Typography, Headlines and Infographics

Tight tracking is often used when a designer needs to conserve
space—for example, by making a six-line paragraph fit on five lines.
Loose tracking is sometimes used to help cover some undesirable white
space.
Designers use a special version of tracking called kerning when they
want to bring a particular pair of letters together. This sometimes is neces-
sary in headlines when an unsightly gap appears between certain pairs of
letters (for example, A and W). If the two letters look like this:

A W

the designer could kern them (reduce the distance between them) to
look like this:

A W

Kerning is not done on body copy, but it makes large headlines look
much better.
A third way to control letter spacing is by controlling the set width.
The set width control changes the width of the letters, stretching or
squeezing them as though they’re made of rubber. The set width con-
trol actually changes the shapes of the letters themselves. It is usually
expressed as a percentage of the font’s original width. For example, here
is a headline with normal set width (100 percent of the font’s original
width):

Wind whips, strips, tips through town

Here is the same headline in a narrow set width (70 percent of normal):

Wind whips, strips, tips through town

The following shows the headline in a wide set width (130 percent of
normal):

Wind whips, strips, tips through town
Set width control is most useful for headlines, especially unusual
ones you might want to use for feature stories. If you change one line
of a headline, however, be sure to change the others in that same
headline.

Alignment

Let’s turn our attention from letters, words and lines to larger chunks
of copy. Copy in the hands of an unimaginative designer can be gray and
dull. Fortunately, you can give your copy personality by the shapes and
contours it fills on the page. For example, a designer can vary the sides
of a story, or alignments, to create three different looks. The three types
of alignments are:

• Flush left. Flush left type runs flush with the left edge of
  the column. It is also called ragged right, because the right
  edge of the column is uneven. Flush left alignment is typi-
  cally used for headlines.


• Justified. Justified copy has straight margins on both the
  right and left edges. It is the usual alignment setting for
  most stories.


• Flush right. Flush right type runs flush with the right
  edge of the column. It’s often used for photo credit lines.

TYPOGRAPHY, HEADLINES AND INFOGRAPHICS^359

kerning

a special kind of tracking that

brings pairs of letters closer

together to prevent unsightly

gaps

set width

a means of scaling the width

of letters. A line of type could

be slightly condensed by

choosing a set width of 95%.

flush left

the alignment of type that

runs flush with the left edge

of the column; also called

ragged right

justified

a description of copy with

straight margins at both the

right and left column edges

flush right

the alignment of type that

runs flush with the right edge

of the column