The Complete Manual of Typography: A Guide to Setting Perfect Type, Second Edition

The Complete Manual of Typography: A Guide to Setting Perfect Type, Second Edition

by Jim Felici
Released July 2011
Publisher(s): Adobe Press
ISBN: 9780132821926

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Book description

Note to customers: The print version of this book is highly formatted, and many pages contain examples that use a variety of approaches to text layout including the use of multiple fonts. The subtleties of this layout would be lost when converted to ePub, so we have chosen to offer this ebook only in PDF format, which keeps the page layout intact.

Beautifully designed and richly illustrated The Complete Manual of Typography, Second Edition, is the fully updated version of THE seminal book on typography by Jim Felici. This book is about how type should look and how to make it look that way — in other words, how to set type like a professional. It explains in practical terms how to use today’s digital tools to achieve the secret of good design: well set type. An essential reference for anyone who works with type: designers, print production professionals, and corporate communications managers can go to straight to the index to find focused answers to specific questions, while educators and students can read it as a text book from cover to cover.

You’ll Learn:

  • Basic Concepts and anatomy of good typography, indexed for quick reference by busy professionals

  • How to manage fonts and handle corrupted or missing fonts on any operating system

  • What makes good type good (and bad type bad)

  • Techniques for working with measure, point-size, leading, kerning, and other type fundamentals

  • Practical ways to fix composition problems such as loose lines, bad rags, windows, and orphans

  • Hard-to-find rules for managing hyphenation and justification, indents, text wraps, and expert-set characters

  • Secrets of how to wring out good type from uncooperative word-processing and layout problems

  • The latest font technologies, including OpenType

  • New typographic tools and improved font services in Operating Systems such as Windows and Mac OS

  • New Techniques, and coverage of working methods such as style sheets.

  • 35 page glossary of type terms


    • Praise for the first edition

    "Clear and elegant... There's no better or more useful introduction to the whole craft of typography"

    Roger Black - Danilo Black, Inc

    "All you've wanted to know about type and typography but never dared ask. Jim Felici brings together a vast amount of knowledge in this book. Must-Have!"

    Erik Spiekermann author, Stop Stealing Sheep (and Find Out How Type Works)

