THE NON-DESIGNER'S TYPE BOOK

Why would you want to create
Multiple Master faces?

Multiple masters come in handy in so many places. You can easily adjust a
headline to fill the space without having to change the size, or you can
make reverse text a little bolder so it will hold its shape. Perhaps you have
a ticket or a poster that needs a wide range of weights and widths and sizes
for all the various parts of the information. Maybe your grandma complains
that the font in the letters you write her are too light and thus difficult for
her to read—so fatten up the strokes, maybe also widen them a bit.

Eventually you will be able to do things like select the type in your head¬
line and tell it to fill the space, or select the text that runs over a bit too
much and tell it to resize to fit the space—the multiple master will create
a new instance to do the job, maintaining the integrity of the design and its
readability and legibility. Oh, life is so exciting.

r n n

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GO\JO CARD

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Can you see the eight different instances / \

of this font, Tekton мм, used in this card?
It can be incredibly valuable to be able to create
real fonts in various weights and widths.

Don't try to go to that web site or cafe—it s gone. Sigh.

0

oosina a ojuvetace

1 fir Ш

W.A. Dwiggins

Dwiggins' cry to the gods is one with which we are all familiar. Even
though there are more than 10,000 typefaces available to us, finding the
perfect font for a particular job can be a stressful task. Or more likely it is
because we have 10,000 fonts to choose from that the task often appears
monumental. There are steps you can take, though, to narrow the selection
down to a handful of appropriate choices.

Remember those categories of type?

First of all, remember those general categories of type you read about in
the beginning of this book? And remember the sections on readability and
legibility? Understanding those categories and concepts is important in
helping narrow your choices, so let's review them.

Oldstyle faces have slanted serifs, gradual thick-to-thin strokes, and a
slanted stress (the О appears tilted). The original oldstyle faces were created
for books, so they are eminently readable.

Modern faces have thin, horizontal serifs, radical thick-to-thin strokes, and
a vertical stress (the О does not appear to tilt). If there is more than a
paragraph or two of a modern face, the strong thick/thin contrast in the
letterforms creates a "dazzling" effect that makes moderns less than per¬
fectly readable. The more pronounced the contrast in the stroke, the
less readable in extended text.

Slab serif faces have thick, horizontal serifs, litde or no thick/thin transition
in the strokes, and a vertical stress (the О does not appear to tilt). If the
slab serif is not too heavy, it can make a very sturdy and solid readable face.