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Thinking With Type 21 40

The document discusses the evolution of typography from the early nineteenth century to modern digital design, highlighting various styles such as Fat Face, Gothic, and Slab Serifs. It explores the impact of industrialization and avant-garde movements on typography, including notable figures like Edward Johnston and Paul Renner. Additionally, it addresses the rise of digital typography and the ongoing exploration of type as a narrative and functional medium.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
23 views20 pages

Thinking With Type 21 40

The document discusses the evolution of typography from the early nineteenth century to modern digital design, highlighting various styles such as Fat Face, Gothic, and Slab Serifs. It explores the impact of industrialization and avant-garde movements on typography, including notable figures like Edward Johnston and Paul Renner. Additionally, it addresses the rise of digital typography and the ongoing exploration of type as a narrative and functional medium.

Uploaded by

hpt818
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 20

Fat Face is the name given to

the inflated, hyper-bold type


style introduced in the early
nineteenth century. These
designs exaggerated the thick
and thin components seen
in the typographic forms of

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Bodoni and Didot.

Condensed typefaces violated


the classical proportions
My person was hideous,
of lettering. Nineteenth- my stature gigantic.…
century advertisements often
combined fonts of varying
Who was I?
styles and widths. Condensed What was I?…
type could force a word or Accursed creator!
phrase into a small space.
Why did you create
a monster so hideous that
even you turned
away from me in disgust?
—mary wollstonecraft
shelley,
Frankenstein, 1818

Exploring the dangers of


technology, Frankenstein is
considered the first work of science
fiction. Like the mad scientist in
Shelley’s novel, commercial type
Gothic and Grotesque are nineteenth-century terms for letters built
designers in the nineteenth century
without serifs. Gothic letters command attention with their massive
distorted the natural state of
frontality. Although sans-serif typefaces were later associated with
letters, alarming traditionalists.
rational neutrality, their early purpose was to attract attention.

Slab serifs transformed the serif from


a delicate ornament into a load-bearing
structure. The slab style was also called
Egyptian, referring to the enormous scale and
bottom-heavy architecture of the pyramids.
Europeans had an exoticized fascination with
African art, design, and hieroglyphics. This
style first appeared around 1806.

thinking with type, third edition 19


Henry Caslon and other descendants of full moon, 1875 (opposite). This letterpress
William Caslon carried on the family business. poster uses a dozen different fonts. The printer
The Caslon foundry created heavy sans-serif chose a size and style of typeface for each line
styles (top) and Italian, a high-contrast to maximize the scale of the letters in the given
style drawn with horizontal stress (bottom). space. Although the typefaces are varied and
Typographic critics would later call Caslon’s decorative, the centered layout is as static and
Italian a “monstrosity.”+ Caslon’s Specimen of conventional as a tombstone.
Printing Types (1844). Reproduced with kind
permission, Letterform Archive.

+ See James Clough, “Caslon’s Italic,” 2010, www


.paulshawletterdesign.com/2010/01/caslon’s-italian-
by-james-clough/.

20 HUMANS AND MACHINES


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21
thinking with type, third edition
REFORM AND Some designers condemned distortions of the alphabet, blam-
REVOLUTION ing industrialization for corrupting art, design, and typogra-
phy. Writing in 1906, Edward Johnston renewed the search for
an ideal alphabet and denounced exaggeration. Inspired by the
nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts Movement, he looked back
to the Renaissance and the Middle Ages for pure, uncorrupted
letterforms. Johnston and other reformers critiqued the com-
mercial mainstream.
Avant-garde artists and poets sought to dissolve the barri-
ers between art and everyday life. They drew experimental al-
phabets and arranged existing typefaces in new ways. The Ital-
ian poet F. T. Marinetti published the “Futurist Manifesto” in
1909. His typographic poems combine different styles and sizes
of type, working against the rigid rectilinear order of letterpress
printing. Futurism exposed the technological grid of letterpress
while pushing beyond it. Dada artists and poets used mass media
Edward Johnston based
this 1906 diagram of tools—from typography to film and photomontage—to attack
essential letterforms on conventional life and social institutions.
ancient Roman inscriptions.
While deriding commercial In the Netherlands, Piet Mondrian divided his paintings with
lettering, Johnston vertical and horizontal lines that seemed to expand beyond the
appreciated medieval
ornament. Writing & limits of the canvas. Theo van Doesburg, Piet Zwart, and other
Illuminating & Lettering (Sir
Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1932).
members of the Dutch De Stijl group applied this idea to design
and typography. Converting the curves and angles of the alpha-
bet into perpendicular units, they forced the letter through the
mesh of the grid. Vilmos Huszár built his hand-drawn logo for
the magazine De Stijl with modular blocks.
Constructivism, launched in the Soviet Union at the end of the
1910s, built on Futurist and Dada typography. El Lissitzky used
printer’s rules and ornaments to divide space vertically and hor-
izontally, foregrounding the mechanical matrix of letterpress.
The page was no longer a fixed, hierarchical window for viewing
content but an open expanse to be mapped and marked with let-
ters, rules, and ornaments. El Lissitzky traveled extensively in
Europe in the 1920s, where he met the German Dada artist Kurt
Schwitters and influenced many avant-garde designers.

