4. Getting Your Masterwork on The Net
For All to See (and Mess With)

Well, the two most common ways tread the fabled and familiar ground of "you can't have it both ways."

First, many editors choose to post a downloadable, true-to-the-original-appearance version in Adobe Acrobat format. The free Acrobat Reader comes with many other software packages (e.g., the recent update of our virus software), and is available free from Adobe's Web site at www.adobe.com. (Ack, there's that pesky period at the end of the web address! Please ignore it.)

That's the easy-and-cheap-for-you, not-so-fast-or-easy-but-ultimately-very-nice-for-Web site-visitors way to go. Several of our clients use that method. For example, Smart Modular Technologies posts Memory Digest, a monthly eight-pager (www.smartm.com/OEM/html/newsletters.html), and Xilinx posts XCell, a 32-or-more-page quarterly (www.xilinx.com/xcell/xcell.htm).

Otherwise (or "second" as a purist would write), you must convert your newsletter into HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language, the quintessential acronym that nobody needs to know the meaning of, but we told you anyway). It's not that hard, and it is much easier for Web site surfers. There are umpty-ump Web site editors out there that don't require you to know jack diddley about HTML before you put your site together.

Besides, if you're already maintaining a Web site, you don't need any HTML advice from us, and if you're not, your webmaster will take care of the details. The important consideration is how to translate the newsletter experience onto the web. Here are the big rules of thumb:

1. Make a tree -- Start at the treetop with a homepage HTML file providing an index describing the contents of each issue you have available online. Fill in the branches by making a similar homepage for each issue. Add links to the top homepage with an index of the articles. Finally, at the base of the tree, make separate pages and HTML files for each article.
   
   A good tree structure has three virtues -- it helps surfers find the information they want quickly and easily, it keeps the sizes of the files small and the loading time down, and it encourages following links instead of scrolling, which draw surfers in and keep their interest longer.
   
2. Bite-sized chunks -- Following the logic of rule 1, it makes sense to break long articles up into smaller pieces wherever possible by creating sidebars. (See "You Gotta Put a Little Bit on The Side," March/April 1998.)
   
3. Borrow graphics from your newsletter -- Make your online newsletter familiar to your readers by reinterpreting the nameplate, department headings and other standing graphics. Don't try to make the online version an exact copy of your printed newsletter (otherwise, the rule would say "steal graphics"). First, it's a big, fat waste of time. A format that works well on a printed page does not necessarily work well online. Second, you can't control what your readers see. While the most common browsers (Netscape and Internet Explorer) pretty much handle files the same way, there are many browsers out there, and every single one of them gives surfers the ability to customize colors, fonts, backgrounds, window size, etc.
   
4. Consistency -- Just as with a printed newsletter, readers expect and appreciate design and layout consistency. Every page your readers surf to should be clearly identifiable as part of your online newsletter. You have total freedom to perform whatever wacky color, font and graphic stunts you like, and you should be ashamed of yourself for even considering it.

If you would like to see an example of how we think online newsletters should be put together, visit www.ruddle.com/calpine to see our online version of Powerline, Calpine Corp. in-house newsletter.

Have you ever received a first draft layout of your newsletter and thought to yourself, "Houston, we have a problem."? Many editors and creative directors have that experience every day, so it's not just you.

The three key issues that affect whether you can get what you want have bedeviled publishers for decades, although some have gotten noticeably worse since with the influx of amateur desktop publishers. The issues are:

• Taste -- There are dozens of good ways to design and layout a given newsletter page. What you mean by words such as "professional" or "fun" might not be what your layout artist thinks they mean. Layouts that you think are "busy" or "horsey" might seem boring or stale to someone else. Your definition of "current" and "trendy" depends a great deal on the magazines, television shows and music you partake of in your free time.
  
• Solution -- Find samples of layouts that clearly fit your definitions of "too busy," "too dull" and "just what I'm looking for." Show your layout artist the samples and explain why you feel the way you do.
  
  
• Competence -- Sometimes either you or your layout artist just don't know what to do or how to do it. It's OK if you don't, as long as you have a skilled designer. Most of our clients don't know a serif from a shadow box. The opposite case can also work, as long as you don't mind training your layout artist.
  
