Objective

To become alert to the flaws made by amateur typographers. To understand those errors in order to avoid making them.

Overview

Create a multi-page presentation that will explain typographic mistakes. Presentation can be built using Keynote, PowerPoint, or Acrobat but must be saved as a PDF.

Each student will go online and research type errors. Each student will choose five different points. One of the five is provided for you on the right. Type out a brief description of each one and find three examples of each. Create your file on a horizontal 11” x 8.5” page.

Final Work Due

A multi-page PDF of your findings and examples with brief descriptions. This will be placed on the Project server. It should be titled: student’s lastname-TypeErrors.pdf.

Sample of Student Work

Download the sample PDF here.

One page example:

Errors to Avoid

1) No Clear Hierarchy – Nicholas Armstrong

2) Poor Kerning – Iain Bukowinski

3) Mismatching Fonts – Dakota Chappel

4) Poor colors and contrast – Alexis Clifford

5) Distorted typefaces – Dane Foelker

6) Lack of space for type in a box – Cortney Curley

7) Bad rags (also known as bad breaks) – Jaden Gross

8) Indenting the first paragraph – Hannah Herzog

9) Wrong voice (typeface style doesn’t match content) – Mallory Hughes

10) Failing to correct widows – Jess Inman

11) Failing to correct orphans – Taylor Johnson

12) Type in all caps (especially applies to paragraphs / body copy) – Lily Larsen

13) Placing a stroke on type – Riley Novak

14) Extra space after a sentence – Cameron Novakowski

15) Not correcting rivers – Ava O'Connell

16) Not using hanging punctuation – Kimberly Salto

17) Inconsistent Baseline - Amanda Simpson

18) Incorrect line length (lines too long or too short) - Morgan Train

19) Failing to use an em-dash when needed - Megan Trebilcock

20) Failing to indent bulleted lists - Jordan Williams

22) Indenting a paragraph too far (2 ems is enough) - Mai Li Wright

24 Typographic Errors to Avoid

The Typographic Errors to Avoid file

Remember the Details, Details, Details.