Tag Archives: font

What we need in a font family for books

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As typographers and book designers, we need a minimum three-font family—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 through the colon to emphasize an important point. In my books I use my Bold Sans Serif. But regardless of which font family you choose it must satisfy several basic requirements of book design. … Continue reading →

The Book Designer’s Book Typography and Fonts package

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Make your book professional with the Contenu/Buddy production group Self Publisher Book Typography & 16 Fonts Only $49.99 or 12 Radiqx house fonts for book design Only $29.99 For self publishers the conversion from Word to InDesign is a huge leap. The goal is a professional look to their book designs, but immediately the problems of typography raise their head. In Word that is not so much of an issue because the typography controls in Word are … Continue reading →

Typography does not start with font design

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This is the first major confusion in typography. Many believe that typography is font choices. 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 … Continue reading →

Adobe Digital Editions 2.0 is not bad

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As I often do, I found out this morning that I have been recommending false information. I’ve alway hated Adobe Digital Editions, Adobe’s free ebook reader. It trashed the type and the images. I always recommended deleting it and not allowing it on your computer. This morning I discover that the 2.0 version is a great improvement. Of course, it’s been out since Sept 2012 & I never noticed I’m surprised that I haven’t heard of it. Has … Continue reading →

Using embedded fonts in ePUBs for free: DIY Publishing wins!

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I just tried something and was surprised by the result. After learning this morning that I don’t actually buy books from Kindle, but lease them, I wanted to see what my options are if I actually buy an ePUB. More than that, as a font designer, I wanted to try an ePUB with embedded fonts. So, I simply exported an ePUB with embedded font from my KF8 version of the book and emailed it to myself. Then … Continue reading →

Bodoni: Modern typestyle, a revolutionary cold fish

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Revolutionary styles (to locate them by time) Modern: Bodoni Book These are type styles of the late 1700s and early 1800s, although their influence remains. To call them Modern, as most of the schools do, is silly. They are 200 years old. To call them Romantic (as Bringhurst does) is equally strange for they are cold fish. They are the natural expression of the radical, revolutionary intellectualism of the period. They are built with hard, tightly structured … Continue reading →

Dutch Old Style: Janson

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By the 1600s, French oppression had caused the center of typography to shift to Antwerp primarily through Plantin who was based there. This style commercialized the French designs that were so heavily promoted by Plantin. The Dutch influence made the French work more printable, taking out some of the subtleties of Garamond and Granjon. Their main influence was in England where there was no real typefounding industry until Caslon in the 1700s. These styles were a abandonment … Continue reading →

Geralde: Garamond, the classic serif font

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Garalde: Garamond 3 This group is named in homage to Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius. These original serif fonts are exemplified by the work of Claude Garamond in Paris in the early to mid-1500s. Robert Slimbach released a new interpretation of Claude Garamond’s and Robert Granjon’s styles called Adobe Garamond Pro—now ramped up to Premier after redoing the OpenType version. Garamond was the first major type designer. He was not a printer or calligrapher, he was a freelance punchcutter. Along with … Continue reading →

Aldine: the intellectuals begin their assault on font design

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Aldine: Bembo These fonts are also from Northern Italy. Bembo is a revival of the work of another printer, Aldus Manutius in the 1500s. Manutius was a major influence on type design as we know it. This continued the trend toward a more intellectual development of type away from its calligraphic roots. Aldine characteristics Narrower caps: But not by much Larger x-height: This tends to make these fonts look a bit more contemporary to our eyes. Ascenders … Continue reading →

Font classifications: the lowest common denominators

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A practical list The four basic classifications of all type are: Of course, most of the so-called Decorative fonts are serif or sans. As you can see above, Abiquiu Fiesta is basically a sans serif. Miscellaneous would be a better term. We’ll start with the majority: serif typefaces. Way more than half of all font designs were serif fonts. This overwhelming majority has been diluted a bit by the outpouring of fancy and widely varied scripts in recent … Continue reading →