
Type As Image: Caption Treatment 159
By their very nature, captions need to be closely tied to
the imagery they are clarifying—so much so that, at
times, they come together to form a single visual unit.
Many readers simply scan pages looking for images
and captions that pertain to them at that moment, so
captions should always be considered a separate text
element from the body text. Their purpose is to help the
reader to understand the image in a better or different
way. The use of color, physical proximity, and a
containing shape, as well as rules, numerals, text size
and shape, and other typographic devices, can all
effectively be used to ...