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ELTips: Vertical Text
—Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing systems are designed for vertical display. Each character fits in a square, making neat, stable stacks. (These writing systems can also be written horizontally.)
—The Latin alphabet is designed for horizontal reading. Lowercase letters have ascenders and descenders, and they have different widths. “M” is wide; “i” is narrow. The horizontal baseline unifies these diverse characters.
—Indic and Arabic scripts also read horizontally, and their designs have strong horizontal design features.
—Stacked Latin letters often have awkward line spacing. The ascenders and descenders of lowercase letters yield uneven gaps between lines.
—Capital letters stack better because they lack ascenders and descenders.
—Bungee, a typeface designed by David Jonathan Ross, is optimized for vertical stacking.
—Try rotating Latin text when you want to make vertical lines.
—Applications of vertical text include posters, book spines, signs on narrow streets, and labels on maps and graphics.
Featured work:
IDEA Magazine, featured in Tone in Tongue, curated by Mary Y. Yang and Zhongkai Li
Bungee, typeface by David Jonathan Ross
Architecture as Craft, book design by Karel Martens & Karl Nawrot
Animals and Alphabets, web design by Marie Otsuka, Occupant Fonts
@djrrb @occupantfonts @motsuka.posts
@ellenlupton