22 HUMANS AND MACHINES


William Morris printed this
excerpt of a famous work
by John Ruskin. The Nature
of Gothic: A Chapter of the
Stones of Venice (Kelmscott
Press, 1892). Reproduced
with kind permission,
Letterform Archive.

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F. T. Marinetti attacked
the mechanical grid of
letterpress. “Lettre d’une
Jolie Femme à un Monsieur
Passeiste,” 1912, from Les
Mots en Liberté Futuristes
(Edizioni Futuriste di Poesia,
1919). Reproduced with
kind permission, Letterform
Archive.

vilmos huszár designed


the logo for the magazine
De Stijl in Amsterdam,
1917. Huszár’s hand-drawn
letters consist of pixel-like
modules. Reproduced with
kind permission, Letterform
Archive. © 2023 Artists
Rights Society (ARS),
New York / c/o Pictoright
Amsterdam.

El Lissitzky explored the


pictorial potential of
typography in Dlia Golosa
(For the Voice), printed in
Berlin, 1923. This letterpress
book illustrates poems by
Vladimir Mayakovsky with
typographic elements. The
thumb index provides a
handy interface. Reproduced
with kind permission,
Letterform Archive. © 2023
Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York.

thinking with type, third edition 23


REFORM AND Piet Zwart was influenced by the De Stijl movement and then
REVOLUTION by El Lissitzky and Constructivism. In his work for Fortoliet,
a flooring company, Zwart combined existing typefaces with
inventive new letterforms pieced together from the materials
of the type shop. He combined visionary letter design with the
ready-made mechanics of typography.
Herbert Bayer was a student and instructor at the Bauhaus, a
German art school. He used drafting tools to construct letters
with basic geometric forms. Such experiments approached the
alphabet as a modular system of abstract relationships. Typogra-
phy was becoming a critical tool that reflected on its own making.
Assembled like machines from uniform parts, avant-garde al-
phabets emulated factory production—yet few were executed as
working typefaces for letterpress printing. In 1927 Paul Renner
created Futura, a commercially viable font family that embodied
+ Christopher Burke, Paul
the machine dreams of the avant-garde. Futura’s serene, abstract
Renner: The Art of Typography forms aimed to “dispense with handwritten movement.” Designers
(New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1998) and around the world embraced Renner’s font as an ideal match for
Douglas Thomas, Never Use
Futura (New York: Princeton
modernity. Futura quickly became one of the world’s most pop-
Architectural Press, 2017). ular typefaces.+
Futura, designed by Paul
Renner in Germany in 1927,
has sharp A’s and circular
O’s. Renner designed
numerous weights of Futura.
The type family was a tool for
painting the page in shades
of black and gray.

24 HUMANS AND MACHINES


Piet Zwart designed the
initials in this 1925 postcard
by combining typographic
rules. Thin lines are visible
between the metal rules,
revealing Zwart’s process.
The smaller text utilizes
existing typefaces. © 2023

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Artists Rights Society (ARS),
New York / c/o Pictoright
Amsterdam.

Herbert Bayer designed


his prototype (below) for
a universal typeface at
the Bauhaus in 1925. This
lowercase alphabet is built
from straight lines and
circles. Reproduced with
kind permission, Letterform
Archive. © 2023 Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New
York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

thinking with type, third edition 25


TYPE AS Responding to the rise of electronic communication, the Dutch
PROGRAM designer Wim Crouwel published designs for a “new alphabet” in
1967, constructed from straight lines. He designed his letters for
optimal display on a video screen (CRT), which renders curves
and angles with horizontal scan lines. Some of his characters are
legible only in the context of the system.+

