Times and Helvetica. Although these are fairly well-designed typefaces, their excessive usage resulting from their specification as the default fonts in so many nonprofessional applications and operating systems has completely changed their perception in the mind of the typical reader. Most professional typographers avoid these two fonts like the plague. As a result, the only place people see them is in output by people who are untrained in publishing and simply use the software defaults — think schools, bureaucracies, the IRS, collection agencies, and the like. Because of this uncaring usage, Times, Times New Roman, Helvetica, and Arial have been virtually ruined for serious use by designers. They bring up too many bad associations.

Typically, you should pick a serif for body copy and
a sans serif for heads and subheads.

However, this is simply the norm. You need to pick font combinations which appeal to your readers of your book within the limited niche of that book. As mentioned earlier, these choices are fairly limited. I will give you some choices as we go. You will definitely find your own as you develop as a publisher. Time spent at MyFonts.com will be great fun for you and a wonderful help to your font style education!
_____________________________
There! Now I feel better. Let me know if these postings are helpful. Argue if you disagree.

Book Typography: Part One

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:19:00 +0000

As I said yesterday, today I want to start a new weekly series on designing books—specifically the typography necessary to create a good book. It will be based on pieces from my book on the subject: Writing in InDesign. I will be assuming the use of InDesign (currently InDesign CS5.5).

After mentioning that font design is only a small portion of typography — especially as far as book design is concerned, I want to go on today to talk about the fonts and typography used in book design & why they are used. As we get started, remember this basic truth:
Word cannot do typography!

This is not for purists

My goal is a practical introduction to people who have decided they need the power of InDesign to get their books published well. So, not only is it limited coverage of the topic, it is tightly focused on helping beginners get started with type in book design.

Let’s begin with the language of type

To begin with, most typographic terminology comes from the dominant technology used in printing from 1460 to 1970—now called letterpress. This is changing somewhat, but most of the present terms will remain. Before you can set type, you must be able to speak the language and understand the concepts.

You can tell how severe this is as we begin by learning a new measurement system. Type is not measured in inches or millimeters. It is measured in points. This is not going to change for many reasons. So, let’s start with a brief discussion of points .

Today all type is sized in points.

Points were an excellent sizing tool, becoming dominant in the 19th century. At approximately 72 points per inch, the smaller sizes of body copy could be clearly differentiated. Type that is one point larger or smaller is almost the smallest increment of size that can be distinguished with the naked eye. We can see the differences between 9 and 10-point, 12 and 13-point. Normally, we cannot see the difference between 11 and 11.5-point type.

Picas (12 pts per pica) and points became the standard. Today all type is sized in points. The old distinctions between European and American points have disappeared, but all use points (and will for the foreseeable future).

The computer has helped

One of the developments in type sizing that eased things a bit was brought about by Apple’s Macintosh. When Apple came out with the Mac and its GUI, they set the screen resolution at 72 pixels per inch. In the years since 1984, the 72-point-per-inch standard has become universal on desktop computers. This is true even though high-resolution monitors make this measurement meaningless.

The nice thing, for us Americans, is that this is exactly 72 points per inch. At this time the pica [6 picas per inch] is disappearing. In fact, we can safely say it is gone in most cases. But points may never go away. Some software (including InDesign) still make points their default measurement, but few use it any more except illustrators. One of the first things you do when you install InDesign is fix your preferences. The main preference to change is switching from Picas and Points to whichever measurement system you are really going to use: inches, pixels, or millimeters. As far as I know, the only industry still using picas is newspapers, and they only use it for column widths. So, if your New Document dialog says that your letter size page is 51p0 (51 picas and zero points) by 66p0, you’ll know what you need to fix.

Letterpress terminology

As you would suspect, much of our type terminology comes from letterpress printing. After all, this printing technology was dominant until a few decades ago. I could give you dozens of letterpress terms that would be of historical interest only. However, it is enough that you recognize the source of many of the terms we use.

A typical example is leading (pronounced like the metal). It would be better (or at least more accurate) to change the term to line spacing. For a number of reasons, that probably won’t happen. Leading came from the letterpress practice of increasing the space between lines of type by adding strips of lead between the rows. These strips came in standard thicknesses: 1/2-point, 1-point, and so on. In letterpress usage, you could only increase leading and could never have line spacing that was less than the type size. That is no longer true with digital type, but the term remains.

Let’s remind ourselves how letterpress type was sized and assembled. Just getting a visual in your mind will straighten out a lot of this. The major fact to remember is that letterpress type is cast metal. The letters are cut into dies and cast into blocks of metal. They all have to be the same height, thickness, hardness, and so on. You have to be able to fit them together into blocks that can be locked into place in the chase (the holding frame for the type). If any letter is a lower height, it won’t ink up as you roll the brayer across the surface of the type. If it stands too tall, it will be smashed by the printing pressures of the steel rollers. Much of our present type usage comes from factors that were determined by the physical nature of letterpress.

