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Classifying typographies : a new intellectual dimension.
4.1 THE EFFECT PHENOMENON
As we pointed it out previously, the transition from metal to digital had many consequencies, but the main one is certainly flexibility.
A type can now be manipulated easily through its computer form : the font.
A modern graphic designer can easily and quickly experiment a lot of things. He can transform, alter and even customize any typeface. The advent of personnal image manipulation softwares (like Photoshop) even introduced a whole new area of manipulation of type, incorporating textures, transparencies, etc.
But the interesting point is that it also influenced the design of type itself : it has deeply opened the mind of the typographers, and dramatically increased their palette.
And this implies another revolutionary phenomenon : most innovators in modern Typography are originally graphic designers. Bureau Destruct is a clear example of that, not to mentions the incredible influence Neville Brody had on Typography in the 90', or the one that the Designer Republic still have, while they actually barely produced a bunch of typefaces !
To understand this fact, the example of Grunge typography is quite exemplary. At the beginning, we have a graphic designer that manipulates types, trash them and explores the limits of legibility in graphic design.
Then, in a second step, himself, or people influenced by his works start to produce typefaces already treated like that : they apply the same rules to type design.
Eventually, a new generation of typographer is educated with the idea that typeface are not only black & white refined shapes.
So, this flexibility has demonstrated the following : a typeface is not only one single perfect drawing, but can presents a wide range of variations, a wide range of treatments.
Now, how does this idea stands with the previous common variations ?
4.2 A NEW DEFINITION OF THE FAMILY CONCEPT ?
If you've red our previous tutorial section about the content of a type family, you know that a type can have many variants.
The first axis of variation, we may call the TYPE SETS axis is about the lettershapes it can features : added to the common 24 letters, 10 numbers and main signs, that constitute the Standard type set, there are various other ones, reserved to specific purposes, like Small capitals, Expert signs, etc.
We included in the image below the main categories, but there are dozens of specialized sub-sets, especially within the Expert set, not to mention the non-standard alphabetic sets, like Cyrillic.
Note that Eastern europe special characters are usually included in the Standard Type Set, as they only offers a bunch of additional letters. This isn't the case of the Cyrillic type set, that offers alternative lettershapes for most letters, and so generally constitute a specific type set.
As we've explained it before (this is one more point where previous classifications weren't logical enough), Cyrillic and all non-roman alphabets are NOT to be considered as type categories, but as alternative type sets, that should be available within any family, independently of its typographic style : there should be a Template Gothic Cyrillic, as much as an Helvetica Bold Compressed Cyrillic, etc.
The second axis, for which we kept back the name of VARIANTS axis, is the well-know one gathering all the possible weights of a type set, that is the different variations in the thickness of lettershapes.
They generally range from Ultra-light (thinest) to Black (thickest) and, even if name may slightly vary from one family to another, they offers a 3% to 5% increment between each variant (for example, the width of stems in a Regular is about 13% of the EM square height, and a light is about 9%).
As shown on the above image, these two axis can combine (for example a Small Capital set can be available in a Light variant or an Extra-bold oblique), and this already provides a very wide range of variation.
Note that, unlike some others authors, we choosed to consider the Italics (and Obliques) as part of the Variant axis, and not of the Type Set Axis : there obviously can be a Small Capitals Bold Italic, as much as a Titling UltraLight Oblique, at least theoretically !
Also note that one of the greatest advantages of the OpenType font format is to offer a much larger amount of possible lettershapes into the same single font file : instead of the common 256 slots from the ISO standard provided in previous font formats, Open Type can litteraly include dozens of different type sets in the same consolidated file.
But (and this is where things are getting a bit confusing!), there is a third level of variation within a family, that is traditionally available.
The most important families, like Helvetica or Franklin Gothic, sometime offers Rounded (with rounded edges),Extended and Condensed variants, these two later ones dealing with the width of letters. Some even includes Compressed versions (that are different from Condensed), or Narrow ones (even more different) !
There are also the well-known Outlines (also called "Open"), or the Shaded (also called Drop Shadow) variants.
Of course, Rounded Serifs are scarcely seen, and a Fraktur would probably attempt suicide instead of getting Extended. But all these variations can theoretically apply to ANY type set, and to ANY weight variant. So they constitute a third axis within a type family, which leads us to the below visualisation of a family :
And this is exactly our point : the new trends in type design like Handwritten, Trash, or Manipulated are not different of the more usual variations like Rounded, Extended et al. As they are not exactly variants, because they apply to any of them, this leads to an extended version of the family diagram, as shown below :
4.3 NO : A NEW DIMENSION TO TYPE CLASSIFICATION
But we can, and we must go further.
Of course, as we demonstrated before, all these variations, all these "Effects" are not exactly new categories : they are conceptually too weak.
But, on the other hand, they are also conceptually more than just variants : they can apply to any type category, and they are intellectually "larger" than the variant concept : they radically alter the style of the type to which they are applied to.
This is why, to our point, they should be "extracted" from within the family limits, and constitute a new axis, a new intellectual dimension of the general classification of typographies.
This can be graphically showed as below, by transforming our classification into a two dimensions diagram :
You may have noticed that we did not mentioned Outline and Drop-shadow on the EFFECT axis. This is intentional, and we didn't meant to include them in the "Etc.", which is meant for future innovative effects.
Morover, dealing with them is a good opportunity to explain more accurately how we can decide whether an effect can be included in the classification or not.
Either Outline or Drop shadow doesn't implies a real re-design of the letter set. Anyone can nowaday create a drop-shadow title, either by manipulating letters in a graphic soft, or by producing a real shadow through an image soft like Photoshop. And the same is also true for the Outline, that can be automatically produced in a soft like X-press, or, in a much better way, through Illustrator (in fact, this later option offers much more accuracy an versatility than any pre-outlined face !)
This is completely different, for example, from the Extended or Condensed. Both are very different from the ugly result you'll get by simply condensing the letters in X-press or Photoshop. They need to be deeply re-drawn, letters by letters, stem by stem, thickness by thickness.
So, here lies the answer : an Effect is Typographic when it requires a real typographic work, when letters are re-designed, and when it requires the skilled eye of a typographer.
Concerning the specific cases of Outline or Drop-shadow, we can conclude that they are now completely irrelevant. Because of the evolution of the graphic tools, they slided from the Typographic area to the graphic area : as a typographically "non-creative" work, they shall be produced by the user.
There is no need for a typographer to produce them, unless it is done in a very specific and innovative way.
As we can see, the introduction of the effect dimension does much more than just solving the classification problem of newborn genres. It also clarifies the limit between the notion of Typographic genre and the notion of family variant. No other previous classification could do all that, unless you bend it so much that it become irrelevant.
As a reward for all this work, we now enjoy the pleasure of giving a name to the new-born baby : the above classification will be refered to as the Chifflot / I.T.I. classification, from the name of its author, and the one of the organisation that heralds it, the International Type Index.
Now that we got our tool, we're going to provide you with a more convenient format of it : you'll find on the next page an image AND a downloadable PDF document showing this classification, illustrated with examples of each category.
We'll also provide you with a guideline on how to use it, either to choose a typeface and to classify some.
There it is !
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