(Glossary) Excerpts from the Elements of Typographic Style
My goal with this publication is to open your mind about the way that type is viewed and change the way you think about it. Enjoy and experiment with type
“The minimal requirement in visual design is … the organization of all the parts into a unified whole. All the parts, no matter how disparate, must be reconciled so they support each other.”
A page, like a building or a room, can be of any size and proportion, but some are distinctly more pleasing than others, and some have quite specific connotations. A brochure that unfolds and refolds in the hand is intrinsically different from a formal letter that lies motionless and flat, or a handwritten note that folds into quarters and comes in an envelope of a different shape and size. All of these are different again from a book, in which the pages flow sequentially in pairs.
Much typography is based, for the sake of convenience, on standard industrial paper sizes, from 35 x 45 inch press sheets to 31/2 x 2 inch conventional business cards. Some formats, such as the booklets that accompany compact discs, are condemned to especially rigid restrictions of size. But many typographic projects begin with the opportunity and necessity of selecting the dimensions of the page.
There is rarely a free choice. A page size of 12 x 19 inches, for example, is likely to be both inconvenient and expensive because it is just in excess of 11 x 17, which is a standard industrial unit. And a brochure that is 5 x 9 inches, no matter how handsome, might be unacceptable because it is too wide to fit into a standard business envelope (4x9Yi). But when the realm of practicality has been established, and it is known that the page must fall within certain limits, how is one to choose? By taking whatever is easiest, or biggest, or whatever is the most convenient standard size? By trusting to blind instinct?
Topography
1) On the printed page words are seen not heard.
2) Ideas are communicated through conventional words.
3) The concept is designed by means of letters.
4) Economy of expression is visual not phonetic.
5) The continuity of page sequence the bioscopic book.
6) The printed page transcends space and time.
Certain proportions keep
recurring in their work because they please the eye and the mind,
just as certain sizes keep recurring because they are comfortable
to the hand.
Many of these proportions are inherent in simple geometric figures - equilateral triangle, square, regular pentagon, hexagon and octagon. And these proportions not only seem to please human beings in many different centuries and countries, they are also prominent in nature far beyond the human realm. They occur in the structures of molecules, mineral crystals, soap bubbles, flowers, as well as books and temples, manuscripts and mosques.
2) Ideas are communicated through conventional words.
3) The concept is designed by means of letters.
4) Economy of expression is visual not phonetic.
5) The continuity of page sequence the bioscopic book.
6) The printed page transcends space and time.
Scribes and typographers, like architects, have been shaping visual spaces for thousands of years.
Many of these proportions are inherent in simple geometric figures - equilateral triangle, square, regular pentagon, hexagon and octagon. And these proportions not only seem to please human beings in many different centuries and countries, they are also prominent in nature far beyond the human realm. They occur in the structures of molecules, mineral crystals, soap bubbles, flowers, as well as books and temples, manuscripts and mosques.
