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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