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Five minute guide to better typography

pierrickcalvez.com

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Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#41

Post by goldenkey »

jtolmar wrote: post #36
twhb wrote: post #34

It's a quest of mine to understand this subject mathematically. I'm convinced that typography is an exact science, it's just easier to use intuition than find the formulae that govern it. Like catching a baseball versus understanding gravity and drag. For example, when aligning that header, they're moving the leftmost pixels into alignment with the body's leftmost pixels. The correct state is well-defined, it's just…

I agree that typography could be an exact science, but I think starting with mathematics would be the wrong choice. Rather, it would be better to devise perceptual experiments and back fit a mathematical model to the results. The excellent LAB color space was created this way. Scientists used experiments - for example the MacAdam ellipse to measure what colors are distinguishable - then backfit a model to that. It in…

I agree with you. But I'd like to point out that the color specifications and audio response ranges we have are pretty much an exact science despite being informed by human experiment. Human experiment is not at all exclusionary to a topic of study being an exact science; it just makes the truth harder to discern. We are still coming up with new color spaces that claim to match the human range better, after decades of research.

Regarding typography however, I argue that there are a multitude of concerns such as readability, aesthetic, and sustainence of focus. People will have different preferences and rankings for which concerns should be most optimized. Thus, the science of typography may need to be parameterized by the context of the text and what it is going to be used for.

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#42

Post by yodon »

twhb wrote: post #34

It's a quest of mine to understand this subject mathematically. I'm convinced that typography is an exact science, it's just easier to use intuition than find the formulae that govern it. Like catching a baseball versus understanding gravity and drag. For example, when aligning that header, they're moving the leftmost pixels into alignment with the body's leftmost pixels. The correct state is well-defined, it's just…

One can of course make a precise set of rules that one will follow, and one might even come up with some pretty good ones. But typography is an art as well, by which I mean the range of optimizations potentially desired from a professional layout is intractably large, presenting huge problems for creating an algorithm that can equal or exceed a good human designer. Focus of the eye, retention, recall, mood to be instilled, characteristics of the speaker/brand to be projected, all factor into those decisions.

That said, if you want to go analytical on typography, you should focus on how it is used in advertising. The original work in the field, Ogilvy on Advertising[0], is still important and fun to read. Given when it was written most of the ads it discusses are quite retro (from what I can tell every industry plot point in the first season of Mad Men came directly out of this book), but Ogilvy was a giant in the field who transformed advertising from "people who write good" to a data driven research activity, starting with typography and layout.

[0]https://www.amazon.com/Ogilvy-Advertising-David/dp/039472903...

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#43

Post by jkepler »

jsjohnst wrote: post #17
Z1515M8147 wrote: post #11

I have persistently encountered the same problem in this space. Most people I've worked with write documents using the last formatted document they made as a template for the next. Tracing back through their history of documents you find that they are all based off one person who decided it was a good idea to mix fonts and colours of headings, and mess around with font sizes and then save it all as default heading an…

> Am I just in a minority In one word, YES. But you aren’t alone either. I feel the same way and use LaTeX for any important writing (and I didn’t start using till after uni either oddly). My resume, a bunch of guides and documents I wrote in it, as well as a book I published. My editor (with WROX) insisted I had to use a Word template for it, but I just couldn’t force myself to. Instead I wrote it in LaTeX and then…

You could get a new publisher. If I ever write a book, I think I'd make LaTeX or TeX support one of my non-negotiable terms, or perhaps I'd self-publish.

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#44

Post by cjoy »

twhb wrote: post #34

It's a quest of mine to understand this subject mathematically. I'm convinced that typography is an exact science, it's just easier to use intuition than find the formulae that govern it. Like catching a baseball versus understanding gravity and drag. For example, when aligning that header, they're moving the leftmost pixels into alignment with the body's leftmost pixels. The correct state is well-defined, it's just…

Typography is not just concerned with maximising readability. It is subject to aesthetics and taste, which are strongly linked to habit and consensus.

Most prolific type designers have at least once toyed with the idea of a mathematically constructed, ideal letter form. The final design is either allowed to offend the human eye or mathematics. I do not know a case where this was not true.

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#46

Post by jankassens »

twhb wrote: post #34

It's a quest of mine to understand this subject mathematically. I'm convinced that typography is an exact science, it's just easier to use intuition than find the formulae that govern it. Like catching a baseball versus understanding gravity and drag. For example, when aligning that header, they're moving the leftmost pixels into alignment with the body's leftmost pixels. The correct state is well-defined, it's just…

The TeXbook and the METAFONTbook explore the mathematics of typesetting in great detail

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#47

Post by npgatech »

jtolmar wrote: post #36
twhb wrote: post #34

It's a quest of mine to understand this subject mathematically. I'm convinced that typography is an exact science, it's just easier to use intuition than find the formulae that govern it. Like catching a baseball versus understanding gravity and drag. For example, when aligning that header, they're moving the leftmost pixels into alignment with the body's leftmost pixels. The correct state is well-defined, it's just…

I agree that typography could be an exact science, but I think starting with mathematics would be the wrong choice. Rather, it would be better to devise perceptual experiments and back fit a mathematical model to the results. The excellent LAB color space was created this way. Scientists used experiments - for example the MacAdam ellipse to measure what colors are distinguishable - then backfit a model to that. It in…

Edwin Land also made tremendous contributions to color science through empirical measurements and finding the deeper "mathematical" models[1]. Besides his scientific achievements, he was a real renaissance man, a tour de force of human intellect. Unfortunately, Josef Albers's pseudoscience[2] and artistic non-sense get most of the credit[3] when it comes to color theory.

[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/12/the-story-of-... [2] http://depts.washington.edu/jrphys/ph214A07/albers.pdf [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/arts/design/josef-alberss...

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#48

Post by mamcx »

Z1515M8147 wrote: post #11

I have persistently encountered the same problem in this space. Most people I've worked with write documents using the last formatted document they made as a template for the next. Tracing back through their history of documents you find that they are all based off one person who decided it was a good idea to mix fonts and colours of headings, and mess around with font sizes and then save it all as default heading an…

You will need a semantic word procesor.

Even if people understand that this thing matter, if not matter MORE than his others problems then don't expect much change...

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#49

Post by brianpan »

twhb wrote: post #34

It's a quest of mine to understand this subject mathematically. I'm convinced that typography is an exact science, it's just easier to use intuition than find the formulae that govern it. Like catching a baseball versus understanding gravity and drag. For example, when aligning that header, they're moving the leftmost pixels into alignment with the body's leftmost pixels. The correct state is well-defined, it's just…

Typography can be understood mathematically to the extent that communication can be understood mathematically. You're never going to account for style, trends, or connotation.

Same with baseball, by the way. Advanced analytics can complement and enhance your understanding of baseball. But there are people involved. It will never be as straightforward as throw a curve because the count is 3 and 1 in this situation.

Human interaction is always going to be art (and fashion) as much as science.

Re: Five minute guide to better typography

#50

Post by falsedan »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #33
Z1515M8147 wrote: post #11

I have persistently encountered the same problem in this space. Most people I've worked with write documents using the last formatted document they made as a template for the next. Tracing back through their history of documents you find that they are all based off one person who decided it was a good idea to mix fonts and colours of headings, and mess around with font sizes and then save it all as default heading an…

Latex is too hard for mortals, but I’d suggest Sphinx or one of the markdown alternatives. I think atlassian confluence is another even friendlier alternative, with a price tag.

> atlassian confluence

l o l

Replying separately because the other response is good and deserves upvotes, please vent your confluence antipathy on this comment’s karma instead.

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