Working with Typography Flashcards

A designer is adjusting the horizontal spacing between the letters 'A' and 'V' in a headline to create a more visually pleasing and balanced appearance. What is this specific typographic adjustment called?

Answer: Kerning

Kerning is the process of adjusting the space between two individual letters to improve their visual relationship and overall legibility. Tracking, on the other hand, adjusts the spacing uniformly across a range of characters.

You are designing a multi-page article for a magazine and notice the lines of body text are too close together, making it difficult to read. Which typographic setting should you increase to improve the readability by adding more vertical space between the lines?

Answer: Leading

Leading is the vertical space between lines of text, measured from one baseline to the next. Increasing the leading adds more space between lines, which can significantly improve the readability of long passages of text.

Which of the following best describes the primary purpose of establishing a clear typographic hierarchy in a design?

Answer: To guide the reader's eye and indicate the order of importance of the content.

Typographic hierarchy uses variations in size, weight, color, and spacing to create contrast between different levels of information, such as headlines, subheadings, and body text. This visual structure guides the reader and makes the content easier to scan and comprehend.

A designer is creating a poster and wants to adjust the overall density of a line of text by uniformly increasing the space between all of its characters. Which adjustment should be used?

Answer: Tracking

Tracking, also known as letter-spacing, is the uniform adjustment of space between all characters in a selection of text, whether it's a word, a line, or a paragraph. This is different from kerning, which targets the space between two specific characters.

In typography, what is the key distinction between legibility and readability?

Answer: Legibility is how easily individual letterforms can be distinguished, while readability is the ease of reading long passages of text.

Legibility is a function of the typeface design itself—how easy it is to tell one character from another. Readability is about how the type is arranged or typeset—including factors like line length, leading, and font size—making it easy and comfortable to read extended text.

A designer is choosing fonts for a new website. For the main headlines, they select a bold, decorative serif font. For the body paragraphs, which of the following choices would create the most effective and readable combination?

Answer: A clean, simple sans-serif font that complements the headline without competing.

A common and effective practice is to pair a decorative or complex headline font (like a serif) with a simple, neutral body font (like a sans-serif). This creates clear contrast and hierarchy, making the body text highly readable while allowing the headline to stand out.