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Typographic Design: Form and Communication, 6th Edition
book

Typographic Design: Form and Communication, 6th Edition

by Rob Carter, Philip B. Meggs, Ben Day, Sandra Maxa, Mark Sanders
September 2014
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
352 pages
13h 27m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Typographic Design: Form and Communication, 6th Edition

2

The Anatomy of Typography

Typographic design is a complex human activity, requiring a broad background for informed practice. This chapter explores the basic language of typography. Letterforms, the fundamental components of all typographic communications, are carefully examined. Nomenclature, measurement, and the nature of typographic font and family are presented.

The alphabet is a series of elemental visual signs in a fixed sequence, representing spoken sounds. Each letter signifies only one thing: its elementary sound or name. The twenty-six characters of our alphabet can be combined into hundreds of thousands of words, creating a visual record of the spoken language. This is the magic of writing and typography, which have been called “thoughts made visible” and “frozen sounds.”

LETTERFORMS ANALYZED

images

2-1 Strokes made with a reed pen (top), with a brush (middle), and with a chisel (bottom).

The four timelines in Chapter 1 graphically present the evolution of letterforms and typographic design from the beginning of writing to the present. Our contemporary typographic forms have been forged by this historical evolution. Typography evolved from handwriting, which is created by making a series of marks by hand; therefore, the fundamental element constructing a letterform is the linear stroke. Each letter of our alphabet developed as a simple mark whose visual characteristics ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781118715765Purchase bookOtherOther