From the course: InDesign: Typography

Font style - InDesign Tutorial

From the course: InDesign: Typography

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Font style

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- [Presenter] In this movie, I'm talking about font style, by which I mean this list right here, the list of style options beneath the actual font itself on the Control Panel. And the first point I want to make is that there is no universally agreed upon standard for how these font styles are named. Here's a list of commonly used style names that you will come into contact with. But keep in mind that one font family's Semibold is another font family's Demi; one font family's Extra Bold is another font family's Black, for example. The second point I want to make is that if you are combining different weights, then make sure that there's enough contrast to justify you doing so. Here, I'm using a typeface family called Acumin Pro. And Acumin Pro has these different weights, so I want to make sure that I'm at least two weights apart so that there's enough contrast: regular with Bold, light with Semibold. But if you're combining regular with Semibold, they're just too similar. When it comes to Italic or Oblique, keep in mind that the Italic version is not just a slanted version of the Roman version. It is a completely distinct character and should be treated as such. And you can see the shapes here are quite distinctly different. In this case, the typeface is Adobe Caslon Pro. You may occasionally encounter a typeface that doesn't have a real Italic version, and you could in a pinch, and you would have to be quite desperate, really, but you could fake it by giving the type a 12 degree slant. But a better option would be choose a typeface that does have a real Italic version. Having said that, though, there are some very widely used Sans Serif typefaces where the official, if you like, Italic version is just oblique and it is referred to as such, Oblique, where it is just a slanted version of the Roman shapes. As well as different weights, there are different widths often, Condensed, Compressed, Extended, and it's always better, far preferable, to use a real condensed version than a faked or squeezed version. And you can see that if you fake it, as I have done here, by making the character width only 70% then that is 70% of everything. So the strokes are only 70% as wide as the Regular. Whereas, if you use a real Condensed version, if available, then the stroke weights are the same as the stroke weights on the Regular version. So that's always going to be a preferable thing to do. Now, you might use Condensed or even Compressed type to create more impact with headlines. And you can see here that these different widths of type going from Franklin Gothic Regular to Condensed to Compressed, they're taking up a similar amount of space on the line, but vertically, the Compressed version takes up much more space, and arguably has much more impact for doing so. So if you just look at their profile, if you like, how much space they're occupying on the page, this is how they measure up. At the other end of the scale to Condensed and Compressed, we have Extended, wide characters, and, again, it's a much better idea to use real Extended characters rather than just stretch them. And you can see here, here is a stretched version where the character width is set to 125% versus the real Extended version. Now, there aren't that many typefaces that have Extended versions, so you will find your choice limited if you want to use Extended letter forms. Speaking of weight and width, I want to mention variable fonts. Variable fonts are an emerging technology. They have been around now for a while. I wouldn't say they've really caught on as much as people might have imagined they would do, but they are around, and it looks like they are around to stay. And the advantage of them is that you can, from a single font character, generate multiple widths and weights. So here, I'm using Acumin Variable Concept. Its icon on the font menu has a VAR badge attached to it. And when you're working with a variable font, you also have these sliders where you can determine the weight and the width. So these four words that we have here are all at the same size in the same fonts. It is just their weight and their width that varies, and that can be controlled with these sliders.

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