The Fundamentals Of Typography

During the summer break I did very little of the design projects that I had set myself back in May. One useful design-related thing I did do was read a few design books. 

One which has directly helped me, in the few projects I did attempt, was Gavin Ambrose and Paul Harris's Fundamentals Of Typography. Definitely a worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in graphic design as a thorough understanding of type is a boon when executing a piece of design.

In the book is alot of useful basic stuff as well as interesting little pieces of type trivia, some of these facts that were new to me include: 

-The point size of a typeface measures the block that the letter would have originally been set in, not the letterform itself.

-An 'em' is equal to the point size of the type, an 'en' is half an 'em' whilst a 'hyphen' is a third of an 'em'. All these units of measurement are used for spacing, indents and dashes.

-The optimum length of a line of type (for readability and integrity of a block of text) can be found by multiplying the width of a lowercase alphabet written out in any given typeface by 1.5-2

-An 'italic' is a specially drawn, slanted version of a typeface whilst an 'oblique' is the standard typeface skewed to the right

-À This accent is a 'grave' Ą this accent is an 'ogonek' Ç and this accent 

is a 'cedilla'.