Lecture Notes on the basics of Type OUGD403 Studio Brief 01

Today we were given a lecture on the basic anatomy of type. This was intended to make us aware of the subtleties and nuances of type design to stand us in good stead for our Brief work. Below are a few sketches to help me remember some of the names of areas of glyphs.

These are a few more definitions we were also told about during this lecture/seminar.

Aperture: The opening of a counter to the exterior of a glyph.

Bowl: The closed part of a character that encloses a counter.

Base Line: The line on which the letters sit.

Cap Height: The distance from the base line to the top of the upper case letters.

Counter: Enclosed space in a letter.

Cross Bar: The horizontal stroke across an upper case A or H.

Tail: A descending flourish on K, R, Q and sometimes a lower case a.

X Height: The distance between the base line and the top of lower case letters.

A useful tip we were also given to tell if a typeface has a particularly large X height is to see if the O id round or oval. A Round O suggests a larger X height.

We also did some experimentation with altering type.