Tag Archives: Typography

Margins are more important than many think: Make the margins bigger

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Make the margins bigger | I love typography, the typography and fonts blog. The I Love Typography blog is often over the top. Even as a typographer who has focused his career on type—both font design and page layout (the two parts of typography)— this blog is always fun, often beautiful, but commonly irrelevant to my daily work. On the other hand, the item discussed in the posting this morning is critical to excellence in typography. Margins … Continue reading →

Writing in InDesign is the only sensible choice for writers in the new paradigm of on-demand self-publishing

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The greatly expanded and rewritten Writing In InDesign Second Edition has been released Buy it Now! Versions available so far Spiral-bound premium workbook $19.99 7×10 perfect-bound paperback $17.99 Kindle (with embedded fonts for Fire) $7.99 (Available in the Kindle Lending Library) What started as a relatively small update turned into a large scale revision when I began adapting my popular Writing In InDesign book to the responses and suggestions I received. I have been pleasantly surprised at all the people … Continue reading →

Using styles enables global control of your book’s typography

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Today I’m mentioning the basic structure of typography. There is one concept which enables typography as we know it in modern book publishing. This is the concept of styles. These styles are contained in styles panels. InDesign has five of them: paragraph, character, object, table, and cell. Styles are also available in word processors—even though they are not nearly so powerful there. What is a style? A style is a collection of specialized typographic defaults that can … Continue reading →

Fonts are not typography, fonts are used to create typography

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Before we can get into this, though, we have to start with terminology. Typography requires a new language. Much of this is based on historical printing usage and the font design process. Without at least a few of these terms you will be lost. This has been complicated now that all of the digital terms have been added to the mix. So, we really need to start with a little of font design. Not only the different … Continue reading →

Typography: Type has nothing to do with typing

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It is obvious that even the terminology is different. However, we have hardly begun. Much more significant than the new language are the actual mechanics of typesetting. The rules have changed! In fact, one of the difficulties in teaching publishing classes today involves a paradox. Writing classes are secretarial. Classes all teach writing using Word: but Word cannot produce professional typography or the formatting services required by the reader. Writing groups assume Word: if you give them … Continue reading →

A typographic opus from Smashing…

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Alexandar Charchar put together a major statement on modern typography yesterday—written by Espen Brunborg called Respect Thy Typography. You need to read it. Espen starts out with a strong statement of hope for me: Good typography shouldn’t have to rely on ornamental crutches to stand tall. Yet despite all the tools and knowledge available to us, we readily embrace a flourishing, decorative typography, with cheap tricks used in a misguided attempt to make it “pop”. This ancient art may rapidly … Continue reading →

Typography for ministry: The reality of picking fonts

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The basic parts of type Again, we need some more basic language definitions. Without it, I can not help you in your ministry. 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 an introduction to typography in publishing found in Appendices A & B in … Continue reading →

Self-publishers need excellent typography

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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 _________________________________________ Writing within InDesign Here I am again recommending a road less traveled by—not unusual in my life and work. … Continue reading →

Readability: the most important aspect of typography?

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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 … Continue reading →

Updates to the blog…

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In my ongoing effort to separate my publishing/design career from my “real” life as a prophet/teacher in the Kingdom of God, I have updated the Skilled Workman to to bring it more inline with my current usage. The Skilled Workman is the blog of Hannaniah Fellowship For my professional work in typography, font design, and on-demand publishing using InDesign you should go to: Font Design & Typography All I am doing is making official the split which … Continue reading →