new alphabet | Wim Crouwel, 1967

In the mid-1980s, personal computers spread the tools of typog-


raphy to a broader public. Zuzana Licko’s typefaces exploited the
rough, jaggy grain of early screen displays and dot-matrix print-
ers. She founded Emigre Fonts and Emigre magazine with Rudy
+ Wim Crouwel, New VanderLans, heralding a new digital era.++
Alphabet (Amsterdam:
Total Design, 1967).
++Rudy VanderLans and
Zuzana Licko, Emigre No.
70: The Look Back Issue,
Selections from Emigre lo-res | Zuzana Licko, 1985
Magazine, 1984–2009
(Berkeley: Gingko Press, Variable fonts, introduced in 2016, generate endless type styles
2009).
from one font file. A core design can generate gradations of
weight, width, and other features. Fraunces, by Phaedra Charles
and Flavia Zimbardi, includes a softness variable, allowing the
terminals of the letters to harden or melt.

fraunces | Phaedra Charles, Flavia Zimbardi, 2018

Designers keep exploring the elastic, fantastic potential of digital


media. Emma Hall’s wavy-gravy typeface Ponte Glitch (2019)
romanticizes the fault lines of technology.

Ponte Glitch | Emma Hall, 2019 | Text: Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism, 2020

26 HUMANS AND MACHINES


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Wim Crouwel published his designs for a
“new alphabet,” consisting of no diagonals
or curves, in 1967. The Foundry (London)
created digital editions of Crouwel’s
typefaces.

thinking with type, third edition 27


TYPE AS In the early 1990s, as digital design tools began supporting the
NARRATIVE seamless integration of type, image, and time-based media,
many designers grew dissatisfied with clean, unsullied surfaces.
Instead, they sought to expose letterforms to physical processes.
Barry Deck’s typeface Template Gothic emulates plastic sten-
cils, tools that are both mechanical and manual. Deck designed
Template Gothic while he was a student of Ed Fella, whose ex-
perimental posters inspired many type designers in the 1990s.

template gothic | Barry Deck, 1990

P. Scott Makela’s typeface Dead History is a mashup of the tra-


ditional serif font Centennial and the pop-culture classic VAG
Rounded, created for Volkswagen AG in 1979.

dead history | P. Scott Makela, 1990

The Dutch typographers Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum
are programmers and designers. Their 1990 randomized type-
face Beowulf changes each time it is used.

beowulf | Erik van Blokland, Just van Rossum, 1990

Typefaces by Tré Seals celebrate Black history. His font Bayard


pays tribute to the life of activist Bayard Rustin and the Civil
Rights posters of the 1950s and ’60s. His work is expanding the
+ Schessa Garbutt, “&&&: White-centered canon of Western typography.+
Provoking Type,” The Black
Experience in Design:
Identity, Expression, &
Reflection, edited by Anne
H. Berry et al. (New York:
Allworth Press, 2022), bayard | Tré Seals, 2018
392–400.

28 HUMANS AND MACHINES


BACK TO WORK Throughout the digital type revolution, designers continued to
build functional typefaces designed for the rigors of extended
reading and screen-based media. Licko produced historical re-
vivals alongside her experimental alphabets. Her 1996 typeface
Mrs Eaves, inspired by Baskerville, became one of the most be-

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loved typefaces of its time. In 2009, Mrs Eaves was joined by Mr
Eaves, her sans-serif companion.

working femme seeks SIDE kick


mrs eaves | Zuzana Licko, 1996 mr eaves | Zuzana Licko, 2009

Martin Majoor’s Scala, introduced in 1991, offered a crisp re-


newal of typographic history. Scala’s simply drawn, decisively
geometric serifs looked back to humanist styles from a contem-
porary point of view. Scala expanded to become a superfamily,
with serif and sans-serif forms in numerous weights and styles.

Renaissance shapes & modern details


scala | Martin Majoor, 1991 scala sans | Martin Majoor, 1993

Tobias Frere-Jones designed Gotham in 2000, inspired by let-


ters found at a New York City bus terminal. Gotham became the
typeface of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Typog-
raphy’s First Family grew to include more than fifty styles.

