The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

PHOTOSHOP TOOLS FOR TYPE

1 First things first: Once you’ve

chosen the basic Horizontal or Vertical Type tool, the basic settings can be

tweaked from here. You can change font, point size, or turn your text 3D

3 Fountain of fonts: Which font to

use is obviously critical. Janelle Cummins says her “favourite fonts

tend to be those with large font families. Because of the variety of

line weights, styles and condensations, I am able to use only

one typeface. This creates unity.”

5 Chunks of text: text is broken up and displayed in the Manage how your

Paragraph panel. Here you have your alignment and justification options,

and you can choose whether to hyphenate or not

2 Give your work character: From

the Character panel you have more control over your text, and can

manage tracking, leading, kerning and so on

4 Layer it up: separate layers so you can manage Text is created on

it and apply different effects. If your client is yet to supply you with all

the words they want, you can create Placeholder Text from the

main Type menu

Typography can seem very technical. There are

rules laid down to ensure legibility and readability,

and you may feel your creativity stifled. “Skilled

typographers,” says Mach, “spend thousands of

hours with letterforms and have studied their

historical metamorphosis and public use. There are

rules that have been decided upon. Although it could

be argued that typography is subjective, some

aspects have to be intrinsically correct. This is the

separation of design and art. Yet, it is clear that

typography changes as human need changes. A

good example is that insular and blackletter scripts

are no longer used in modern books.”

Indeed, these days, Murilo Lopes says that you

can often see “more clean styles, less gradients, less

information. The principal rules that I use is

alignment and colour combination. And readability!

For example, an image with much information

behind the text, with many colours and contrast does

not help the readability.” A common mistake that

Janelle Cummins spots is “too little leading and

tracking,” or “the unnecessary use of multiple

typefaces [that] hardly relate to the message of the

piece. In general, no more than two or three

typefaces should be used at one time and should aim

at enhancing the meaning of the words.”

“Novice designers often make type too big,”

says Mach. “Of course you have to design for

specific situations and people, but when I am

struggling with a text layout, it nearly always

comes down to my tracking being too tight and

type size being too large. Trained typographers use

size, tracking, weight and careful typeface

selection to convey meaning and mood. These are

reasons why letters and alphabets have won out

over pictograms and symbols to describe complex

ideas in the modern world.”

When he was learning, Martin Schmetzer used

graffiti “to explore the alphabet and learn how the

letters are put together. You don’t have to follow strict

traditional typographic guides and can twist and bend

the letters until you tame them into your own. Make

each letter look different in unlimited ways. In fact, I try

not to have guides or rules in consideration when I

design, other than legibility and the aim to create

something visually appealing.”

Often, the typographer will push the latter, while the

client may want to play safe with the former. In this

regard, van Deflt mentions “the wish of the client to use

comic-style fonts for headings or body-text. I am glad

when I can convince them not to go for something

THEY SOUND LIKE THEY MEAN THE SAME

THING, BUT TYPOGRAPHERS HAVE TO

JUGGLE BOTH CONCERNS

LEGIBILITY VERSUS READABILITY

Legibility is how easy it is to distinguish an

individual letter form, while readability is about

how easy it is to read and understand the text. The

former depends on large X-heights and large

counters and occurs when “the designer deeply

understands human perception and language,

including the end purpose of the typeface,” as Seth

Mach put it, while the latter is about point size,

line length and letter spacing. Mach adds:

“Readability is obviously how easily a typeface is

able to be read, but a lot of decisions go into that

design such as point size, line lengths, tracking,

leading and type alignment, among other factors

like the background contrast. All these can affect

the way people perceive letterforms and words.”

“As a typographer,” Bart van Delft adds, “it’s

sometimes tempting to choose a beautiful thin font

for headings. Not all clients can see the beauty of

lean lettering and prefer readability over design. So

try to search for a legible but attractive typeface.” © Bart van Delft

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Graphics & new media

148 The Professional Photoshop Book

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