• Solution -- Compare samples of your layout artist's past work with the samples of other newsletters you think are well designed. If they generally match in terms of quality, OK. If you think the samples look sloppy or dull, you are, by definition, correct (since it's a matter of opinion). All in all, it generally pays dividends to hire an experienced staff designer or vend out to a design firm. (Yes, here's the gratuitous advertisement: a design firm such as the marvelous Ruddle Creative).
  
  
• Procedure -- Laying out a newsletter is a lot like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, except that the final picture can be quite different depending on how you put the pieces together -- so, a process is required to make sure they go together in the manner you prefer. If you and the layout artist don't follow the same process, the end result won't please you, and you will think your artist is an idiot. While that may very well be true, the main problem is that different assumptions go into the process you each followed.
  
• Solution -- Some editors and creative directors take control of jigsaw puzzle by sketching out either a thumbnail- or real-size mock-up (we'll cover making mock-ups in the next issue). Unless you have experience at making mock-ups fit, you might make matters worse by asking for the impossible without knowing it. As long as your designer or design firm is competent enough, it's often much better to discuss the process in advance.

Our Layout Process

We generally follow this process when organizing a layout:

1. Place or allow space for all of the elements with a consistent location (e.g., the nameplate, the masthead [aka "the staff box"], recurring columns, the mailing panel).
   
   
2. Roughly estimate the lengths of the articles (be sure to allow room for graphics and design elements such as column headers and pullquotes) -- full page, half a page, third of a page, etc.
   
   
3. Work out a layout "ladder"showing which articles will appear on each page, using this method:
   
   1. Identify the lead story(ies), with the help of the editor, that will start on the front page (or primary inside page if the newsletter uses a cover).
      
   2. Group the other stories according to subject and/or reader constituency. For example, a story about new widget features should be laid out on the same page or an adjacent page with a story about using widgets.
      
   3. Identify the priority level of each article (or group of articles) by importance to the largest number of readers and availability of graphics (sometimes a less important story with a good photograph deserves higher priority). Plan to place important, graphically interesting stories on right-hand pages (they are more visible to readers, and hence more desirable). Place less important stories and continuations of articles from the front page on left-hand pages.
      
   4. Look for articles that ought to appear in the two places with special characteristics -- the center spread and the back page. Heavily graphical two-page articles or those that can stand alone or be pulled out should go in the center. Reference-type information such as contact addresses and phone numbers or event calendars belong on the back.
      
   5. Adjust for printing quirks. For example, if you are using a special color of ink on the cover, other pages (e.g., the back page) may also use that ink color. The ladder completed using steps a) through d) will show the pages that will be printed on the same sheet of paper, so check it for pages that will be incompatible because of heavy solids or abutting background screens.
      
      
4. Begin each page layout by placing any elements that have a known location, such as columns, advertisements, headers and folios.
   
   
5. Decide on a focal point (usually either a graphic or a headline). Place the other graphically interesting elements on the page to avoid competing with the focal point and to allow room for the articles to flow between them. Generally, a hierarchical structure works best, with the most interesting element used as the focal point, and each lesser element getting smaller, less colorful (if applicable) and lower on the page.
   
   
6. Adjust placement of headlines, graphics and design elements (e.g., boxes, screen tints, shadows, lines, icons) as needed to ensure that articles are clearly separated from one another, and that the natural flow of the page begins with the focal point, moves to the top left corner, then snakes its way back and forth down the page to the bottom right.

As if direct-to-negative imagesetting and direct-to-copier Docuteching isn't bad enough on the film strippers who work (or used to work) in the back rooms at print shops, the printing world has invented direct-to-plate and direct-to-press.

For those readers who send files out to service bureaus for film, you may find that those same fine folks can image your files directly onto a printing plate (made of polyester or nylon, believe it or not). In many cases, you will save both time and money (as long as your print shop is willing to play along, so call first to make sure you get the specifications right).

Laser Printer Plates
Saving even more time and money, there are printing plates that you can run through your laser printer (Omega polyester plates and Pronto-Plate to name just two). As a rule, laser-printer plates last for about 5,000 impressions and can't handle line-screen settings above 100 lpi (or, at least, you are unlikely to own a laser printer that can reproduce one). Also, there's very little point in even trying laser-printer plates unless you own a laser printer that can handle 11"x17" paper (B size), although 13"x19" (super B size) would be better.

