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 assigned to you from the list below. 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:

EXERCISE 1 RESOURCES

ERRORS TO AVOID

1) No Clear Hierarchy – Megan Baksa

2) Poor Kerning – Emma Beiser

3) Mismatching Fonts – Onalei Butler

4) Poor colors and contrast – Lindsay Deherrera

5) Distorted typefaces – Sydney Dietzel

6) Lack of space for type in a box – Mikayla Fleming

7) Bad rags (also known as bad breaks) – Thalia Guzman

8) Indenting the first paragraph – Minah Hubbard

9) Wrong voice (typeface style doesn’t match content) – Aundrea Kelly

10) Failing to correct widows – Livia Londrigan

11) Failing to correct orphans – Ava Mace

12) Type in all caps (especially applies to paragraphs / body copy) – Melissa Mendoza

13) Placing a stroke on type – Annalise Mileski

14) Extra space after a sentence – Terrion Moten

15) Not correcting rivers – Caroline Nelson

16) Not using hanging punctuation – Aubrey Palmer

17) Inconsistent baseline – Rose Ram

18) Incorrect line length (lines too long or too short) – Emma Rowley

19) Failing to use an em dash when needed – Raychel Rupnow

20) Failing to indent bulleted lists – Sarah Smith

21) Indenting a paragraph too far (2 ems is enough) – Tanner Smith

22) Not setting AM & PM in small caps – Gracie Warner

23) Using default apostrophe or default quote marks – Allyson Wegner

24) Stacking lowercase letters – Paige West

25) Use of tacky display typefaces such as comic sans or papyrus – Unassigned

24 TYPOGRAPHIC ERRORS TO AVOID

The Typographic Errors to Avoid file

Remember the Details, Details, Details.