Typography and Page Layout

Printed pages generally consist of a mixture of text and graphics. Once the desired text and graphics have been identified, they needto be composed into pages. This is done with page layout software.

Examples of page layout software are PageMaker and QuarkXPress. Regardless of the page layout software used, it is necessary to handle multiple fonts of type.

Type and Typography

Printed material consists of two distinctive kinds of elements, type which is textural material and illustrations and decorations which are graphical in nature. We start with some definitions.

Type - Standardized form for letters, numbers and punctuation marks.

Font - Style and size of type characters.

Typeface or face - Style of a font.

Originally named for the flat printing surface of three-dimensional type of letterpress. The design of a typeface effects mood and ease of reading. It takes into account appearance of characters and how they fit together. A font has both style and size. The size is usually expressed in points (72 points per inch).

Typography - Design and selection of faces and sizes of types.

Typesetting - The operation of assembling types into words and lines. The technology of typesetting has evolved radically over the last quarter of a century. It has gone from physical movable type to a computerized electronic base where text and graphics are output simultaneously.