Direct-to-Press
Finally, "digital printing" is the really hot new trend. New presses (most notably made by Indigo and Heidelberg) can print directly from your electronic file (well, QuarkXpress and PageMaker at least) onto high-quality paper.

It's real printing, not color copying (although that can be a good alternative sometimes, too). No film. No plates. No bluelines or Matchprints. Extremely little make-ready (paper wasted during press set-up). Best of all, no trapping is needed. Because the paper goes through the press just once and all of the colors are printed simultaneously, trapping doesn't matter.

Besides those technical reasons to use it, digital printing has two big assets in its favor:

1. Quick changes. Datasheets and brochures are a natural fit because the set-up costs are tiny compared with traditional printing. (How many times have you faced the dilemma of having to print more copies than you wanted even though you knew they would be outdated in just a few weeks or months?) For example, you can digitally print 100 copies of your brochure to get started, and then update it once you've gotten some feedback from customers. Or you can customize. For very little extra expense, you can custom print newsletters geared to particular reader groups or even individuals. Imagine a nameplate that read, "John Smith's personal copy of the Blather Report."
2. Speed. Forget waiting five, seven, 10, even 14 days for your print job to return. Once a digital print shop figures out your file, the actual printing takes no time at all. (Well, how's that for an exaggeration!) Expect complex full-color work back in three days.

Since digital printing is a new technology, it still has two major drawbacks:

1. Price range. The prices are competitive only for very short runs (under 1,000) of full-color printing. As long as your job goes smoothly, traditional printing will continue to be cheaper for long runs. However, if you are one of those evil creatures who routinely make changes after seeing your Matchprint, digital printing might actually save you money because there are no prepress costs. Most mortals, however, will have to wait for these expensive presses to become less costly and more common so that the range of cost-effective projects will become worthwhile.
2. Software hassles. You may have trouble getting your files to work correctly. If you have ever had trouble with a service bureau trying to imageset your film, then you know what to expect. Most digital printing shops are either stand-alone operations or outgrowths of traditional print shops. If you decide to try it, look for one that is connected to a large, well-respected imagesetting service bureau. At least those folks will have a good idea of how to help you if your job runs into trouble. We have encountered a few shops that accept only QuarkXpress files (Ouch! A quick poke in the ribs of the thousands of PageMaker users out there!).

Ultimately, the point of this article is to encourage you to consider some of the new printing options (especially if you are frustrated with the one you're using now). You may save money and time once you get the kinks worked out (unless you are running your newsletter off on your own personal mimeograph machine in your basement, in which case you must enjoy kinks).

Preprinted shells can give a one-color newsletter the look of a two-color publication for little additional cost. The same goes for two-color/three-color.

Let's say the logo of your organization is black, blue and red. Well, red doesn't make a very good accent color (unless your readers really like pink), so, if your budget is for a two-color newsletter, you probably don't want to spend 40% more to print a three-color newsletter. Preprinting the red portion of the logo (although you might be forced to print the whole thing) onto enough sheets to last for a year will wind up costing about the same as if you had compromised on the logo by printing the red parts in black or blue.

For a two-color example, consider the Baguette Gazette, which we produce for Le Boulanger restaurants. They only need 500 copies printed on 65 lb. cover weight Simpson Evergreen Matte Natural paper.

For $930 we preprint 3,500 shells with the nameplate, page numbers, various rules/boxes and the masthead in PMS 194 (the front page of the preprint also uses black ink) to last six months (500 x 6 months + 15% waste allowance).

We produce artwork for the four-page newsletter that's imprinted on the shells in black ink. The imprinting costs $135 for 500 copies. In total, six issues cost $1,740 to print, or $290 per issue. We would have charged Le Boulanger $600 per issue if we were printing just 500 two-color copies each time, so they save $310 each time, but still get a newsletter that looks like it has been printed in two colors (black + PMS 194). Yes, the same things are in color every time, but most readers don't notice.

As a defensive measure, most paper manufacturers have added recycled fibers to their product lines, but enviromavens have kept one step ahead by popularizing the two-number system of defining recycled papers.

The "mill broke" fibers used in most recycled papers are waste products of the manufacturing process (and wouldn't count as recycled in most people's minds if they knew about it). In the new system, the first number shows the percentage of recycled content, while the second number is the post-consumer waste portion. For example, 50-10 would mean half of the fiber is recycled, but only 10 percent of it is from reprocessed paper that someone threw into the recycling bin at their office because the environazi office manager has eyes in the back of its head.

