The Art Of Eyeballing – Part V: Stroke (Modulation: Introduction)
Part I: Introduction | Part II: Learning To See | Part III: Overshooting | Part IV: The Stroke (Optics)
0. Introduction
Welcome back!
I’ve been rewriting this article for ages now, so I’m glad to finally share this with you!
Today we’re going through a subject that it’s apparently simple, but the degree of complexity and abstraction can escalate pretty quickly, so I’ll be dividing this article in four sections: Introduction, Translation, Expansion and Scatter.
So this first part deals with the basic concepts that we need to understand this matter thoroughly; some structural, some a bit more abstract.
Scared? Great: it means that this will be easier than what you’re thinking. Let’s get this started!
1. Modulation
So, what the heck is modulation? Let me try to give one of my famously cryptic definitions:
In type, modulation is the register of a given tool on a given surface, through a given gesture, or the emulation of this.
Dude, you should write poetry. Yeah, I know.
In the human-friendly version, when you draw a letter with – let’s say – a ball-point pen, you make a certain gesture with your hand that, on a piece of paper, makes the pen release ink and produce a certain shape. Obvious stuff.
Now, let’s say you use a pointed brush instead of a pen. Depending on the pressure, angle and surface (imagine doing this on wood, for example), even if you make the exact same gesture, the shape produced will be different: there will be thicks and thins, rough edges and so on.
Or, if you’re drawing in a digital environment, you’ll be emulating this result.
So, modulation is the way a tool creates variation in a stroke, whether analogue (via calligraphy) or emulated (via lettering or type design). Or the variation of the stroke itself.
2. Gesture and Ductus
I guess I don’t have to explain what gesture is, since it’s not a matter of type-specific jargon. But when you do a gesture, it follows a path. To this path, we call it ductus.
The ductus is the skeleton of a letter. Although an abstraction, think of it as the path from where the stroke expands, or as the path of a writing tool.
Some definitions will tell you that you can get to the ductus by a reduction of the stroke towards the middle of the letter, but this is an imprecision: this might work in the case of translation (as you’ll see later on), but in most situations, especially when it comes to drawing glyphs by outlining them, the modulation around the ductus is assymetric.
3. Velocity, Pressure, Angle and Rotation
Especially in the translation model, angle is commonly treated as being fixed. This means that the writing tool (i.e. broad-nib pen) will be held at a certain angle and this won’t change while it propagates through the ductus. Still, every calligrapher knows that “rule” is just for comprehension sake; in fact, the angle can change a lot, even with a broad-nib pen.
How the angle of the tool changes in the gesture is vital to understand velocity and rotation: rotation is the variation of the tool’s angle, while velocity is the speed of which this rotation happens.
As you can see above, these factors have a huge impact on the shape of the stroke.
Finally, let’s consider pressure. Though we can almost ignore pressure in the case of translation and/or pushy people, it plays a big deal in the expansion and scatter models.
This item on our list will be explored further in the series (pretty much as any of the others), but here’s a simple explanation: the force exerted by the writing tool against the surface may influence the stroke. Take a pointed brush or nib, for example: as further pressure is applied, the stroke expands accordingly.
4. Some considerations
Before we move on, there’s a couple of things that I’d like you to keep in mind.
First of all, if you’re still a bit confused, things will become more obvious in the next articles, where you’ll see these concepts in action. So pat yourself on the back and plow through.
Second, you don’t have to become and expert calligrapher in order to produce good lettering or type designs. In fact, you don’t have to do calligraphy at all, although it wouldn’t hurt. The goal here is to understand where letterforms come from and to know how writing tools work, so you can analyse form in a more knowledgeable way, developing your sensibility.
Third, purely emulating these concepts and processes won’t produce satisfactory end results. There’s a lot more to do on top of this, such as optical corrections, curve quality, formal consistency and such. Still, knowing this will, for sure, aid you in achieving better end results.
Fourth, read Gerrit Noordzij‘s The Stroke. Really, get it and read it: it’s a fascinating read.
5. Wrapping up
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article, since you’re at the doorstep of some very interesting stuff: we’re going to put these concepts to work in the next few articles, so subscribe below to get notified and see you in the next chapters!
The Art Of Eyeballing – Part IV: The Stroke (Optics)
Index
Introduction | Learning To See | Overshooting | The Stroke: Optics
This is the first article of three, in our series, to talk about the stroke.
We briefly introduced the idea (in the previous article) that the stroke width has an effect on perception and, for this reason, should be adjusted. So, this article is just about that: optical adjustments to stroke.