A slug of type was always .918 inches high and left enough room vertically on the top surface for all the characters in a font of type. This was because all type had to fit into evenly sized rectangles to line up properly on the composing stick. Often, these terms no longer mean the same things. A slug is now what we call the black bar highlighted when you select type [which indicates the leading].

Face, for example, used to mean the actual printing surface of the letter. Now, in common usage, face often means a type style such as Helvetica or Times—although in that case the word typeface is often used. As is lamented by grammarians, American English is a living language under constant change.

The same is true of the word counter. A counter was the recessed area around the letter above which the face of the character protruded. Now it is usually used (if at all) as a term for the open areas inside a P or e or g or even an s, for example. I will give you a diagram in a little bit that covers some of the old terms which remain relevant.

Many of you are probably grumbling to yourselves at this point: You say in your twenty-first-century superiority, “Who cares?” Actually, you care or you will care. Most of you will find that the longer you design documents, especially books, the more you will fall in love with type. Type will become a very important graphic tool for most of you. This importance will increase throughout your career.
____________________________
That's enough for today. I'll share more next week. Let me know what you want covered. And certainly tell us if you disagree with post and why.

Font design is a very small portion of typography

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:05:00 +0000

We often start with font design
But this brings us to the first major confusion in typography. Many people believe that typography is font choice. They spend a huge amount of time on which fonts to choose, how fonts developed historically, and the reader reactions to these fonts.
This indeed is a good portion of typography, but this pursuit misses the entire point. The point of typography is to use words to communicate. Font choices can help—but this is really a small portion of what we need to be concerned with as typographers and book designers.

Fonts are not typography —
fonts are used to create typography.

I am not minimizing the importance of choosing fonts which are easy to read and comfortable for your target audience. But we mustn’t confuse the tools and materials with the techniques for using those tools. In addition, we cannot focus on these two areas without maintaining the end product as our primary goal.

For example, let's consider woodworking for furniture.

The type and species of wood chosen (as well as the fabric and hardware)
The saws, chisels, planes, and power tools used
The smoothing, fitting, and joinery skills employed
And the finishing techniques of shaping, adjusting, polishing, and coating
Are all subservient to the beauty & comfort of the chair being built.

In my world, I'm focused on typography for books.

The fonts chosen (as well as the words and images)
The drawing, image manipulation, and layout tools used
The paragraphs, columns, pages, graphics, and formatting skills employed
And the final adjustments necessary to make the type beautiful and polished
Are all subservient to the beauty and comfort experienced reading the book.

_________________________

Tomorrow morning, it is my intention to begin a new serialized presentation of what it takes to create a book to be published on-demand. I choose my own fonts designed for the purpose, using InDesign, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver, with page layout skills developed over nearly four decades, and widely varying printing & publishing experience of over three decades.

My hope is that you will enjoy the ride.

See you tomorrow...

A simple use for a nested style

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:36:00 +0000

I hesitate to mention this because it seems so simple. But, it seems good to share it with those of you who might not know about these things.
Nested styles apply character styles automatically within a paragraph
Now I know you knew that. I figured out this new use the other day. As some of you may know, I write a lot of Bible studies. I am constantly needing to have a special style for Scripture quotes. At the end of every quote I need to list the version used. I always want it smaller and in caps. What I came up with was really simple.

I made a new Character Style called Version
It is all small caps (in my OpenType fonts the parens, and brackets have small cap versions).
Then I made a Nested Style in my Scripture style
I set up the nested styles like this: [None] until the first en space; then Version until the End Nested Style character. Actually, the nested style, Version, will be active until the end of the paragraph.
When I hit the Return at the end of the paragraph, I automatically go to Body Copy so I can keep writing the Bible study. It works really slick. I'm adding a capture, but it is hard to read. If you need something better, send me a comment and I'll do something else.

Adding the nested styles took only a minute or so (including writing the new character style)

Merry Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 06:57:00 +0000

I'm sorry I've left you in the lurch. I've been rethinking my Websites and how I use my blogs. This should give you better content as we go. I'm expecting 2012 to be an excellent year!

I pray it is for you also.

Dave Bricker did a nice piece on small caps today

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:48:00 +0000

Dave has been putting up some good simple, basic design pages lately. I thought I'd mention the latest. Today's article is on small caps: how and why to use them. It's good and a good review for those of us who think we know what we're doing.

The problem, of course, is to get all these design necessities available in the ebook world as well. That still looks like it is a ways in the future (maybe even a decade or so), but probably within a year or two.

Niche marketing for the budget conscious

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:13:00 +0000

One of the interesting things about the new publishing paradigm is the ability to create, publish, and distribute your work simply to see if there is a niche out there that works for you and your life. It does take a while to develop a niche (and even to determine what your niche or niches might be). But it is an important work for your career. Joel Friedlander wrote a good article on niche publishing a while back. I thought I'd share this link to jump start your brain in this regard.