However, even paper with post-consumer waste in it is not necessarily Earth-friendly. Tons of post-consumer waste gets dunked into chlorine (or, much less damagingly, hydrochloric acid) to make its fibers pristine and white. So, the demand for chlorine-free and acid-free recycled paper has become the new recycled paper thing.

Except, that is, for the new treeless papers that are gaining in popularity. Made from kenaf (sort of a weed-like minitree), agricultural waste (from corn and wheat processing), cotton and recycled blue jeans, non-tree-killing papers are starting to enter workplaces throughout the world. So far, most alternatives tend to jam copiers and laser printers a bit more than their virgin pulp cousins.

Your final printed product might not look exactly like the artwork you have created. "Laid" and "felt" paper textures, like multi-level carpeting, change perception through optical illusion -- they make unblemished faces look as if their owners have tromped through a patch of poison ivy or contracted chicken pox. Linen paper makes the faces of photo subjects appear to be made of corduroy.

Papers such as Circa 83 and Strathmore with very obvious watermarks can cause unexpected ink density changes in photos placed near the center of the paper. Most text weight papers thinner than 70 lb. have serious problems with bleed-through.

Yadda yadda yadda. It all boils down to this: before selecting a new paper, get a printed sample of a newsletter or brochure that's similar to yours.

Choosing the right print shop for your newsletter means more than just matching the capability to your needs to get the best price. It's fairly easy to spot shops that are too big by their price. The low-priced shops often pose a much greater challenge.

Newsletter Nameplate would be difficult to print on an 18" one- or two-color press like the ones found in most quick print shops -- too many screen tints, too much heavy coverage, small type, bleeds, images that cross the gutter (a.k.a. the middle where the paper folds). It requires consistent density of ink across all of the rollers all of the time, but can't be held in place with a center roller because the images that cross the gutter will get ink on the roller.

On a small press, the large area of cork on page 4 would steal ink from the "Newsletter Makeover" heading, making it appear mottled. The large number of photographs (in most issues) would contain dot densities so varied that a small press would have a devil of a time maintaining exactly the correct ink density needed to keep all of the dark areas in all of the photos from "plugging up." The large screen tint and photos increase the danger of hickeys (spots) caused by lint in the press or (worse) in the platemaker.

Finally, heavy coverage areas (such as the page 4 cork) would slop too much ink on the rollers of a small press, inviting the problem of ghosting when the as-yet-undry cork image rubs off onto a roller which then transfers the image back onto the paper a couple of inches further down.

If your newsletter suffers from ink stealing, ghosting, uneven ink density, photo "plugging," hickeys or roller marks, your print shop is not big enough (or is trying to print your job on the wrong press to save money).

Anyone who has ever read a magazine knows how glossy paper can make a newsletter or brochure seem shiny. If you don't glean enough gleam from the glossy, you can up your printed piece's wattage with one of these special inks:

• Foil -- The best place to start is with the choice that isn't even an ink (even though "these special inks" might have led you to expect one). Although it comes in a limited range of colors, most of the foil you see, such as on holiday greeting cards, is either gold or silver. If the paper underneath the shiny stuff is slightly debossed (pushed in), then you're looking at foil. It is stuck on using a letterpress (the type that stamps impressions onto paper, whack, whack, whack) and a specially cut (and expensive!) die.
  
  
• Metallic -- For decades, the last swatch in the Pantone Color Formula Guide® featured seven metallic inks -- from gold PMS 871 to rusty PMS 876 to silver PMS 877. Not much to choose from. Today, Pantone offers 204 metallic ink colors covering the entire spectrum. Best of all, except for the lack of a debossing effect, metallic gold ink looks quite a lot like metallic gold foil to most people, so it's an excellent way to get a foil-like appearance without paying a foil-like price.
  
  The ink contains actual flakes of metal that leaf together to form a bright finish on coated papers and uncoated papers with smooth textures (rough textured papers keep the flakes from leafing together, so the results are disappointing). As a result, they are harder to print with, so expect to be charged up to 30 percent more.
  
