What Makes a Typeface "Good" Part 02
Choosing The Right Typeface
This intro is the same as in part 01. If you don’t need a reminder skip to the “what is color in Type Design” Section
As a graphic designer you know the most crucial decision of any design is font selection. A typeface can totally change the look, feel and meaning of a design. And we all know there are good typefaces and bad typefaces. When you see a well designed typeface something just feels right about it even if you can’t quite put your finger on it. But when it comes to choosing typefaces that feeling might be more elusive. If type is such a crucial piece of the puzzle the ability to pick out a well designed typeface from a sea of average is one of the most valuable skills you can have as a graphic designer.
Just to introduce myself before we get too far. I am a graphic designer and a typeface designer I have seen behind the curtain and want to give you my take on the issue. This post aims to give designers the ability to pinpoint and the language to articulate what makes a typeface “good”
Now, there are all kinds of different typefaces, serif, sans, blackletter, monospaced scripts etc.. and each one may be appropriate for a different occasion. Just to clarify this isn’t about what makes a typeface appropriate. That is a whole other issue. This is about what all well designed typefaces have in common no matter the style. And how you as a designer can identify them.
There are 3 things all well designed typefaces have in common. In Part 01 we looked at Curve Harmony. Here in Part 02 we will look at “Color”
What is Color in Type Design
Typeface Designers are pretentious. so we like to make up odd ways of using terms that graphic designers are familiar with in unfamiliar ways. It helps us feel cool, and we really need to feel cool sometimes cuz our life’s work is literally the same thing as the homework of a toddler learning to draw letters. So when talking about the “Color” of a typeface we are NOT talking about hue, saturation, value, or a specific hex code; we are talking about how light or dark grey the typeface looks if you squint your eyes and make it all blurry. (I realize this definition also sounds like it was made up by a toddler.)
When it comes to well designed typefaces there are 3 areas across which even color should be achieved.
Across Strokes
When drawing each individual letter of a typeface a consistent color should be achieved. At a very basic level this means that all of your vertical and horizontal strokes are the same weight. This goal seems simple enough to achieve in theory. Make all your vertical strokes 100 pixels in weight et voilà everything has an even color… Wrong! Take a look at these two “HB’s” the one on the left uses this logic and looks absolutely heinous. The “HB” on the right has a much more even color. How is this achieved?
As a note before we move on. Even color does not mean an even weight when it comes to horizontal vs vertical strokes. Many well designed typefaces have thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes. The important thing when it comes to even color is that those vertical and horizontal stroke weights and relationship to one another stay visually consistent.
Optical compensation
A well practiced type designer knows when to math things out and when to abandon math and use the eyeball to get things right. For example vertical strokes appear lighter than horizontal strokes of the same mathematical weight. In order to achieve the same visual weight steps need to be taken to compensate. As a general rule a horizontal stroke should be 10% lighter than a vertical stroke in order to appear the same weight. However even general rules are subject to change based on the style and weight of a typeface. Visual over mathematical choices need to be balanced in every character to achieve a balance of color. When this balance is hit correctly a typeface has a human warmth and machine precision that dance with each other. Again, like in curve harmony it is a balance of tension and release that creates beautifully colored characters. A well practiced type designer has the ability to strike this delicate balance in each and every character of a typeface.
Below is an image of how a mathematically perfect typeface might look (orange outlines) compared to Vanilla Grotesque Display (black letters). You can see each letter needs special attention and human adjustments to achieve even color with no serious dark spots in any letters
As a designer look closely at each character. Blur your eyes and notice are there dark spots at the corners of the M and N. Do the Bowls of the B disappear into a dark blob? Does the O look too heavy on the top and bottom? All these are ways to check for a poorly colored typeface. Of course like all things there needs to be a balance often strictly prioritizing even color leads to odd looking letterforms. Again, balance is key.
Across characters
Once you have established whether an individual character is well colored the next task is achieving even color across every character of a typeface. You don’t want your O’s to look lighter than your W’s for example. Again there are tricks that can be implemented when math fails to achieve visually even color. Rounded strokes generally need to be thicker than straight ones so the stroke of an “O” is mathematically heavier than the straight strokes of the “H” in order to achieve visually even color. And Capital Letters are mathematically Heavier than lowercase ones. By how much is a topic of very hot debate that deserves its own super wonky blog post but we wont go there now. For now know that when you are looking at a long paragraph of text set in a well designed typeface when you blur your eyes you shouldn’t see any darker or lighter spots. (the exception being with monospaced fonts)
Below is an example of the color of a monospaced font vs a text font designed for reading at small size. Not the inconsistent splotchy color on the left vs the more even color on the right.
Across Axis
You have made it this far so imma assume it is safe to get real wonky on you. Many typefaces have one or more Axes. Axes are a perimeter in which a typeface varies. The most common axes in typeface design is weight. The weight of a typeface varies from light color to dark color. This is why super duper bold fonts are often called “black” when designing a cross the weight axis it is important to have a smooth stepping of color from the lightest style to the darkest. There should not be an obvious jump where one style is much much darker or lighter than its neighbor. This however is becoming less important and will become less and less so as variable fonts rise in popularity and technical support.
Multiple Axes
While weight is the most common axis of a typeface, often typefaces have two, three or more axes. It is important to maintain consistent color between all axes of a typeface. For example a regular weight in a condensed style typeface should have the same color as a regular weight in a wide style of the same typeface. And as you may have guessed by now there is not a mathematical way to achieve this. A condensed typeface with a mathematical stoke weight of 100px will appear to be much darker than a wide typeface with a mathematical stroke weight of 100px
Below is an image showing what different widths with the same mathematical stroke look like (top) vs different widths in the same weight adjusted for visual color (bottom). The top line effect is achieved by dialing in the variable font sliders while the bottom line is Vanilla Grotesque’s defaults settings.
Text Size
Finally when it come to text size as a variable axis small letter forms tent to be read as a whole whereas display size letterforms tend to have their element read individually. This means even color should be more heavily prioritized in type styles intended for small text sizes. And harmony of curves should be more heavily prioritized in type styles intended for large text sizes. We will get more into the difference between text and display fonts in part 03 of this series.
So What Does This Have to Do With Graphic Designers?
It was mentioned a bit before but when evaluating the quality of a typeface look blur your eyes a bit. Do you notice any dark spots in letters? Do the same in large blocks of text. Do you notice any dark or light spots? And finally if you plan on using multiple styles of a typeface do the condensed styles have the same color as their wide counterparts? What about Italic vs upright? And so on and so forth you get the idea.
If you run a typeface through these tests and the color stays consistent you are most likely looking at a well designed typeface that will elevate any design it touches.
Thanks for Reading, Now Go Make Something.
Harbor