More to the point, it’s at its best when it doesn’t become a distraction. Headlines and body copy work better when the words and their meaning become the focus of the reader and not the alignment and look of the letters and words.
True story: I would often take the ‘before’ and ‘after’ samples home and show them to my father. I would ask “Dad, which one of these ads make you feel more interested in buying from the company?” Nine out of ten times he would choose the ad that had been properly kerned, ragged, leaded and proofread.
“Why?,” I would ask. To which he would give the immediate reply “I DON’T KNOW!”
But our brains do. When things are easier to read, they simply work better. And that’s one thing we do well.
Here are some before and after type samples illustrating various type crafts we live by daily at CP2.
And here are some fun things to do and read about type and prepress that we’ve fun across. Many thanks to the folks who did these.
- The Kern Game (interactive and fun)
- Shape your own type (interactive)
- The Psychological Aspects of Typography (article)