  
• Fluorescent -- Pantone's guide has also long included seven Day-Glo® colors -- from blue PMS 801 and green PMS 802 to orange PMS 804 and magenta PMS 807. Seemingly illuminated by a back light, fluorescent inks include pigments that reflect ultraviolet light and, hence, glow in the dark. For best results, use bright white, uncoated paper. Less ink sticks to coated paper, so printer shops often have to run the paper through the press a second time to get a sufficiently fluorescent appearance. One caveat: the postal service hates envelopes printed with fluorescent ink.

Visit the Pantone Web site at www.pantone.com for more than you ever wanted to know about Pantone inks and color. Want to know what colors say about your personality? Look up your "Colorscope" under "Tips and Techniques" at www.pantone.com/allaboutcolor/allaboutcolor.asp.

The readers of Newsletter Nameplate demonstrate such mental vitality, it astounds and bemuses even the most cynical self-declared newsletter expert. You too will agree if you find this article useful. It appears courtesy of reader Carol Medusky, who requested a thorough discussion of typefaces. (The fact that she also wrote, "I love my Ruddle mug and read Nameplate from cover to cover" has absolutely nothing to do with it.)

Begin at The Beginning

The typefaces Johann Gutenberg cast for the first workable offset printing presses in the 15th century were standardized copies of calligraphic forms that had been used by scribes since Roman days. Over the last 500 years, famous-name type designers such as Nicholas Jenson, Claude Garamond, Christopher Plantin, William Caslon, John Baskerville, Giambattista Bodoni, and, more recently, Ed Benguiat, Hermann Zapf and Sumner Stone (not to mention hundreds of non-eponymous ones) have created thousands of typeface families with more categories and variations than you need to care about.

The major categories of type have evolved as:

1. Serif -- typestyles with short, angled lines at the ends of each letter's strokes; the major varieties include:

• Old Style -- Type families such as Caxton or Garamond, as well as neoclassical designs like Bodoni, borrow the Roman ideals of geometric proportion, appearing precise and even. They tend to change dramatically in their italic forms.
• Transitional -- Greater contrast between thick and thin strokes, with dainty serifs, such as Tiffany and Baskerville. They are likely to have been designed with more variations such as light, demibold and heavy.
• Slab Serif -- Instead of elegantly angled serifs, typefaces such as Rockwell and City use square serifs and letter forms.
• Modern -- Less angled, thicker serifs, combined with a large x-height (see below) for easy reading.

2. Sans Serif -- means literally "without serifs," such as Helvetica and Eurostyle. Popularized by Caslon's great grandson (William Caslon IV) in 1816, sans serif faces came into their own when the Swiss Bauhaus school of designers got ahold of them in the late 19th and early 20th centuries ("Helvetica" is the Latin word for Switzerland), idolizing their purity and directness. A few "fancy" sans serifs were designed for practical uses such as Machine and Bank Gothic. Sans serif typestyles such as Avante Garde and Bernard Fashion were so popular during the 1920s they prompted an explosion in display typeface designs.

3. Display -- sort of the "miscellaneous" typeface category, display faces can have serifs like Algerian and Merced, and can be sans serif as well, like Bremen and Dom Diagonal. By definition, they are too elaborate for text, but excellent tone-setters and attention-getters at large sizes. They range from script faces such as Freestyle and Flemish to wacky advertising faces such as Harlow and Pipeline.

Choosing a Typestyle

As a rule, old style and modern typestyles make for the best newsletter text. After all, many modern styles were invented to solve specific readability problems, such as Times Modern (newspapers), Schoolbook (textbooks) and Stone Serif (300 dpi laser printers).

(For you clever readers -- that is, all of you -- notice that I've avoided using the word "font." Desktop publishing will probably corrupt the word forever, but, in reality, a font is a set of all the characters for a particular typeface and size, say 10 point Times Roman Italic. Technically, the set containing all sizes of Times Roman Italic would be called a typeface. That set, plus its near relatives --Times Roman, Times Roman Bold and Times Roman Bold Italic -- is called a typeface family or typestyle.)

