[Finals] Basic Typographical Rules
This text is adapted from John Krygier and Denis Wood’s Making Maps (2011, Guilford Press).
“Effective type in [landscape representation] requires understanding the basics of typography. Of particular relevance are kerning, tracking, leading, and alignment. Careful design of type will make your [representation] more functional and beautiful.”
Kerning
Kerning adjusts the spacing between particular pairs of letters to make them look uniform and less distracting. (Compare to monospacing.) Kerning is automatically adjusted with most digital type placement algorithms in drawing software, but can also be set by hand.
+ Evaluate type on your representation that may need kerning.
+ Kerning is more important for larger type sizes.
Tracking
Tracking changes the spacing between all letters.
+ Avoid negative tracking (scrunched-up, hard-to-read type) in most instances.
+ Sometimes increase tracking slightly for a more open, airy feel in a block of text.
+ Increase tracking by using upper-case letters to label area features.
Leading
Leading adjusts spacing between lines of text.
+ Evaluate type on or around your representation that may need leading.
+ Maintain a consistent leading for similar features labeled on a representation.
+ Avoid reducing leading to reduce the space utilized by a block of text; use a smaller type size instead.
+ Avoid excessive leading within labels or blocks of text, as that may result in such labels being read as multiple labels.
Alignment
+ Avoid left-right justification if it causes distracting spacing problems. (A jagged right edge is generally more visually pleasing than crisp edges with distracting spacing in-between.)
+ Ragged right alignment is the norm, but too much ragged is distracting.
+ Use hyphenation sparingly in text blocks (note that hyphenation is often on by default in InDesign), and avoid it entirely on annotations and labels.
+ Ragged left alignment is difficult to read in blocks, but may be used for annotations referring to symbols or features to the right of the annotation.