Rock-solid CONSTRUCTION
gotham | ultra | light | bold | Tobias Frere-Jones, 2000

Designers choose typefaces by considering the history of type,


the connotations of form, the balance between readability and
surprise, the content and themes at hand, and the designer’s own
desires and interests. No rule book assigns a fixed meaning to ev-
ery typeface; each designer confronts the library of possibilities
in light of a project’s unique circumstances.

thinking with type, third edition 29


EVERYONE, Typefaces can connect communities and protect local traditions.
EVERYWHERE 1.8 billion people live on the Indian subcontinent. They speak
November Type systems tackles the unprecedented task of designing
November Type systems tackles the unprecedented task of designing
aNovember
set of fonts for systems
Type the Indian sub-continent
tackles the hundreds
supporting
unprecedented
a set of fonts for the Indian sub-continent supporting hundreds
hundreds
task of languages, including many that are indigenous and
of designing
of set
languages
November of systems
Type India, Nepal, Pakistan,
tackles Bangladesh
the unprecedented and
taskSriofLanka
designing
ofalanguages
of fonts
offor theNepal,
India, Indian sub-continent
Pakistan, supporting
Bangladesh and
endangered.
hundreds
Sri Lanka
asupporting
ofset
languages
supporting
over
of fonts for 1.5
thebillion
overof1.5
India,Indian people.
Nepal,
billion
sub-continent supporting
Pakistan, Bangladesh
people. and Sri Lanka The November type system, an ongoing project of
hundreds
ofsupporting
languagesover
of India, Nepal,people.
1.5 billion Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
supporting over 1.5 billion people. Typotheque, supports a dozen Indic scripts; the native scripts
of North America; Thai, Lao, and Khmer in Southeast Asia; and
many more large and small writing systems.

अर््थ श ास्त्र
november | Typotheque

ஒற
ஒற
ஒற் ் ் றறக
றறக
றறக் ் ் கல
கல
கல વિધાનસભામાં
் ் ் વિધાનસભામાં
વિધાનસભામાં ଶର୍ମି
ଶର୍ମି

ଶର୍ମି କ
କ अर््थ
अर््थ श
श ास्त्र
ास्त्र
ஒற்றறக்கல் વિધાનસભામાં ଶର୍ମିକ अर््थशास्त्र
compressed tamil extralight rounded gujarati black stencil odia medium devanagari bold

දේේශපාාලනය
දේේශපාාලනය
දේේශපාාලනය ਨਦੀਆਂ
ਨਦੀਆਂ
ਨਦੀਆਂ রাজনীতিতিদ
রাজনীতিতিদ
রাজনীতিতিদ രാഷ്ട്രീയം
രാഷ്ട്രീയം
രാഷ്ട്രീയം
දේේශපාාලනය ਨਦੀਆਂ রাজনীতিতিদ രാഷ്ട്രീയം
ಬ್್ರಹ್್ಮಾ್ಮಾ್ಮಾಾಂಾಂ ಡ ᱠᱚᱢᱚᱯᱤ
sinhala medium stencil gurmukhi black compressed bangla condensed

ಬ್್ರಹ್
ಬ್್ರ ಹ್ ಾಂ ಡಡ ᱠᱚᱢᱚᱯᱤ
ᱠᱚᱢᱚᱯᱤ పుస్పుస్ ్త ్త ్త కాలు
కాలు
hairline malayalam light

ꯈꯨꯨ
ꯈꯨꯨ
ꯈꯨꯨ ꯗꯤ
ꯗꯤ
ꯗꯤ ꯤꯡꯃꯛ
ꯤꯡꯃꯛ
ꯤꯡꯃꯛ ಬ್್ರಹ್್ಮಾಾಂಡ ᱠᱚᱢᱚᱯᱤ పుస్ ్త కాలు
ꯈꯨꯨꯗꯤꯤꯡꯃꯛ
stencil meetei black
పుస్కాలు
condensed kannada medium ol chiki heavy
stencil
telugu extralight

Experimental type designers are challenging the norms of West-


ern typography. Letters drawn with heavy horizontal strokes
look strange to readers of the Latin alphabet. Such typefaces
often are called reverse or inverted contrast, marking them as
+ David Jonathan Ross, deviations from the (Latin) norm.+ Yet not all writing traditions
“Backasswards, Revisited,”
Amalgam, Op. 1 (2018): 84–89. share Latin’s strong vertical emphasis. Arabic, Hebrew, and Indic
scripts are typically designed with horizontal stress.

tortellini | David Jonathan Ross, 2019

++ Ben Wittner, Sascha Curiosity and necessity compel designers to learn about different
Thoma, and Timm Hartmann,
Bi-Scriptual: Typography and
languages and different ways to read and write.++ Typo­graphy
Graphic Design with Multiple can preserve cultures, connect diverse groups, express identity,
Script Systems (Salenstein,
Switzerland: Niggli, 2019). and expand collective notions of beauty and history. Delight and
understanding are everywhere to be found.

