typography – Page 4 – Alphabet City Press

23 February 20154 January 2015

Antikva Margaret

Antikva Margaret is not a typeface you come across nowadays, although it was part of the Linotype font library at some point because it appears in a typesetting catalogue I have from back in the era of phototypesetting. Antikva Margaret was designed in the 1960s by Hungarian type designer Zoltán Nagy for VGC (Visual Graphics Corporation). My type catalogue includes samples of light, italic, extra bold and black weights. I found a free download, but also discovered Olde Megrat NF, a version of the original that was updated and digitised by Nick Curtis of Nick’s Fonts in 2011.

14 February 20154 January 2015

Tracking

Tracking, like kerning, is a horizontal space adjustment of letters, but whereas kerning refers to the space relationship between two individual characters, tracking applies to the uniform spacing of groups of letters—whether it be a word, sentence, paragraph, or larger block of text. Tracking can range from very tight to very loose. Large headlines are often improved by some tightening of the tracking, and very small type can be made more legible by some loosening, especially if the paper it is to be printed on is absorbent and allows ink spread.

21 January 20154 January 2015

Weight

Weight refers to the blackness or heaviness of a character, and generally ranges in scale from light to bold. Weights from one typeface to another can vary considerably, but they have relative meaning within a typeface family. Some typeface families have only a few weights. Bernhard Modern, for example, has only Roman and Bold, and Clarendon has three weights—Light, Roman and Bold. Other typeface families, such as Helvetica Neue and Interstate, have a huge range. Helvetica Neue has eight weights, from Ultra Light to Black.

3 January 201529 December 2014

Ligatures

In typography, a ligature is a single glyph made up of more than one character. Ligatures can be functional or ornamental. A good example of a functional ligature is the combination of the letters f and i. In many typefaces the dot of the i crashes into the arch of the f, and the ligature resolves the overlap of letters and improves letter spacing. The typefaces shown here are Adobe Caslon, Eames Century Modern and Adobe Garamond Pro: the second two also contain the ff and ffi ligatures in their glyph set.

28 December 201424 December 2014

Red and white

My friend gave me a pair of lava earrings. I quizzed her about her choice—wondered if it was because she knows I am so taken with Haleakala, Mauna Kea and Kilauea. She said that was partly the reason, the other factor being that the graphic blackness of them suited the designer in me. But that’s only half the story of her considered gift-giving. The other was the package it came in: a carry bag, massive in proportion relative to the gift within, but perfect nonetheless. Red sans serif upper case city names repeated over and over on a white background.

16 December 201416 December 2014

W.F

In proofreading, w.f. stands for ‘wrong font’, but that can hardly be applied here, even though my pavlovian response is to look for where to make the correction! Every country town most certainly has its butcher, baker and candlestick maker, but the kind of store I gravitate towards is the double-fronted outfitters—women’s clothes on one side, men’s on the other, recessed doorway in the middle allowing maximum window shopping. This clothing store was even wider, with four windows and two doors, and the vignetted, gold-outlined signage appeared twice. The letter shapes were almost the same but not quite, and I particularly liked this F, which was much more elongated than its counterpart above the other doorway.

10 December 201410 December 2014

Real

There’s something a little wonky going on with this lettering. The letter shapes are not quite right: the thickness of the strokes varies, the middle stroke of the E juts out a tad longer than the bottom stroke, the leg of the R doesn’t quite support the bowl. The kerning would benefit from some fine-tuning too. But the letters have character—no pun intended, although perhaps I should say they have personality! I like this carefully painted but not perfect gold and red word—perhaps for the very reason that it isn’t perfect—as well as its reflection in the building across the road.

26 October 201426 October 2014

Fancy goods

‘Fancy goods’ is not a term you hear much, and in fact I realised I didn’t know exactly what it referred to. The dictionary informs me that fancy goods are novelty items and accessories that are primarily ornamental, designed to appeal to taste—or fancy, as the term suggests. I guess, these days, we would call them non-essentials, and we would buy them on impulse with our disposable (!) income. The sign above the adjacent window said ‘stationer’, in matching gold lettering. Then and now, that would be enough to get me inside, always a sucker for some (essential) pen and paper.

11 October 201411 October 2014

Dooleys store

I found this above the door of the general store in the small NSW town of Murrurundi. The J Dooley & Co Ltd store was opened in 1901, and the sign above the door is original, although it looks like the PTY was added later, given the spacing and typographic mismatch. It’s not just the letter shapes that indicate the age: the punctuation and superscript used here out of fashion these days, and say as much about the era as the typeface.

5 September 20145 September 2014

Sunshine biscuits

I wouldn’t mind some Sunshine biscuits, especially because they Are Better! I am not particularly nostalgic, nor do believe that old typography design is better than new typography design, but there is no doubt that advertising like this has a quality that current advertising (for me, at least) lacks. I wonder if, in years to come, we will look back at advertising in the convenience store windows of today in the same favourable light that we view old signage like this. Seems improbable, but if I’m still around in another fifty years or so, I’ll let you know.