Goal:

Effec­tive use of spa cem ake sty pog rap hymo rein vi ting tore ad and ea sier to un der sta nd.

Visual judge­ment and under­stand­ing of space could be con­sid­ered one of the most impor­tant aspects of good typography.

Objective:

The objec­tive of the exer­cise is to rec­og­nize the visual attrib­utes and man­ual actions nec­es­sary to cor­rectly space in design software.

Background Reading

• Kane, p 76–79.
• Dab­ner, Mod­ule 3, Unit 1 and 2.

Exercise:

Cre­ate a base­line grid and sam­ple let­ter­space com­po­si­tion using InDesign.

Part One

Begin the assign­ment by cre­at­ing a base­line grid using InDe­sign. Size your page to Let­ter (8.5 × 11 in), ori­ent it ver­ti­cally (por­trait) and cre­ate 3 pica (nota­tion: 3p) mar­gins on all sides. Within these mar­gins, edit the Pref­er­ences> Units> Base­line Grid to draw evenly spaced hor­i­zon­tal lines down the page at 1p incre­ments. Return to the doc­u­ment and turn on Base­line Grids using the View menu.

Part Two

Using InDe­sign reate the word “holo­graphic” in a serif type­face from the restricted type­face list at 48pts. Draw the word three times start­ing with the clos­est pos­si­ble spac­ing, touch­ing, or almost touch­ing. Pro­duce the word a sec­ond time increas­ing space to achieve opti­cally good spac­ing in the sec­ond draw­ing. Finally, pro­duce the word with the let­ters over spaced, just to the point where they appear to float, unre­lated to each other. Next, set the same word in all caps, repeat­ing the pre­vi­ous spac­ing conventions.

Finally, type­set the word “holo­graphic” an addi­tional six (6) times in the same man­ner as above, but this time use a sans-serif face from the restricted type­face list at 48pts. In all, you will pro­duce the word twelve times. Please see the fol­low­ing example:

• holo­graphic
• holo­graphic
• holo­graphic
• HOLOGRAPHIC
• HOLOGRAPHIC
• HOLOGRAPHIC

• holo­graphic
• holo­graphic
• holo­graphic
• HOLOGRAPHIC
• HOLOGRAPHIC
• HOLOGRAPHIC

• The fol­low­ing rubric posted on D2L will deter­mine exer­cise score: Exer­cise Grading

Techniques

let­ters pac­ing, track­ing, type specifications

Materials

Adobe Inde­sign, typefaces