The rules of mixing typestyles have much in common with dressing yourself in the morning. Don't clash. Be consistent. Use things that fit. Specifically where typestyles are concerned, try these rules of thumb:

• If the information is more important than the presentation, use a single type family, ideally an appropriate serif style (most likely a modern face such as Bookman or Century).
• If the design and information are equally important, use complementary serif and sans serif styles (e.g., the proportions of the serif Palatino and sans serif Futura are similar). Times and Helvetica always work together. Using a serif with a complementary display face can work (e.g., Stencil could be an appropriate headline typeface for a sign company's publication).
• If the design is more important than the information, combine complementary serif and sans serif faces with a display type used for accents such as drop caps or pullquotes. For example, old style serif Goudy, similarly shaped sans serif Gill Sans and script display face Shelly can be elegantly combined.
• Use a serif face for body copy (quasi-serif typestyles such as Optima, Friz Quadrata and Lydian are OK, too).
• When using a complementary sans serif or display face, be consistent and appropriate. If one photo caption appears in Helvetica Condensed, all captions should. In fact, sans serif faces often make a better choice for small type and charts. Display faces, on the other hand, should not be used at sizes smaller than 14 point.

Keep Things in Proportion

You can blame standard point sizes of type on the Medieval preference for the number 12 (it's divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12) compared with 10 (a quarter of which is 2-1/2, and 2/3 is 6-2/3 -- icky icky pittang!). It's a much more convenient system if you are spacing out words by hand using small slivers of metal.

To add even more multiples of three to the equation, there are 72 (that is, 6 x 12) points in an inch. There's a lot more to this if you want to know about picas and stuff, but I think these numbers are interesting on this electric-decimal planet of ours today because they explain the difference between the "em dash" (that is, "--") used as the standard typeset dash (no, you won't win any points with me if you use two hyphens -- instead!) and the "en dash" (that is, "–"), which some people use in calendar listings and similar places (compare "Sept.-Oct." with "Sept.–Oct.").

As you might guess, an "em" is the width of an old style capital "M" (no points for guessing how wide an "en" is). But how wide is an "em"? Well, a 10-point em dash (not to mention a 10-point "em space") is 10 points high and 10 points wide. All "en" things are half as wide (just five points wide in a 10-point font).

Actually, a 10-point capital em does not measure 10 points in height. If you had a pica ruler (who doesn't?), you would find it was just eight (or seven) points high. Why? Most serif (except modern) and sans serif characters divide their vertical space this way:

• 20% for ascenders (the stem on a "d" or "h")
• 60% for "x-height" (the distance from the baseline where most of the characters rest to the top of a lowercase "x")
• 20% for descenders (the stem on a "p" or "g")

The M, like all capital letters, takes up the ascender and x-height space, but doesn't go below the baseline, losing 20% of its potential height to the "oh-look-at-me-I'm-special" p's, g's, j's, f's and q's of the type world who must have their space. As a result, a 10 point M is just eight points high and wide. Go figure.

Tracking & Kerning

Modern desktop publishing systems take care of pair kerning for most purposes, so it's not much worth discussing anymore. If you're interested in why kerning used to be such a burning design issue, try typing the combinations PA, TA, Ta and Vo on a typewriter. Physically, the gap between the letters will be the same as for every other combination. Visually, the letters will appear miles apart.

Tracking still smolders as an issue. All typefaces (except script styles such as Kaufmann or Shelley Allegro) have a bit of extra space built in on the sides of each character -- some of it physical, some just visual -- to maintain a consistent appearance no matter what sort and size of words you choose to type. Tracking controls the size of those spaces. If your software gives you an option, choose either "normal" or "tight" tracking for greatest readability. Only script typestyles in which all of the characters connect to one another should use a setting of "no tracking."

Leading & Spacing

In the days of metal type, compositors slipped strips of one- or two-point-wide lead between lines of hand-composed type, hence the term leading (though some programs like Word refer to it as spacing).

That's why designers continue to befuddle neophytes by referring to "two points of leading" when the leading setting in Quark or PageMaker they are using reads 12, 15 or whatever. Two points of leading means two points more space from baseline to baseline than the point size of the type. So "10 on 12" means 10 point type with two points of leading (the space between lines is 10 + 2 = 12 points).

