{"id":34127,"date":"2016-03-10T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/?p=34127"},"modified":"2024-04-10T06:26:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T13:26:04","slug":"7-step-plan-typography-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/7-step-plan-typography-expert","title":{"rendered":"A 7-Step Plan to Become a Typography Expert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why is typography such an important part of graphic design? What does it take to gain respect as a world-class typographer? As in many aspects of artist expression, there are often more questions than answers. Today, however, you’ll find answers to the questions above and hopefully many more — enough to propel you into an exciting new career.\"a-7-step-plan-to-become-a-typography-expert-infographic-1-01\"

When you speak, words can mean many different things based on how you say them. Typography contains within it the written equivalent of spoken inflection, tone, cadence, volume, pitch, modulation and emphasis. That’s a lot of baggage to carry, but believe it or not, you can control all of it. To do so, you’ll need to experiment with the subtlest variations of design elements such as the serif, pairing, ligature and kerning. What do all those things mean? Prepare yourself for a crash course in typography, beginning with how fonts impact the viewer and ending with a pathway to immortality (or at least a second income).<\/p>

<\/span>The Psychology of Typography<\/span><\/h2>

A great deal of research on typography has been instigated by marketing challenges, where instant visual communications and the emotional content of images have a measurable financial impact. Research by economic professor Terry Childers shows that a typeface alone<\/a> can affect how well people remember a piece of text and how they feel about the associated brand. The association was so strong that Pamela Henderson and the American Marketing Association published a typographic framework<\/a> for which impressions can be created by specific artistic elements. With effective branding, consumers can identify a company by its font<\/a> in the absence of other clues. As the essence of a brand’s logo, the font alone can be worth hundreds of millions.<\/em><\/p>

In the paragraph above, you may have been distracted wondering about the difference between a font and a typeface. For the vast majority of people today, there is no difference. To understand the distinction from a typographical perspective and discuss it intelligently, you’ll need a little background on the history of typography, a great first step to embarking on your new career.<\/p>

<\/span>How to Become an Expert Typographer<\/span><\/h2>

<\/span>Step 1: Learn the History of Typography<\/span><\/h3>

As a typographer, you’ll be joining a tradition that has more than 4,000 years of intriguing history<\/a>. The Greek word “typography” is made up of “typos,” meaning a stamp for making impressions in clay, and “graphein,” meaning writing. Call it laziness or efficiency, but the earliest scribes at the dawn of civilization got tired of writing the same letters over and over, so they built stamps they could reuse in endless combinations.\nAfter three millennia, the Chinese invented a machine that held ceramic characters for repeated printings. In the Western world, movable type came about almost by accident. Johannes Gutenberg, in 15th-century Germany, collected investments to sell holy relics along a crusade route. Unfortunately, he got the year of the crusade wrong, and nobody showed up to buy his relics. To satisfy his angry investors, he quickly came up with a movable type machine, perhaps borrowed from Chinese designs, to print Bibles instead. The world of mass printing instantly exploded. Over the next five centuries, building striking and engaging typefaces out of wood, metal or digital bits became an original artistic endeavor demanding skill in visual arts, composition, sculpture, engraving and color theory.<\/p>

<\/span>Step 2: Understand the Major Types of Fonts<\/span><\/h3>

This is where the font vs. typeface distinction<\/a> begins. Before computers replaced printing presses in the 20th century, “typeface” referred to the overall design, and “font” meant the specific size and weight of that typeface used in any given print setup. For example, Times New Roman is a typeface, while Times New Roman Bold 24 point is the font. In Microsoft Word (and many other software programs), the typeface is now referred to as the font name. Expect clients and project managers to use either term interchangeably in discussing the look and feel of your work. At this point, it tends to break down as a generational disagreement, but some top typographers are still a bit sensitive about the use of the terms. What’s truly important is understanding the four categories of fonts, or typefaces, that typographers work with most often:<\/p>