Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

109

CREATING AND FORMATTING TEXT

THE ART OF TYPE

is a very nuanced thing. If you’ve seen

one typeface, you’ve seen them all, right? Why not just enter the

text, print it, and be done with it. After all, your artwork is what

really shines in Illustrator—so why should you worry about the

text formatting?

Even given my predilection for typeface geekery, I have to admit

that the differences between one typeface and another are at times

incredibly subtle. Consider Figure 4-1, borrowed from Adobe InDe-

sign CS4 One-on-One. There are seven uppercase O’s from seven

different sans serif fonts. (To learn more about serif and sans serif

typefaces, see the sidebar “The Look

of Type” on page 114.) A type nerd like

me could wax poetic, explaining how

remarkably diverse these letters are,

hailing from three distinct sans serif

traditions. But to the untrained (or

less fanatical) eye, the letters are just

a bunch of ovals. Some look like

rings; others look more like donuts.

But in the end, they’re all still ovals.

The overwhelming majority of your

readers can’t tell a Grotesque O from

a Humanist O, and furthermore they

probably don’t care. It makes you

wonder why Max Miedinger put so

much care into creating his ubiqui-

tous typeface Haas-Grotesk (renamed

Helvetica in 1960)—and why in the

world I know that he did.

Figure 4-1.

Several O’s from different sans serif fonts

Myriad Regular

Antique Olive Roman ...