That rascally space between lines of type makes a big difference in readability. Ironically, small and big sizes do best with very little leading. Text sizes do best with moderate leading. Here are a few rules of thumb:

• Auto leading is bad. Many programs set "single space" or "default" leading as 120% of the point size. That's OK for some sizes, but definitely not for all sizes. If you want to design, learn to set your own leading.
• The leading you choose depends on the x-height of the typestyle. Modern faces with an x-height that consumes 65-70% of the total need more leading than old style typefaces with a 60% x-height. Remember that the ascender and descender space will look like leading most of the time.
• At sizes of eight points and smaller, leading of a point or even half a point works best. If you like, compare samples of "5 on 7" with "5 on 5-1/2" to see for yourself.
• At text sizes -- from 9 to 12 points -- leading should be at least one and not more than three points. Take the extra leading if you can afford it. "11 on 14" is much more readable than "11 on 12" (which looks crowded).
• If you must reduce the leading to make something fit, all of the text leading on that page should change as well so that everything looks consistent. (It's more practical, too. The aesthetics of a page will be affected less if you reduce all of the text leading by half a point than if you reduce just some of it by one-to-two points.)
• At subhead and small headline sizes -- 14 to 24 points -- use 1/2 to one point of leading.
• At large headline sizes -- 24 to 48 points -- use no leading (that is, "set solid" in typography lingo).
• At 48 points and above, use negative leading. You might have to fuss with the words or alignment to avoid having a descender from the first line crash into an ascender from the second line, but it will be worth the effort.
• If the actual heading in question uses no descenders, tighten up the leading even more than normal.
• When using type entirely or partially as a graphic element (such as in a pullquote, merged with an illustration or in a "how to order" or similar short sidebar blurb), broad leading is OK. Four to 12 points of leading can help to differentiate such items from the body copy and headlines (assuming you followed the other rules).

As with size, kerning and tracking, it's the visual, not the physical space between characters that counts.

Lebensraum

While individual characters, words and lines of type in the same block should be close together, blocks of type should be distinct from one another and from other design elements.
Here are a few more rules of thumb regarding space between items:

• Things that relate to one another should appear closer to each other than to other things. For example, a subhead in the middle of an article should have visually less space below it than above it because it relates to the paragraph below.
• The gutter between columns of text should be roughly 10% of the width of the column. For example, a typical three column newsletter would have 2.5"-wide columns, requiring a 0.25"-wide space between columns.
• When text appears inside a box, the space between the text and the box should be 8-12% of the width of the column. Again, a 2.5"-wide column of text should be 0.2" to 0.3" away from the box.
• The box spacing rule also applies to text wraps around objects. However, even though wrapped text should stay at least 1/8" away from a photo or graphic, the caption for the photo should be closer, say 1/16", most of the time.

As with all fashions, the popularity of a typeface depends on trendsetting designers, usually valuing difficult or unexpected uses for type.

The advertising world's taste for raggedy versions of Courier seems to be sticking around for a third hard-to-decipher year. Yet, poor Garamond, Apple Computer's font of choice, seems to be waning with the fortunes of the Macintosh's parent. The same goes for Palatino, Avant Garde and Zapf Chancery, given new life during the ‘80s by Adobe Postscript (curiously, Bookman never did catch on again and New Century Schoolbook is just getting going).

From this vantage point at least, the trend in serif body copy fonts seems to have shifted away from the simple, elegant Stone Serif and Clearface toward "old style" forms, such as the ornate families of Berkeley and Goudy.

Designers who tired of the resurgence of Helvetica during the late ‘80s (would you believe that Eurostyle and Univers ruled the sans serif world in the years immediately preceding desktop publishing!?), quickly rediscovered Futura, one of the most elegant, flexible sans serif faces ever designed. Easing Futura aside a bit, Gill Sans has made a comeback (a popular '70s face).

Luckily, Benguiat is still dead.

In the display face arena, fuzzy versions of common fonts still rule the roost, hand-drawn, wacky fonts such as Kids, Wet Paint and hundreds of others have found a place.

Yet, through it all, Caslon and Optima have trooped along -- always available, always familiar, always a good choice for ads, newsletters and brochures alike. Hooray for them.

Capitalization, like most things, follows trends. There are two accepted ways to use upper case letters in headlines and one of them -- "down style" -- is by far the most popular among ainstream publications (for the moment).

"Down style" headlines follow exactly the same capitalization rules as sentences -- that is, the first word and proper nouns get capitalized; the rest don't.

"Up style" headlines (like the ones you'll read in Newsletter Nameplate and all of the other publications we produce) capitalize every word except articles (a, an, the) and prepositions and conjunctions of three or fewer letters (on, to, up, for, and, but).

Like our thin ties, red meat and Futura fonts, we're going to hold on to up style in the calm assurance that it will Have Its Day Once Again.