May I state it right now: this is not rocket science and the more elaborated considerations about stroke (such as modulation, for example) will be covered in the next articles. For now, we want to approach a very simple case – a monoline construction – and try to achieve balance.
And without further ado (and because I’m starting to feel way to serious while writing this), let’s skip to the good part.
1. Horizontal vs. Vertical
Let’s get right to it: in the image above, which are the thickest strokes? Vertical or horizontal? Take your time. Horizontal, right?
If you thought “they’re equal”, you’re right. But do they seem equal? To me, they don’t. And to most people, they also don’t.
But for many years, I simply trusted the computer. And, as always, the computer was right, so who was I to judge mathematical perfection? Well, this is about perceptual balance, not the first. Again, trust your eyes.
And here’s a correction (with horizontal strokes being about 1% thinner than the vertical ones):
But why does this happen? In honesty, I don’t really know, although I have some theories about it:
- We have two eyes, distributed horizontally, making our area of eyesight wider than taller; and this might add relevance to vertically distributed elements;
- In type, we have millennia of broadnib and flat brush writing, usually with 30 to 40º angle from an horizontal position, making horizontal strokes wider than vertical ones. But again, this could be due to a perception/optical/neurological phenomena.
If you’re wondering about how this works in typefaces, have a look here:
2. Orthogonal vs. Diagonal
Consider the following example:
Again, all the 3 lines have exactly the same stroke width. We already talked about how to compensate the horizontal line, so let’s just do that:
If it wasn’t obvious in the first image, now it is: the diagonal line also looks heavier than the orthogonal ones.
So, for comprehension’s sake, let’s give the diagonal line the same stroke width has the (already compensated) horizontal line:
… which makes the diagonal line too thin.
Before we get into the solution, I’d like you to consider a couple of things:
- This example is not random, i.e., I’ve picked a 45º angle to the diagonal line for a reason that you’re about to find out;
- We can only apply this to monoline fonts, although this is just a starting point (the next articles will cover more cases and correspondent corrections).
So, if neither of the horizontal nor the vertical strokes’ width is applicable to the 45º diagonal (which, again, is half-way rotated between the orthogonal axis), what happens if we pick the exact in-between stroke width? Here you go:
Does it look alright? *wink*
And now, you might be asking about other angles. If we apply the same width stroke to any diagonal, we get this:
If you compare the first two lines, the second looks too thin; and if you compare the last two, the former looks too thick.
So here we can start to acknowledge that the thickness of a diagonal line should vary according to it’s angle, and that it’s a progression between the horizontal and vertical widths.
Here’s a linear progression of angles and widths:
2.1 Tackling Slants and Widths
If you’re anything like me, by now you’re doing some stressful mental schemes on how to calculate the exact width of a diagonal, depending on the horizontal and vertical strokes’ widths.
So, in order to save you some stressful times, here’s a quick and dirty way to do it:
- Draw an ellipse that has the same width as the vertical stroke and the same height as the horizontal stroke;
- Adjust the strokes to be tangents to this ellipse.
Two steps method. This is what I call workflow optimization! Here’s a visual representation of the method:
And, to implement a tradition, here are these principles applied to type:
3. Straight vs. Curve
And we’re coming closer to an end.
Let’s start with the following image, where all the strokes are exactly the same (and the O is already overshot):
And now, let’s make the corrections that we already know about (horizontal and vertical, in this case):
Same kind of question: do the straight and curved strokes feel equal? You might want to take a step back it see the images from afar.
The H seems to pop out more that the O. And, as I mentioned, the O is already overshot, so it’s not a case of overshooting. Or is it?
Well, curves seem thinner that straight lines for the same reason we have to overshoot them: a lot of white space is created and positive mass is decreased, so we have to compensate for that.
But the thing to retain here is that curves seem thinner than straight lines and the amount of compensation needed isn’t as extreme as the one we do in the verticle / horizontal cases, so it’s closer to an overshooting compensation.
Let’s correct our example:
4. How Much?
If you’ve noticed, I wasn’t blunt about how much to compensate; in fact, I only gave one example in §1.
I could provide rules-of-thumb that would be percentage ranges of compensation, but I feel that this is a trap.
First (and again), I advise you not to make calculations; providing you such rules (on how much to compensate) would oblige you to make these calculations and I want you to design as freely as you can.
So take what you’ve learned today and trust you’re eye. If it looks awkward, well, it’s awkward. Teach yourself to pay attention to the forms, counterforms and whitespace. Inspect the curve/line segments on by one and compare them to the whole form. And to the whole group of forms.
Even if we dabble in maths and geometry, here, keep in mind that these are means to an end, not the end itself.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article, see you in the next one! Cheers!