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52 Chapter 3. Design Elements, Design Principles, and Compositional Organization
            Typography not only carries a message but also imbues a message with visual meaning based on the
            character of a font, its style, and its composition. Words are meaningful in and of themselves, but the
            style and composition of words tells a reader you are serious, playful, exciting, or calm. Typography is
            the tonal equivalent of a voice and can be as personal or as general in flavour.


            Typography traditionally has two functions in most design projects. One function is to call attention to or
            to ‘display’ the intent of a communication. This function is called titling or display typography and it is
            meant to call attention to itself. The second function is to present the in-depth details of a communication
            within a text block. This function requires a different typographic approach — one that is quiet and does
            not call attention to itself. Instead, it is intended to make the content accessible and easy to read.


            Font Categories


            There are many ways to categorize and subcategorize type. This overview discusses the seven major
            historical categories that build on one another. Serif fonts comprise four of these categories: humanist,
            old style, transitional, and modern. Italics, first designed in the 1500s, have evolved to become part of
            a font ‘family’ and were at one time a separate category. They were initially designed as independent
            fonts to be used in small pocket books where space was limited. They were not embraced as text fonts,
            but were considered valuable for adding emphasis within a roman text and so became part of the set
            of options and extensions a font possessed. The trajectory of use is the opposite for the sans serif
            category. Sans serif fonts have historically been used for display only, but in the 20th century, they
            became associated with the modern aesthetic of clean and simple presentation and have now become
            very popular for text-block design. Egyptian or slab serif fonts can be used as either display or text
            depending on the characteristic of the font design.


                                                         Blackletter





























                                        Figure 3.10 Example of Blackletter type


            Blackletter was the medieval model for the first movable types (see Figure 3.10). It is also know as
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