Typography essentials

A quick insight into the typography world

Hello beautiful reader, I am glad that you are here again to get some logo design tips. Today we are going to talk about typography.

Typography and logo design

Today I would like to explain to you what typography is. The ultimate purpose of this article is to show you that there are rules connected with a good type. A good designer needs to be aware of the rules. Once one is aware of the rules one can even break them to make the design even more interesting.

What is typography then? Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed. Legibility, readability and visual attractiveness are crucial attributes of a good logo design (read more about logo design essential here).

Anatomy of typography

Every character consists of several parts and each part of the character has its own name. It is good to know that there is a specialised vocabulary to make it easier to talk about typography. There is no need to memorise it by heart but it is good to have general knowledge about it to be able to discuss the topic with others. See the whole Type glossary here.

Anatomy of typography

There are definitely some nice terms that one can easily remember. If I had to pick one must-to-know it would be the serif. A Serif is the little line that trails off a letter shape. We distinguish between the serif typefaces (Times New Roman, Baskerville, Caslon, Garamond and Bodoni) and the san serif fonts without the trailing lines (popular san serifs include Helvetica, Arial, Geneva, Tahoma and Verdana).

Details making the difference

When it comes to design it's all about the details that you have perhaps never noticed. Let's take a look at some of the interesting rules connected with a good type.

Curved letters and pointed letters are always drawn above the cap/mean line and below the baseline. It is the only way to draw them to make them appear as they have the same size.