Hackberry Font Foundry's Website is radically revised

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:26:00 +0000

All the fonts are grouped by serif, sans serif, script, decorative, and packages. I tried playing with @fontface a little. The purchasing routine should be a lot easier.

The prices are lower on the Website
In fact, they are lower than anywhere else (unless I have a special sale on at Myfonts).

All the fonts at my site will be sent to you attached to an email once I receive your payment email form PayPal. So, it is a little slower. If you want the immediate gratification of a download, click on the font image to go to the page on MyFonts.

Let me know about broken links, missing images, and the like. I think I got them all, but you know how that goes.

Practical Font Design for Fontographer 5.1 at FontLab

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:18:00 +0000

The book is now available on the FontLab site

A new review

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:32:00 +0000

Richard Fink of the ReadableWeb (a blog mainly about Web fonts and hinting), posted a really nice review of Practical Font Design Third Edition today. It blew me away.

Richard's review of Practical Font Design Third Edition

Renaming and updating the blog...

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:43:00 +0000

As I have mentioned (and talked about quite a bit on my main blog, The Skilled Workman), I have been gradually separating my professional work as a font designer, typographer, and on-demand publisher writing in InDesign from my real focus which is helping the Kingdom of God grow in Mankato, Minnesota—my hometown.

Today I have made it more or less official. I changed the look and blog header in The Skilled Workman earlier today. Now I have done the same here. In the process I felt it necessary to change the name of the blog as well. It is now called:

Font Design & Typography On-Demand

I haven't changed nor has the content of the blog. But it does align better with the realities of my new life as a writer, publisher, and teacher.

All my Lulu Editions 25% off

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:14:00 +0000

25% OFF! Coupon Code: BUYMYBOOK305
Coupon expires December 14, 2011 $50 Max Savings
My Lulu offerings have the best print quality, PDF availability, and ePUBs. Click on any of the links below, or buy any of my other books on Lulu.

Practical Font Design Third Edition
PDF Download: $9.99
ePUB (3rd edition): $7.99
Premium paperback: $15.96 (on sale, Lulu) $19.95 retail

Fontographer: Practical Font Design for Graphic Designers

Spiral-Bound Workbook $19.95
6×9 Paperback $19.95
PDF of the printed book $9.95
ePUB version $9.95

1st Fontographer book in 15 years, you'll like 5.1

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:06:00 +0000

Why do you want to use Fontographer?

For the fun of it!

When I received the opportunity to go back to my roots, and see what the new Fontographer was like, I was a little concerned. I had just spent nine years painfully teaching myself to letterspace by hand, to write OpenType features, and to become accustomed to the tool set of FontLab. Don't get me wrong, FontLab is a great program and I am grateful for what I have learned. There are still a few features of FontLab that, as a professional font designer, I cannot do without. But I was taken by surprise.

Fontographer brought the fun back!

It is still the same marvelous program with which I first learned to design fonts. The drawing interface is still clean, clear, and elegant. It still works the way I have learned to work over the past two decades of digital graphic design. I found pleasure in drawing again. Fontographer is a wonderful drawing experience. It has been a real joy to experience that again. After nearly a decade in FontLab, font design is fun again.

Spiral-Bound Workbook $19.95
6x9 Paperback $19.95
Kindle Version $9.95
Amazon Paperback $19.95
PDF of the printed book $9.95
ePUB version $9.95
Nook version $9.95

To quote from the book:

"Fontographer is an application which appeals to experienced graphics designers with a background in PostScript illustration—especially those with FreeHand experience from version 7 and earlier. The majority of designers working in the mid-1990s had a copy of Fontographer. It came free with the FreeHand Graphics Studio first released in 1995—and everyone probably used it [at least a little]. Fontographer had [and still has] a unique and intuitive set of drawing tools that enable amateurs of that era to enter the world of font design. I'm talking amateurs in the sense that John Baskerville considered himself an amateur—as I also consider myself, though I am certainly not in Baskerville's league. For me, font design is a beloved sideline with which I indulge myself. It's become a treasured tool I use in my current trade—book writing, designing, and production."

Dave Bricker: An online resource for beginners

noreply@blogger.com (David Bergsland) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:53:00 +0000

On his "one hour guide to self publishing" blog Dave Bricker has been offering some basics. It's a good resource for your newer clients in the self-pubishing field.

#1 Margins & Leading Some basic layout concepts well presented.
#2 Margins, indents, & spacing
#3 Dealing with numbers This is pretty good. He just misses small cap figures, but they are still rare.

This is real basic stuff, but many of your clients do not have a clue so it's a resource. I don't necessarily agree with many of the statements. But, I do see that they represent to "normal" party line from design schools. Most of these things are also covered in my InDesign books like Writing in InDesign. Nigel French also has a very good book on InDesign typography called InDesign Type.