When I think about typography, I am often taken back to a university excursion to the local mall. We walked for hours as our tutor pointed out all the ‘type crimes’ found in logos, window displays and signage. It was a valuable lesson in what not to do with typography, however I now unwillingly find myself on self-guided ‘type crime’ excursions every time I leave the house!

What is a type crime?

This is anything that makes text difficult to decipher, from legibility to visual appeal. An obvious crime might be something like stretched type. This is a common error people make to fit text into the available space. In distorting the typeface like this, the font’s personality is lost, and it becomes difficult to read.

Poor font pairings or too many in one place is another typographic criminal offence. When pairing fonts, it is best to aim for high contrast so there is a clear distinction in hierarchy.

Type crimes meet publishing

Many type crimes are obvious – to people with or without a background in design. For me, the worst type crimes are the ones that most people wouldn’t notice – the ones hidden amongst blocks of text that subconsciously interrupt the flow.

Rag

Paragraph rag refers to the uneven vertical margin of a block of text. In a left aligned block, the right edge is naturally a little jagged. I see this one everywhere and it is often a simple fix.

During final stages of a book’s design, we go through and clean jagged edges up. One way to do this is to force words over to the next line using a soft return. We often see a stray ‘a’ or ‘I’ sitting out on its own, which makes a block of text look disconnected.

Sometimes it’s a matter of long words edging out beyond the main body of text. Taking these words over to the next line often won’t solve the issue as it leaves a big gap in the paragraph. To fix these, we adjust the tracking slightly, tighten long lines and extend the tracking on the ones that fall short.

Tracking

Tracking, also known as letter spacing, refers to the horizontal space between letters in a word or line of text.

A little bit of rag is natural, and it is best not to push the text too far or it becomes obvious and – dare I say it – another type crime is created: over or under tracking.

Rivers

Rivers are gaps in text that appear as white lines running through paragraphs. They usually appear when text is fully justified or when text columns are too narrow. Adjusting the tracking usually removes rivers, creating less distraction for the reader.

Double spaces

Double spaces: the bane of my existence. I notice these in blocks of text at least once a day. It’s something you may have never noticed, but unfortunately now you will. Sorry, I can’t go through this one alone.

Orphans/widows

Widows and orphans are single lines of text left stranded at the top or bottom of a page. Widows sit alone at the top; orphans are left behind at the bottom. On a full page of text, they stand out like a sore thumb. Not only do widows and orphans look lonely, but they also break up the flow of text.

A time and a place

As much as I despise type crimes, some art movements embrace this type of ‘bad design’ and intentionally break rules as an aesthetic. It can be an effective way of grabbing attention. Anyone remember the 2021 ‘Spotify Wrapped’ rebrand? Spotify stretched typography to the point of illegibility. Whether it should be deemed good or bad design, it had the whole world discussing Spotify, which was very intentional.

Type crimes are something we generally avoid at Hyphen to ensure each book is clean and easy to decipher. In the wise words of my university tutor, typography is a life force and it is best not to mess with it.

– Jane Heriot, Junior Designer