    Table of contents

    1. Table of Contents
    2. Foreword
    3. Introduction
    4. PART ONE: Typographic Basics
      1. 1 The State of the Art and How We Got Here
        1. The Building Blocks of Type
        2. Evolution and Automation
        3. Desktop Publishing Alters the Rules
        4. Output Resolution and Type Quality
      2. 2 Units of Typographic Measurement
        1. Absolute Measurements
        2. Relative Units
        3. Other Units of Measure
      3. 3 About Typefaces
        1. Definitions: Font versus Typeface
        2. Type Design and the Em Square
        3. Type Anatomy
        4. Optical Aspects of Typeface Design
        5. Size Changes Everything
        6. Principal Features of Typefaces
        7. Typefaces as Role Players: Text, Display, and Decorative
        8. Classifying Typefaces by Historical Period
        9. Typeface-Naming Issues
      4. 4 About Fonts
        1. The Two Basic Kinds of Fonts: Outline and Bitmapped
        2. What’s in a Font?
        3. Cross-Platform Font-Compatibility Issues
        4. Finding the Characters You Need
        5. Identifying Font Formats
        6. The Basics of Font Management
        7. Font-Editing Programs
      5. 5 The Basics of Using Typefaces
        1. Readability
        2. Traditional Roles for Seriffed and Sans Serif Types
        3. Expressing Emphasis
        4. Uses for Condensed and Extended Faces
        5. Using Display Type
        6. Using Decorative Type
        7. Type in Color
        8. Reverses
      6. 6 Typesetting versus Typewriting
        1. Page Sizes and Line Lengths
        2. Word Spaces
        3. Line Endings and Carriage Returns
        4. Quads
        5. Typeface Choice and Point Size
        6. Unavailable Characters
        7. Tabs
      7. 7 Setting Type on a Personal Computer
        1. A Tale of Two Systems: Typesetting and the Word Processing Legacy
        2. How WYSIWYG Works
        3. How Operating Systems Manage Fonts
        4. Font Embedding
        5. Font Copyright Issues
      8. 8 What Makes Good Type Good (and Bad Type Bad)
        1. Legibility and Readability
        2. Type Color
        3. Optical Effects and Alignment Problems
        4. The Eyes Have It
    5. PART TWO: How to Set Type
      1. 9 Measure, Point Size, and Leading
        1. Line Length, or Measure
        2. Leading
        3. Typeface-Specific Considerations
      2. 10 Controlling Hyphenation and Justification
        1. What Hyphenation and Justification Means
        2. Controlling Word and Letter Spaces
        3. How Measure Affects H&J
        4. Specifying Word-Space Ranges in Ragged-Margin Type
        5. Specifying Word-Space Ranges in Text with Justified Margins
        6. Specifying Letter-Space Ranges
        7. Altering Character Widths during H&J
        8. Testing Your H&J Values
        9. Fixing and Avoiding Composition Problems
        10. Aesthetic Rags
      3. 11 Kerning and Tracking
        1. Definitions: Kerning and Tracking
        2. Kerning in Practice
        3. Using Tracking Controls
      4. 12 Managing Indention and Alignment
        1. Kinds of Indents
        2. Skews and Wraps
        3. Alignments of Characters and Text Blocks
        4. Visual Alignment
      5. 13 Special Characters and Special Situations
        1. Extended Character Sets
        2. Small Capitals
        3. Old-Style Numbers
        4. Ligatures, Logotypes, and Diphthongs
        5. Swash Characters
        6. Superiors, Inferiors, and Ordinals
        7. Fractions
        8. Dashes
        9. Points of Ellipsis
        10. Common Pi Characters
        11. Accented Characters
        12. Character-Specific Spacing Issues
        13. Initial Capitals
      6. 14 Document Structures and Typographic Conventions
        1. Structural Elements
        2. Navigation Tools
        3. Independent Text Units
        4. Indexes
        5. Bibliographies
      7. 15 Tables
        1. The Structure of Tables
        2. Table-Setting Techniques
      8. 16 Language-Specific Issues
        1. Character Sets
        2. Hyphenation
        3. Time Expressions
        4. Currency Symbols
        5. British English versus American English
        6. French Typographic Conventions
        7. Spanish Typographic Conventions
        8. Italian Typographic Conventions
        9. German Typographic Conventions
      9. 17 Typesetting with Style Sheets
        1. How Style Sheets Work
        2. Creating Style Sheets
        3. Using Style Sheets
      10. 18 Resolution Issues: Print, Screen, and Web
        1. The Advantages of High-Resolution Output
        2. Type Onscreen
        3. Typography and the World Wide Web
    6. PART THREE: References
    7. Glossary
      1. A
      2. B
      3. C
      4. D
      5. E
      6. F
      7. G
      8. H
      9. I
      10. J
      11. K
      12. L
      13. M
      14. N
      15. O
      16. P
      17. Q
      18. R
      19. S
      20. T
      21. U
      22. V
      23. W
      24. X
    8. Index
      1. A
      2. B
      3. C
      4. D
      5. E
      6. F
      7. G
      8. H
      9. I
      10. J
      11. K
      12. L
      13. M
      14. N
      15. O
      16. P
      17. Q
      18. R
      19. S
      20. T
      21. U
      22. V
      23. W
      24. X
      25. Z
    9. Further Reading

    Product information

    • Title: The Complete Manual of Typography: A Guide to Setting Perfect Type, Second Edition
    • Author(s): Jim Felici
    • Release date: July 2011
    • Publisher(s): Adobe Press
    • ISBN: 9780132821926