Cotton-Ch 2 reflection

                

             Chapter 2 was extremely helpful with the typographic anatomy project. It gave many examples and discussed the many differences in type faces. The vocabulary in this section was more than abundant with terms such as: terminal, spine, and shoulder, which were all new terms to me, really helped me in my analysis of type. This chapter also does a very nice job of showing the stroke weight of certain types and comparing them to others. A single letter such as "r" can have hundreds of variations depending simply on the stroke weight that is used at the different points of the letter. Condensed and expanded type were also compared and discussed showing when perhaps it might be a good idea to make a word seem more dense and not so spread out. Also repetition of stroke is also given a very nice section showing that a single type family can share a single characteristic that really defines it and sets it apart from the rest. The classification section was great to see how historically type has been characterized and why it is done that way. The stress of letter was also shown with a very helpful visual showing that certain type faces shift the axis of a letter or letters in order to distinguish them as a part of that type family or so the type flows more smoothly. Type gauges were covered near the end of the chapter showing many tools that are used to measure not only the type itself but the spacing of a group of type.