4 ms·

Yes it is basically a demo. Specimen and Specimen Sheet are common terms in typography. The author is trying to display how type looks in a grid on this page, t

by vogt 11y ago

Yes it is basically a demo. Specimen and Specimen Sheet are common terms in typography. The author is trying to display how type looks in a grid on this page, though I agree the horizontal grid looks messy.

grey-area 11y ago
The point of a baseline grid in design is to relate elements sitting next to one another - say a picture sitting in a flow of text should hit the baseline of the text and perhaps x-height at the top, or a heading sitting in a column beside another col of text sits on the same baseline. This system doesn't provide that and there are many typographic crimes on this page: Many head sizes are smaller than main text. Heads do not sit with the paragraphs they belong to but float in a huge canyons of space - this is basic typography. Heads mix fonts in the same heading - OK for raygun maybe, not ok for normal use. Text cols overlap at many widths, and main text is allowed to be too short and too wide. There's a grid, but nothing sits on it or relates to it (baseline, x-height, cap-height etc). If a grid is shown it should be a baseline grid, and text should be locked to it at least in some cases, somewhere on the page. Looks like the grid is off. The blurb talks about 'vertical rhythm', but the styles don't display this - instead the two columns are unrelated and jarring - the only thing aligning is the main copy, but that means of course that heads have those awful gaps above and below - a nasty tradeoff which isn't worth it.
Bluestrike2 11y ago
The whole specimen is a mess. I get what he's aiming for, but a specimen should be clear and concise. This one isn't, and makes figuring out what you're looking at a lot more jarring than it should be.
- as1ndu 11y ago
  Thats why its open source. you can fork a copy improve on it and then send a pull request.

4 ms·

Yes it is basically a demo. Specimen and Specimen Sheet are common terms in typography. The author is trying to display how type looks in a grid on this page, t

by vogt 11y ago

grey-area 11y ago
The point of a baseline grid in design is to relate elements sitting next to one another - say a picture sitting in a flow of text should hit the baseline of the text and perhaps x-height at the top, or a heading sitting in a column beside another col of text sits on the same baseline. This system doesn't provide that and there are many typographic crimes on this page: Many head sizes are smaller than main text. Heads do not sit with the paragraphs they belong to but float in a huge canyons of space - this is basic typography. Heads mix fonts in the same heading - OK for raygun maybe, not ok for normal use. Text cols overlap at many widths, and main text is allowed to be too short and too wide. There's a grid, but nothing sits on it or relates to it (baseline, x-height, cap-height etc). If a grid is shown it should be a baseline grid, and text should be locked to it at least in some cases, somewhere on the page. Looks like the grid is off. The blurb talks about 'vertical rhythm', but the styles don't display this - instead the two columns are unrelated and jarring - the only thing aligning is the main copy, but that means of course that heads have those awful gaps above and below - a nasty tradeoff which isn't worth it.
Bluestrike2 11y ago
The whole specimen is a mess. I get what he's aiming for, but a specimen should be clear and concise. This one isn't, and makes figuring out what you're looking at a lot more jarring than it should be.
- as1ndu 11y ago
  Thats why its open source. you can fork a copy improve on it and then send a pull request.