Designing Information Material

Designing Information Material 4(1+3)

Lesson 5: Tools in Information Design Text

Typefaces

The unique properties of each instruction should be a guide to selection of a suitable typeface. The Roman type style includes most of the typefaces in modern printing. These typefaces have serifs, finishing strokes at the ends of the letterforms (aaaabbbbccccdddddd AAABBBCCCDDD). Serif typefaces are often considered to be easier to read than sans serif typefaces (aaaabbbbbcccccddddd AAAABBBCCCCDDDD), except for small letter sizes. Baskerville, Berling, Bookman, Garamond, New Century Schoolbook, Palatino, and Times New Roman can be used successfully for the body text in books, pamphlets and reports.
Generally speaking common type faces are easier to read than uncommon ones. Private documents may invite the use of stylish looking fonts. Professional documents, however, require maximum legibility.

• introduction
• introduction
  Serifs on characters make it easier to follow horizontal text lines. This word is very hard to read.
• introduction
• introduction
  The upper parts of letters shape images of words. This word is easy to read.

Size of Type
Our perception of size is always relative. Some type looks gigantic (very big) and some minuscule (very small). It all depends on the design of the typeface, especially its height. Traditionally the vertical height of letters is designated in typographical points.

We normally refers to this as font size. Programs for desktop publishing use the Pica system, giving points as “pts.” To achieve optimum legibility it is known that letter size must be adjusted to the visual format and the reading distance.
Example: - Designing Information Material Designing Information Material (Geneva not found)
Height and width vary in different font type of the same size. Garamond (left) has lower letters than Geneva (right). The differences in the shape and size of the characters will influence legibility.
The running text in a book, a pamphlet and a report that should be read in a continuous manner should be set between nine and twelve Pica points. Here 40–50 characters will result in a line that is 75–90 millimeter in length. The longer the line is, the larger the type size should be. The shorter the line is, the smaller the type size can be. The x-height is important. Typefaces with large x- heights manage well with smaller type sizes than typefaces with small x-heights.

6 p Helvetica
7 p Helvetica
8 p Helvetica
9 p Helvetica
10 p Helvetica
11 p Helvetica
12 p Helvetica
14 p Helvetica
18 p Helvetica
24 p Helvetica
36 p Helvetica
48 p Helvetica
72 p Helve

Stylistic Variation of Type
Regular type is easier to read than uncommon type. Boldface or italics should normally not be used for continuous text. Italic print is read more slowly than regular type and is also disliked by many readers. Make type big enough to stand out from the background and heavy enough to be visible. Underlining in the middle of a sentence makes the lower line more difficult to read
Regular type- A typeface is often available as regular, bold, italic, and bold and italic.
Italic type - A typeface is often available as regular, bold, italic, and bold and italic.
Bold type- A typeface is often available as regular, bold, italic, and bold and italic.
Bold and italic type- A typeface is often available as regular, bold, italic and bold and italic.