30 HUMANS AND MACHINES


Alseny Diallo created Jangu Adlam,
an app for teaching ADLaM, in 2020.
The ADLaM alphabet is used for writing
Fulani, a language widely spoken in
West Africa and the African diaspora.
ADLaM was created in the 1980s by
Abdoulaye and Ibrahima Barry, who
grew up in Guinea. Diallo’s app is

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typeset in Noto Adlam, designed by
Diane Colier/Monotype, 2016.

Mirna Pierre designed her typeface


View after researching the history of
Black graphic designers and studying
design and fashion popular in the
1970s. She created the typeface for
the AIGA SPOT Mentorship program
in 2022. View’s horizontal stress
and dramatic curves reflect Pierre’s
research and personal journey.

Chris Skillern, a citizen of the


Cherokee Nation, named his typeface
Meli (pronounced may-lee) after his
daughter, Mary. Meli is the Cherokee
name for Mary. Inspired by children’s
books, Meli (2021) includes a brushy,
pseudo-sans display style, a friendly
serif text face, and a text italic. The
font supports the Cherokee syllabary,
designed by Sequoyah in 1821. Meli
aims to appeal to younger readers.

thinking with type, third edition 31


anatomy

Calligraphy and handwriting are traces of human life. Bodies

shape our relationships with writing. The fluid lines of Arabicp34

convey the motion of the hand from right to left. Latinp33 typog-

raphy contains eyes, ears, shoulders, and spines. The strokes of

Chinesep35 typefaces are often compared to sinews and bones.

The shapes of the Koreanp36 alphabet (Hangeul) are based on

the movement of the human mouth and throat during speech.

Not all bodies are human. The Latin s has a beak, and y has a tail.

The characters of Tamil, an Indicp38 script, have shoulders, necks,

beaks, legs, tails, and eyes.

The main axes of alignment in Latin typography are the cap

height, x-height, and baseline. Other writing systems have dif-

ferent points of focus. Many Indic scripts hang from a headline.

Chinese characters gravitate to the heart. Japanesep37 characters

occupy a square, while Indic and Arabic scripts emphasize hor-

izontal flow. Each of the world’s writing systems is an extraor-

dinary work of art, design, and culture—and a living organism.

32
LATIN

capital line shoulder

x-line/median
arm

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x-height
The main
body of the baseline
lowercase stem bowl serif descender
letter

tail

ligature ascender
eye

finial

terminal ascender

beak

spine

Capital or
uppercase small capitals lowercase

cross bar

counter
overhang
Curves pass
slightly beyond
the baseline
and the x-line.

thinking with type, third edition 33


ARABIC | WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY KHAJAG APELIAN AND WAEL MORCOS

REQUIRED
LIGATURE LIGATURE

Top line diacritic dot HEAD tooth

initial Nabirah
Medial Nabirah

Baseline Thickness
middle line

bottom line elongation,


tatweel,
madd body tail

In Arabic typography the top and bottom


lines define the vertical space where
the letters sit. A middle line serves as a
horizontal guide to align the letters that
connect horizontally.

filament, forehead
HeliaH

top line
LIGATURE knot arch

initial Nabirah

middle line splint


Descender 1

BOWL splint counter


bottom line

LYON ARABIC DISPLAY | Khajag Apelian and Wael Morcos

Several guides are added to align letters When typesetting Arabic and Latin
that share similar structures. Guides for typography together, you can align
nabirah/loop heights are added for letters the middle line of the Arabic with the
above the middle line such as sin, qaf, and baseline of the Latin typography.
fa. Descender guides are added for letters
below the middle line such as ra and ya.

34 ANATOMY
CHINESE | WRITTEN BY CASPAR LAM AND YUJUNE PARK

central axis
dot Body

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| | | | | | |
frame
short
left-falling
horizontal

center of
right-rising gravity
core

vertical right-
left-falling falling surface
hook frame

Chinese characters employ subunits In type design, however, the typology of strokes
called strokes. Each stroke is a continuous differs slightly, along with variations in how they
writing motion. Strokes are often described are described.
anthropomorphically in terms of bones and
sinews. The strokes cluster around a core
and radiate from a focal point (the center of
gravity). There are eight traditional categories
of strokes, exemplified by the character for
eternity (above).

