In search of a good-looking head: display type can make the difference between prosaic and professional pages - Desktop Publishing - Tutorial

Home Office Computing, Oct, 1992 by Steve Morgenstern

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Display Type Can Make the Difference Between Prosaic and Professional Pages

There are, roughly speaking, two kinds of typefaces. The first is appropriate for setting lengthy blocks of text or captions, headers, and footers--the meat-and-potatoes materials in your publication. The second is called display type, and it's used for headlines and other larger text. Choosing the right typeface for text can make a tremendous difference in the look of your publication and the impression it makes on your readers. But choosing type can also be very frustrating for folks with a shaky sense of design, since the variations among text faces can be subtle but significant.

That said, let's hold off on a discussion of serious typefaces for text until some other month. Instead, let's look at all those cool typefaces you've been itching to try--the display faces.

DISPLAY TYPE VS. TEXT TYPE What makes a typeface a display face?

* A display face is generally used in a larger point size than regular text--bigger than 12-point, let's say.

* A display face is used for short, attention-grabbing text such as headlines for articles, advertisements, and fliers; publication cover lines; and posters.

* A display face is often more stylishly designed than a text face.

Text faces can be very attractive, but they can't be too ornate or they distract and become hard to read. For instance, it's a pain to read a long block of text in some outrageous Art Nouveau typeface with swirly serifs and unusual letter shapes. However, the same decorative display face may be the perfect choice for setting the name of a restaurant in a large size for a flier headline or the cover of a menu.

If you're looking for nice, neat rules for using display type, you're going to be disappointed. Well, I take that back. There is one rule. Never set a script typeface (like the Zapf Chancery built into most PostScript printers) in all uppercase letters. The letters don't hang together well, they're hard to read, and the whole thing just looks awful. That's it--you now know the only rule.

What I can offer you, in the absence of rules, are several guidelines for setting display type so it looks right.

HOW DISPLAY TYPE WORKS

Stringing together letters, numerals, and punctuation marks creates an enormous variety of oddly shaped spaces. Within a text setting, the sheer quantity of type tends to average out this diversity to produce a fairly even-looking, well-spaced page. When you're setting display type, however, the characters, spaces, and punctuation can combine in odd ways.

For example, let's say you're setting a three-line advertising headline that reads

Try Eggcentfic Eggs--

Delicious and Nutritious

Morning or Evening

If we set the lines in centered body text, the mathematically correct leading (vertical spacing between the lines) and centering look acceptable as is. But when we try setting the same text in a larger, bolder display typeface, things look a little strange (see figure, page 48). The sheer size of the setting amplifies the impact of the spacing peculiarities.

What's causing these peculiarities? Notice that the first line contains five characters with descenders (the below-the-line tails on the lowercase y and g), while the second line has several characters with ascenders (the tops of the I and t). By contrast, the second line has no characters with descenders at all, and the third line has just the dots of its i's as ascenders. Put it all together and the top two lines seem much closer vertically than the bottom two, even though the lines are set mathematically correctly, with the same distance from baseline to baseline (the baseline is the imaginary line the capital letters stand on).

There's another problem: the centering of the first line. Once again we have a mathematically correct setting that doesn't look right, this time because the em-dash at the end of the line doesn't take up as much visual space as an alphabetic character. The same thing happens with other punctuation marks---it's most commonly seen with quotation marks in headlines.

What's the answer? Abandon mathematical precision and fail back on optical alignment. That is, move the type until it looks right to your eye. Add leading between the first two lines and take some away between the second pair. Move the top line right about the width of a narrow lowercase character. Now print out the result on your laser printer and try to evaluate the headline as a set of shapes instead of a series of connected letters. Squint at it. Turn it upside down. Hold it out at arm's length. Prop it up on your desk and step back for a look.

Another consideration in setting display type is the spacing between letters and words. Computer typefaces include built-in settings for letterspacing, and page-layout programs have default values for the spaces between words, but both of these settings are adjustable in nearly any good page-layout program. And when it comes to display type, adjustment is often needed, because large-size settings require proportionally less horizontal space between letters and words than the same text set smaller. If you look at professionally set display type, particularly in advertisements, you'll find the spacing is very tight indeed. As a matter of style, display type is often set TNT---"tight but not touching." The theory is that a TNT setting gives the text more visual impact. TNT text is undeniably darker-looking than more generously letterspaced type, but sometimes an ultra-tight setting becomes intimidating and difficult to read. As I said, there are no rules. Tweak the settings, print out a laser proof, look at it critically, and make further adjustments as needed. You don't have the day-in, day-out experience a professional typesetter relies on to tailor spacing settings for a particular typeface, size, and page layout. However, you do have the enormous advantage of getting as many laser-printed proofs as you want, for pennies apiece. Trial and error, patience, and a critical eye will help you produce handsome display typography.