TYPOGRAPHY is a complex and subjective graphic art that is a mystery to some, and a complete unknown to most people.

Yet, it has an effect on our everyday life. During the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s Britain, arguably, produced the best typography in the world.

Then came the microcomputer, suddenly, the means to typeset and produce printed material was available to everybody.

Taken out of the hands of the professionals, standards plummeted as every garish combination of typeface, size, colour and clip art were crammed into any job down to nightmarish business cards needing a microscope to read the phone numbers.

With the increased training in excellent industry standard programmes such as QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator and PhotoShop, standards have, to some extent, clawed themselves back, but there is still a long way go.

Good typographic design is the manipulation of type, graphics and space to produce the best combination of legibility, readability and suitability.

Legibility is vital. Anyone viewing a printed item must be able to easily see and recognise what is in front of them.

There is no point setting a leaflet intended for the elderly, in 6 point type, or technical instructions in an ornate typeface.

Readability is subtly different, this is ensuring the message in the text comes across to the reader with the least interference.

Too many words to a line can make it difficult to pick up the start of the next line.

In English, just about the most words we can comfortably handle per line is ten (or 60 characters), before we start skipping lines and disturbing our reading flow.

Advertising, however, allows considerably more freedom and experimentation.

Even so, don't go mad. Don't use ten different typefaces on one job. Use a family, ie: one or two, at most, typefaces with the related bold, regular, light or italic in a minimum of different sizes.

A similar problem is found if the leading (space between lines) is too small, and to a lesser extent, too large. It depends on the typeface, but a good place to start is 20% of the point size. So, a 10pt font would have 2 pt leading, or 10pt on 12pt.

However, it may be necessary to adjust this. Typefaces with long ascenders and descenders, and a small ‘x’ height (body size), require less leading. A large ‘x’ height with short ascenders and descenders requires more leading.

The text in books is generally justified (ranged both left and right), apart from looking neat; it also helps the reader to pick up the next line.

But this advantage diminishes as the column width is reduced; large white holes start to appear as the line is forced to fit the column, check your tabloid newspaper to see how bad this can get. Newspapers do this because it is easier and faster to juggle narrow elements to fill their page.

A general rule on choice of typeface is that serif faces (Times, Century, Plantin, etc.) are more readable than sans serif (Helvetica, Univers, Arial, etc.).

Reach for any novel on your bookshelf, and you will find that it will fit, within reason, the above guides.

One of the first choices that will need to be made is: Which typeface (also called font)?

Each typeface has its own characteristics, and this is where it gets subjective, the designer must use their experience and judgement to make a selection that fits in with the subject in the text. It tends to rely on gut feeling, rather than science.

This affinity of typeface with subject or product applies more to advertising and leaflets than to book design.

In book design, the main criterion is the uninterrupted flow of information to the reader. Therefore subtly is the watch word.