Graphic designer Mehman Mammedov has created a Swiss graphic design inspired series of posters based on the Adobe Fonts Glossary Typography Terms.
Using Adobe’s Fonts Glossary Typography Terms as a reference, Mehman Mammedov has created an amazing poster series inspired by the principles of Swiss graphic design. So these posters are not only nice to look at, but you can also learn something about a few typographic terms. All of the following poster designs have been created by Mehman Mammedov with the help of Adobe Illustrator.
X-HEIGHT
“Traditionally, x-height is the height of the lowercase letter x. It is also the height of the body of lowercase letters in a font, excluding the ascenders and descenders. Some lower-case letters that do not have ascenders or descenders still extend a little bit above or below the x-height as part of their design. The x-height can vary greatly from typeface to typeface at the same point size.”
WORD SPACING
“Adjusting the average distance between words to improve legibility or to fit a block of text into a given amount of space.”
WIDTH
One of the possible variations of a typeface within a type family, such as condensed or extended.
WHITE SPACE
“The blank areas on a page where text and illustrations are not printed. White space should be considered an important graphic element in page design.”
WEIGHT
“The relative darkness of the characters in the various typefaces within a type family. Weight is indicated by relative terms such as thin, light, bold, extra-bold, and black.”
UNJUSTIFIED
“Depending on alignment, this term refers to text which is set flush left, flush right, or centered.”
TYPOGRAPHIC COLOR
“The apparent blackness of a block of text. Color is a function of the relative thickness of the strokes that make up the characters in a font, as well as the width, point size, and leading used for setting the text block.”
TYPEFACE FAMILY
“Also known as family. The collection of faces that were designed together and intended to be used together. For example, the Garamond font family consists of roman and italic styles, as well as regular, semibold, and bold weights. Each of the style and weight combinations is called a face.”
TYPEFACE
“The letters, numbers, and symbols that make up a design of type. A typeface is often part of a type family of coordinated designs. The individual typefaces are named after the family and are also specified with a designation, such as italic, bold or condensed.”
TRACKING
The average space between characters in a block of text. Sometimes also referred to as letterspacing.
TABULAR FIGURES
“Numerals that all have the same width. This makes it easier to set tabular matter.”
SYMBOL
A category of type in which the characters are special symbols rather than alphanumeric characters.
SANS SERIF
“A typeface that does not have serifs. Generally a low-contrast design. Sans serif faces lend a clean, simple appearance to documents.”
LIGATURE
“Two or more letters tied together into a single letter. In some typefaces, character combinations such as fi and fl overlap, resulting in an unsightly shape. The fi and fl ligatures were designed to improve the appearance of these characters. Letter combinations such as ff, ffl and ffi are available in all Adobe OpenType Pro fonts and selected Adobe OpenType Standard fonts.”
RULE
“A solid or dashed graphic line in documents used to separate the elements of a page. Rules and other graphic devices should be used sparingly, and only for clarifying the function of other elements on the page.”
REVERSE
“The technique of printing white or light-colored text on a black or dark background for emphasis. This technique greatly reduces legibility, especially with small type.”
RAISED CAP
“A design style in which the first capital letter of a paragraph is set in large point size and aligned with the baseline of the first line of text. Compare to a drop cap.”
PARAGRAPH RULES
“Graphic lines associated with a paragraph that separate blocks of text. Rules are commonly used to separate columns and isolate graphics on a page. Some desktop publishing programs allow paragraph styles to be created that include paragraph rules above and/or below the paragraph.”
MARGIN
“The white spaces around text blocks. Margins typically need to be created on the edges of a page, since most printers can’t print to the very edge. White space also makes a document look better and easier to read.”
SERIF
“Small decorative strokes that are added to the end of a letter’s main strokes. Serifs improve readability by leading the eye along the line of type.”
LETTERSPACING
“Adjusting the average distance between letters in a block of text to fit more or less text into the given space or to improve legibility. Kerning allows adjustments between individual letters; letterspacing is applied to a block of text as a whole. Letterspacing is sometimes referred to as tracking or track kerning.”
Hey, I really like the tracking one!