sofobomotypo

I've been learning a bit about typography and layout for SoFoBoMo. There's so much to take in! Over the weekend I read the Non-Designer's Type Book by Robin Williams. The biggest crisis of choice I'm being faced with is the vast variety of fonts I can choose from. I think I'll just have to pick a couple and get on with it. The basics are simple, sans serif for titles and better legibility, serif fonts for larger blocks of text that need to be readable. But there are so many choices! Then there is all the more subtle details; using old-style numbers, kerning, small caps, ligatures, appropriate em dashes and quotes. Adjusting the paragraph and font alignment, hanging punctuation. The way a serif font letter 'a' changes to an enclosed 'a' in the italic version, but the san serif 'a' doesn't change for an italic serif font'a', just slanted. Many of the features that differentiate a layout tool from a word processor. Details that I was never aware of before, but now I see everywhere as I read. This sort of selective revelation has always fascinated me. Growing up I'd never seen a sun dog. Never even knew what one was. It wasn't through lack of opportunity- I spent a lot of time watching clouds float by. A few years ago I read a book about atmosphere and effects. It mentioned sun dogs and I thought they must be some sort of rare, hardly ever seen event. Amazingly, the day after I read the book, I saw one. Then I started seeing them every few weeks. They'd always been there - I just didn't even know to look for them, so I couldn't see them. I think this happens with photography too. Until I was aware enough of sharpening halos and other sharpening side-effects, I couldn't even see them to tell if they were right or wrong. I can look back at early pictures that I thought looked perfectly fine and now see all the issues. I couldn't even see those problems at the time I made them - I wasn't aware. But once you become sensitive to them and aware, then you can start improving on those features. The awareness is the key. The use of rhythm in composition, or layering or other compositional ideas is similar. Before I knew to look for it, I might know an image was more compelling, but couldn't divine why. Once you have the language and awareness to go look for the features, then you can understand what is going on. Only then can you start intentionally using it in your own composition. I now have a much better awareness of typography, that I didn't have before. Hopefully I can apply it to my SoFoBoMo book!