Basic Typography for Retail Sector
The course aims at familiarizing the learners with fundamentals of typography and how is it relevant to the students of Design for Retail Experience (DRE) through creative experimentation.
The course will have the following topics:
• Typefaces and Fonts
• Basic terminology and Concepts in Typography
• Typeface Anatomy
• Letter Forms
• Words and Paragraphs
• Legibility and Readability
• Grids and Fonts
• Scale
• Type as Image
• Type and Colours
• Type use in Words and Paragraphs
During the course the students are expected to do few assignments to realize the conceptual learning from the course in a more practical manner.
Typeface and Fonts:
Few important points to remember:
Typeface:
A Typeface is a collection of characters, letters, numerals, symbols, and punctuation, which have the same distinct design.
Font:
A Font is the physical means used to create a typeface, whether it be a typewriter, a stencil, letterpress blocks or a piece of postscript code, or a computer code.
Type family:
A Type family is all the variations of a particular typeface or font that includes all the different weights, widths, and italics as can be seen opposite. Examples of families include Universe, Times Roman, and Garamond.
Hierarchy:
Hierarchy is a logical and visual way to express the relative importance of different text elements by providing a visual guide to their organization. A text hierarchy helps to make the layout unambiguous, clear and easier to understand.
Colour:
Colour works with typography in many ways to perform a number of roles that both help impart information and contribute to the overall effect of a design. Colour can be used to provide a logical, visual hierarchy for text, in addition to providing definition, contrast and added meaning to text elements.
Alignment:
Alignment refers to the position of type within a text block, in both the vertical and horizontal planes. The existence of extended type families means that it is easy for a designer to use several different type sizes coherently within a design. Care must be taken that the tracking (letter spacing) and leading may need to be adjusted to compensate for any increase or decrease in type size.
Grids and Fonts:
Grids can be used as a basis for creating typography, with the letterforms built around the structure of a grid rather than being penned by hand or based on carved letterforms like traditional typographic forms.
Legibility:
Legibility refers to the ability to distinguish new letterform from another through the physical characteristics inherent in a particular typeface.
Readability:
Readability refers to properties of a piece of type or design that affect the ability to make it understood.
Type:
Type forms part of a larger visual and informative scheme. In design work typography is used in combination with images, diagrams, photography, and other graphic elements. Type can be used to add a great deal of texture to a design.
Type is also used as a graphic device that speaks more through its visual representation than meanings of the constituent letters. Logos are a common example of this as the styling of the letters is used to create a visual statement about a company or organization.
Typography:
Typography is an important communication and design element. Technological development makes it easier to develop new typefaces. Type plays an important role in communication process as much through the shapes and styling of letterforms as the actual words that they form. Types can be used creatively to enhance communication and produce visual impact, further to identifying key norms to guide type usage.
