Typography in Affinity Publisher

[Prouvé]

I thought it may be of help to those new to Affinity Publisher to produce a brief guide to Typography. 

The focus of the guide is to highlight the importance of using typography settings to allow for repositioning and sizing of page elements when finally deciding on a page layout design. Hopefully, it will be of use to those who may be unfamiliar with the typography settings in AP.

The guide can be viewed HERE. If you want to download the PDF, click on THIS LINK

[peter]

If only everybody read this, then simple documents would be a pleasure to read.

 

If only the people who do small print would pay heed to this simplicity.

[smadell]

I enjoyed your piece, and found it quite informative. Therefore, I apologize for being a "buzzkill," but you misspelled the word "Typography" on the front cover – the letter "o" is included twice.

[Alfred]

1 minute ago, smadell said:

I enjoyed your piece, and found it quite informative. Therefore, I apologize for being a "buzzkill," but you misspelled the word "Typography" on the front cover – the letter "o" is included twice.

If we’re going to be picky, there should be a hyphen instead of an en dash in the word.

[jmwellborn]

@smadell and @Alfred  surely those must be "typos?" 🤪

[walt.farrell]

And surely, if there can be typos, there can be ography about them. And as two otherwise unrelated words, typo-ography would properly have an en-dash, not a hyphen

[Prouvé]

Ok People! You all get gold stars for paying attention!   The error wasn't initially deliberate but it took our people almost a full 7 days to spot the error, so you all did marginally better at about 3 or 4 days. Thought it would be good to leave it as it was to see if anyone else spotted the illusionary aspect of the error. It's now a bit of a game in our office as we try and find other examples of this type of thing. Here are a few of the examples of illusionary  typography we've collected.

How many "F"'s are in the following phrase?

On first glance, many people will see 3, but there are actually 6.

And what about this one that I remembered from my school days?

 

The double "THE" isn't always spotted on first glance

Here is another one that's quite interesting - most English speakers will be able to read the following without any real problem at all!

Do you guys have any more examples? Would be great to share.

 

[jmwellborn]

@Prouvé  Here's another version:

 

[walt.farrell]

I have to say, @jmwellborn, that I found that one harder to read than the one that @Prouvé showed us.

[jmwellborn]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I have to say, @jmwellborn, that I found that one harder to read than the one that @Prouvé showed us.

I think that is because the paragraph starts with a word with an apostrophe and the second with four vowels.  By then the mind goes into lockdown for a second or two, before pressing on regardless.

[smadell]

Jeez – did I start all this?

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, smadell said:

Jeez – did I start all this?

Yes

(Or, no, Prouvé did.)

[Prouvé]

I think it just proves the point that the visual appearance of typography is an important design element that makes text more readable and understandable - even when it contains blinding errors.

[loukash]

On 4/14/2021 at 6:28 PM, Alfred said:

If we’re going to be picky

Rule #1 in serious typography:

Do.
Not.
Use.
Arial.

Ever.
(Unless your client forces you to use it and you really need the job in order to pay your bills. Been there done that, so sue me. But at first we had an argument. And in the end I didn't put my name under it. :D)

But other than that (and the other picky picks), a nice summary of what some of us may have been taught at art schools for years, before DTP even was a thing.

[Prouvé]

I agree entirely. Arial is not he best font in the world, particularly when creating text heavy publications. However, the guide itself, although using Arial for the explanatory text and the initial specimen text, it was chosen because most WP applications use something like Arial, Calibri or Helvetica so it helps to emphasise the contrast between typical word processing output and the output from a DTP application (what the guide is about). You will notice that when the guide reaches the topic of fonts, the specimen body text changes from Arial to Meta Pro, which is a more acceptable font for use in publications that use a sans-serif font. The continuing use of Arial for the explanatory text was used to maintain consistency from the starting point of the guide through to the final page. It will also be noted that Adobe Caslon Pro was used as the serif font.

[Rodi]

Giambasta Bodoni, the excellent printer from Parma who pushed the Didot types (funny enough now mostly named "Bodonis", some of my favorites), had books littered with typos.

It's print, keep looking, you find mistakes!

Very well done Prouve!

[Alfred]

A priest, a pastor and a rabbit walked into a blood donation clinic.

The nurse asked the rabbit, "What is your blood type?"

"I am probably a type O," said the rabbit.

[PaulEC]

2 hours ago, Rodi said:

It's print, keep looking, you find mistakes!

Too true!

For years I was involved with producing "What's On" brochures for a theatre, with a calendar listing shows, dates, times etc. Three of us used to proof read these. Taking our time, checking everything several times over. As sure as God made little apples, for virtually every edition, we'd approve the proofs, the print would be delivered and as soon as I looked at the finished article, there, standing out like a sore thumb, was some glaring, obvious, typo that all of us should have spotted easily. Never failed! 😁

[lepr]

On 4/14/2021 at 10:06 PM, jmwellborn said:

I think that is because the paragraph starts with a word with an apostrophe and the second with four vowels.

Probably doesn't help that l (el) is missing from "couldn't"

[Alfred]

6 minutes ago, anon2 said:

Probably doesn't help that l (el) is missing from "couldn't"

True, but an ell is also missing from “ell” in your post! 

[lepr]

24 minutes ago, Alfred said:

True, but an ell is also missing from “ell” in your post! 

Funny but wrong.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/el

[Alfred]

10 minutes ago, anon2 said:

Funny but wrong.

Not wrong but simply a variant spelling.

[lepr]

7 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Not wrong but simply a variant spelling.

A variant, so you were wrong to claim something was missing from my spelling.

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, anon2 said:

A variant, so you were wrong to claim something was missing from my spelling.

Oh, all right, we’ll let you off this time! Just don’t do it again!!

[lepr]

1 minute ago, Alfred said:

Oh, all right, we’ll let you off this time! Just don’t do it again!!

bloody el/ell