July 04, 2005
The first part of this Five Simple Steps series is taking some of the points discussed in the preface and putting it to practice.
Ratios are at the core of any well designed grid system. Sometimes those ratios are rational, such as 1:2 or 2:3, others are irrational such as the 1:1.414 (the proportion of A4). This first part is about how to combine those ratios to create simple, balanced grids which in turn will help you create harmonious compositions.
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June 26, 2005
Following my article in Design in Flight I've received countless emails to elaborate, in some way, on how to correctly design grid systems. It's quite a complicated field and so distilling it into 'Five Simple Steps' has proven to be quite tricky, so much so that I thought I needed to write some sort of preface before we get on to the first part.
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May 18, 2005
The final part in this series, I'm glad to say is a little more cut and dry than the last in the series. It's more about historical typographic theory but with a simple, practical guide to ensuring a balanced use of typeface weights.
Typeface weight, and the choice of weight, is perhaps one area of typography that to most designers is simply a matter of choice. That choice is dictated by answering a design problem which is aesthetically, or content, motivated. What many designers do not realise is that there are rules which should govern the choice of weight - a typographic pecking order - which when followed, aids the designer's typesetting and can produce stunning results.
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May 09, 2005
I've struggled a bit with the latest addition to this 'simple steps' typography series. Mostly because it's not so simple and it's a bit more of a grey area than the previous three articles.
Typographic hierarchy, put simply, is how different faces, weights and sizes of typefaces structure a document. Some of these hierarchical devices are well-established conventions, such as cross heads and folios, so I'm not going to touch on them in this post. To keep it simple I'm going to concentrate on two things - size and weight. The first of which is size.
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April 25, 2005
I'm pleased this series is turning out to be so popular and it's somewhat confirmed what I suspected. A bit of a thirst for simple typographic design theory.
As I've been writing this series i've deluged by email and comments from people agreeing, disagreeing, asking for more information etc. What's great is designers are thinking and talking about typography again. Designers are questioning typography and not just letting the font and the software do the work. It's nice to hear. But enough back-slapping Mark, on with the next in the series...
The third installment of this series is dedicated to just one typographic element - Ligatures.
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April 18, 2005
Hanging punctuation is an area of typographic design which has suffered at the hands of certain software products. It's a term which refers to glyph positioning to create the illusion of a uniform edge of text.
It's most commonly used for pull-quotes, but I feel the most neglected is that of bulleted lists.
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April 13, 2005
Typography, I find, is still a bit of mystery to a lot of designers. The kind of typography I'm talking about is not your typical "What font should I use" typography but rather your "knowing your hanging punctuation from your em-dash" typography. Call me a little bit purist but this bothers me.
So, in an attempt to spread the word here's the first of five simple steps to better typography. To kick it off, part one is about the Measure.
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I'm a graphic designer from near Cardiff in the UK. I've been a designer for over ten years now and primarily work on the web. I'm still partial to a bit of print every now and then though. I used to work for