Seattle InDesign User Group Home Meeting Summary Archive

Meeting Summary

Just Your Type
Tue, May 12th, 2009 at 6:30 PM
Adobe University
Event Details

First and foremost, a heartfelt thank you goes out to Steve Laskevitch for over four years as the Seattle InDesign User Group Chapter Representative. This group wouldn't be the resource it has become without his dedicated leadership. Thank you, Steve!

May's featured guest speaker:
Thomas Phinney, Senior Product Manager for Font Solutions/Extensis

A Rant on Legibility

• Type is often hard to read—consider the conditions where people will be reading the text
• Text vs. Background contrast—don't assume reading conditions will be the same as where you are designing
• For better legibility at low-res or small sizes, choose fonts with:
  • generous x-height
  • low contrast (thicks vs. thin)
  • avoid condensed shapes
  • worth using a 'better' font at smaller size?

How Fonts Are Made

• Concept/design brief
  
• Refinement
  
• Outlines
  
• Character Set
  
• OpenType features
  
• Spacing
  
• Kerning
  
• Productization

Tips & Tricks

• A thorough resource available on the Extensis website: Font Management in Mac OS X; Best Practices Guide
• Character Styles: when 'bolded' or 'italicized' in Word, adds a style to font. In InDesign, key commands for bold or italic actually switch to actual bold or italic font. One option is to create character styles to 'apply' bold.

Why You Might Need Font Management

• Font version conflicts
• Slow-loading applications
• Font menus scroll forever
• Help finding the 'right' font
• ID and auto-activate missing document fonts
• Better previews and sample sheets
• Detect (and possibly repair) 'bad' fonts in advance
• Server-based solutions for shared sets, metadata, licensing compliance

History of Type

• Blackletter; literacy was not widespread- reading was very rare, specialized, letter forms very ornate
• Uncial
• Gutenberg; tried to print books that looked like handmade books
• Whiteletter; Venetian Old Style medium, diagonal contrast, sturdy serifs
• First 'italics' appeared in 1501, published by Aldus. Whole book in italic
• Standalone Italic
• Dutch-English Old Style; stress becoming more vertical, serifs becoming sharper
• Transitional; 1750s
• Modern; late 1700/1800. thick/thin contrast increased, strict vertical stress
• WoodType; a need for big print, big advertising. Metal type weighed too much, so wood type evolved
• Grotesques; san serif, mid 19th century
• Art Nouveau; 1880-1890s
• Neo-grotesques
• Geometric Sans; 1920s
• Art Deco; 1930s
• Humanist Sans
• Slab Serif

Open Type

• Single-file, cross-platform fonts
• Unicode encoding
• Up to 64K glyphs per font; alternate glyphs accessed via formatting
• Basic OpenType Typography: ligatures (one or more characters tied together as a single glyph); standard, discretionary and historical
• Small Caps; faux (scaled down caps) vs. real (strokes appropriately weighted)
• Advanced OpenType Typography: stylistic sets, swashes + ligatures, stylistic sets + ordinals, contextual ligature substitution

Next Meeting

July's topic: Interactivity

Do you have a particular topic you'd like for us to cover, or a project you'd be willing to present?

If you are willing to volunteer for a presentation or to check people in, please email us at seattle@indesignusergroup.com



Heather Ueckert & kEvin Friberg
Chapter Representatives
Seattle InDesign User Group
seattle@indesignusergroup.com