center of
gravity

There are no strict rules governing the alignment The cap height of the Latin typeface is
of Chinese and Latin scripts. Chinese characters typically centered vertically against the height
are aligned according to the center of gravity, of the Chinese characters. The descenders
while Latin characters are aligned along the are taken into account optically. Depending
baseline. Combining the two requires judgment. on the typeface, this means that the top of
Generally, the placement of Chinese characters the x-height may intersect with the Chinese
is judged relative to the cap height and x-height characters’ center of gravity, as shown above.
of the Latin typeface and the overall color Latin letters should never be aligned to the
(texture) generated by the two scripts. top or bottom edge of a character.

diagrams by Naiqian Wang and Stephanie Winarto | Additional research by Decong Ma

thinking with type, third edition 35


KOREAN | WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY MOON JUNG JANG AND TAEKYEOM LEE
Korean (Hangeul) typefaces have
two primary styles: Buri and Minburi. Bridge
The Buri style has many slight Pillar
Buri Minburi
projections—spurs, knobs, and
dots—because it is derived from Upper
Side Stem
script and calligraphy. Some letter
combinations are designed in two Side Stem Lower
versions: one with a longer stem/ Side Stem
pillar and the other with a short stem/
pillar. The length is determined based Terminal
on which letter it is put together with.

Horizontal
Knob Knob
Final Spur
Start Spur A buri is the bent tip of
a stroke in Hangeul. It is
Top similar to a serif in Latin
Knot fonts. Minburi means
Round "without buri," similar to
Stem sans serif.
Turn Spur or
Round A bo is a horizontal stem.
Ieung
It originated from an
essential building element,
the bo or daedeulbo on
Horizontal Stem the pillar supporting a
roof in traditional Korean
Short architecture.
Pillar

Angled Bo
Stem
Joint Stem

Vertical
Stem Short combined letters
Turn Pillar with the Buri and Bo

Final Spur
Curve

Descent Pillar
Dot

Joint Bo

Angled
Stem
IN COLLABORATION WITH
YEOHYUN AHN
Additional research by
Sandoll MyeongjoNeo1 | Soohyun Park Soyeon Kwon

36 ANATOMY
JAPANESE | WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY RYOKO NISHIZUKA

occupying 90–95%

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of the square 1000 x 1000 units
kanji

880

Baseline
120

occupying 83–88%
hiragana of the square

kana
katakana

Japanese characters include ideographic and katakana. These syllabic characters


kanji and syllabic kana (katakana and need to be designed carefully to achieve
hiragana). Generally, each kanji character good readability. Hiragana and katakana
occupies 90 to 95 percent of the area in characters are expressed through diverse
its square body, while a kana character letterforms, reflecting various typeface
is slightly smaller, occupying 83 to 88 styles and designs, including Mincho, Gothic,
percent of the body area. The majority of Rounded Gothic, and many others. Typical
characters in Japanese texts are hiragana Japanese texts also include Latin characters.

thinking with type, third edition 37


INDIC | WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY AKSHITA CHANDRA

Indic scripts, also called Brahmic, descend from the


ancient Indian Brahmi script. Indic writing systems are
used across the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast
Asia and parts of East Asia. Dozens of different scripts
support hundreds of languages. The graphic elements
of a few Indic scripts are shown here.

DEVANAGARI

FINAL STEM MIDDLE STEM HORIZONTAL CLOSED COUNTER UPPER MATRA


CONJUNCT
UPPER MATRA LINE
HEADLINE
UPPER MEAN LINE

LOWER MEAN LINE


BASELINE
LOWER MATRA LINE
VERTICAL CONJUNCT LINE
DEEP MATRA LINE
LOWER MATRA

AKHAND CONJUNCT HALF STEM VERTICAL CONJUNCT


UPPER MATRA LINE
HEADLINE
UPPER MEAN LINE

LOWER MEAN LINE


BASELINE
LOWER MATRA LINE
VERTICAL CONJUNCT LINE
DEEP MATRA LINE
CLOSED LOOP OPEN COUNTER OPEN KNOT VERTICAL TERMINAL

BANGLA

STEM conjunct matra ASCENDER BASE


HEIGHT
ASCENDER LINE
HEADLINE
UPPER MEAN LINE

LOWER MEAN LINE


BASELINE
DESCENDER LINE
BOWL DESCENDER

ARM TERMINAL HEADLINE COUNTER


ASCENDER LINE
HEADLINE
UPPER MEAN LINE

LOWER MEAN LINE


BASELINE
DESCENDER LINE
BINDU

38 ANATOMY

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