Design your school work—Part 3: Typefaces
Once you’ve considered the layout of your essays and decided to use a tasteful and minimal colour palette, the next thing I think you should consider is my favourite topic: typography. If you missed my first and second articles in this series then I recommend you read them first
Maybe it is because I know the most about this particular aspect but I think this really needs to be split into two and so I will teach you some of the basics of type in terms of what kinds of typefaces to use when and what to use for emphasis. Next week I ask you to bring your magnifying glass to look at some of the really fine details that set apart the poseurs from the people who really know what they are doing.
So, I would hope that you can tell the difference between different typefaces, even if you can’t accurately describe them or put a name to them. So... Spot the difference:
While there are many different ways of classifying typefaces, I tend to use the simplest, most obvious and probably the most flawed system. They either have serifs or they don’t, either closely resemble handwriting or they don’t.
The most useful to us are the top two. A serif typeface (like Times New Roman, Georgia, Garamond, Caslon, ect.) has little details on the ends of the letter-forms which help to guide the eye along the lines; a sans-serif (like Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Calibri, ect.) doesn’t have these but they can be just as useful.
While there are sub-divisions within these, I don’t think we really need to go into them—there are enough places on the internet where that kind of knowledge can be found.
Generally speaking, serifs are more readable in large blocks and so I would recommend that you use them for the text in your essays. Sans-serifs are more legible meaning they are easier to read at a glance and so I maybe put your name, word count and title in a sans. I personally prefer to do everything in pretty serifs, regardless of the implications to legibility. You don’t have to take my every word as gospel but make your own decisions what looks good and when visual appearance out-weighs functionality—in an essay situation, this rarely happens.
While in most situations I would strongly advise against using any kind of script or handwriting font in an essay—and never use one for large blocks of text—but there are times (for example in a pull-quote (I’ll come on to them later) or if you are writing something that should be hand written.
In Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books, each character has their own distinct handwriting font which helps to show a little bit more character and allows the reader to see, at a glance who has written the letter. I can’t really see how you would integrate that into an essay but if it calls for it then I better give you some advise on what to do with them.
For one, I don’t care what you prefer normally, never justify the text, when was the last time you saw someone doing this in their handwriting. Secondly, the size and shape of the letters dictate how big to make the font and what the line-spacing/leading should be like. Finally, most scripts have interconnecting letters so don’t change the letter-spacing/tracking or this effect will be ruined.
It could be argued that this would be a pull-quote (I said I would get on to them), and I’m sure everyone who has ever read a newspaper has seen one of them—those quotes from people, usually set in larger text that breaks out from the rest of the page. While they are normally used in newspapers, a variation can be used to add some visual spark to your essays. You don’t have to have a quote from someone, maybe you have an important statistic or point to make that you want to show off, why not design that into your essays?
So now that we have talked about calling attention to a block of text, now lets look at calling attention to individual words. Firstly with italic or oblique (both slanted) text; with bold type; with colour; with small caps and with another typeface.
Probably the most used form of emphasis is slanted text, and for good reason;it is definitely noticeable, calls attention to itself subtly and doesn’t require a colour printer.
Most people would think that all slanted text is italics, but there are actually two types. Italics are redrawn to be more cursive while the second type—oblique—is just skewed slightly.
Second to that is probably the mighty bold. Simple and effective, this calls more attention to itself that italics and so should be used less.
As I mentioned last week, colour can be used for emphasis but make sure that you change the weight to bold to compensate for the power of the black text around it.
Small-caps are exactly what they say on the tin; small capital letters that can be used for emphasis.
Unfortunately, not all typefaces have them and if you let the computer draw them for you by simply scaling down full-sized capitals it’ll lose the effect.
Another method of emphasis is to use a different typeface altogether. If you are using a serif then a sans for emphasis can work really well and because it is so rarely done it can give a nice, unusual effect.
Headings can be another matter altogether. Although you must be careful not to go overboard, you can use pretty much whatever font you like here. This is the time to show off your sassy personality with a snazzy typeface. Bear in mind though, that it is still a piece of school work. Don’t use the yellow submarine font in your IT essays.
The most important thing is that here is a definite difference between heading and body text. You can do this with size, all-caps, small-caps, bold, different face... Sound familiar?
Finally, as you can see in the example above, drop-caps give a lovely effect. Follow this guide to use them in Microsoft Word. Don’t use them on every line, again the more you use something, the less effective it becomes. Try using them on the first paragraph of your essay or at the start of a new chapter.
I think the key is to use functional typefaces and make your essay stand out with the embellishments. Your teacher will most likely appreciate you making your work easier to read and more visually appealing.
