Using Typographic Color and Typefaces

Throughout the history of publishing, professional typographers have enhanced the look of documents by selecting from a variety of fonts to produce a desired look, and by increasing or decreasing character spacing. When done correctly, character spacing gives a finished look. Words set in characters that are surrounded by generous amounts of space have a light, airy feel; words set in characters that are close together feel heavier and more serious.

Typographic color

As a group , four aspects (kerning, tracking, scale, and hyphenation) determine what typographers call color, simply another way of describing the overall quality or appearance of text on a page. If you want to see a document's typographic color, make your eyes go slightly out of focus. Here's a good way to understand the concept of typographic color: Find a magazine page that has a good amount of text on it. Stare at the page for two minutes or so. Then focus on something halfway between you and the page. You'll see the text blur. The resulting gray level and consistency is color. Why is a document's color so important? Because it affects both the document's mood and readability. For most publishing applications, a light to medium color is preferable because it is easier on the eye.

The influence of typeface

Factors in addition to character spacing influence color. The most fundamental factor is the typeface. An airy, light typeface such as Baskerville Old Face has a light color, while a solid, heavy typeface such as Franklin Gothic Heavy has a dark color. Figure 40-5 shows the same text in these two typefaces. Notice how the text on the right, in Baskerville, looks lighter than the Caslon 224 text on the left. The example shown in the figure clearly demonstrates that type fonts are major contributors to typographic color. Some typefaces are light, some are heavy. Regardless of a typeface's intrinsic weight, InDesign includes character spacing controls that let you modify a font's effect on typographic color.

Figure 40-5: Different typefaces produce different shades of typographic color.