U&lc Issue: 27.1.1

The nature of the type world keeps changing. And any online publication is, by definition, about change. U&lc Online began life as an online companion to U&lc, ITC’s award-winning magazine; from here on in, it will begin a new life, in a new format, as ITC’s online voice. Expect the unexpected. U&lc Online is ITC’s international journal of graphic design and digital media. U&lc Online needs no subscription; it’s part of the ITC web site, itcfonts.com. To read U&lc Online, just bookmark this page and check it out every month.

Skolos/Wedell: A Marriage By Design When newlyweds Nancy Skolos and Tom Wedell moved to Boston and opened their own design company in 1979, Tom was a photographer and Nancy was a graphic designer. But soon the boundary between their separate disciplines disappeared. Today, the integration is virtually seamless. Their work is particularly intriguing in that it applies cubist theory to contemporary materials and surfaces.

Letter Series: A No one knows why ‘A’ is the first letter of our alphabet. Some think it‘s because this letter represents one of the most common vowel sounds in ancient languages of the western hemisphere.

Justified Type Used well, justified type can look clean and classy. When it’s carelessly set, however, justified type can make your text look distorted and hard to read.

Creative Indents Indenting the first line of every paragraph is a habit most of us acquired in grammar school. However, for those daring souls who have always insisted on coloring outside the lines, it’s time to consider using a different style paragraph indent. There are more options than you might have realized!

Initial Letters Want to get your text off to a great start? Try using initial letters. An initial letter (or initial cap, as they are also called) is an enlarged letter that is used as the first character of a paragraph.

Oldstyle Figures Oldstyle figures are a style of numeral which approximate lowercase letterforms by having an x-height and varying ascenders and descenders. They are considerably different from the more common “lining” (or “aligning”) figures which are all-cap height and typically monospaced in text faces so that they line up vertically on charts.

Small Caps Small caps are available for a select number of typefaces and allow you to bring distinction and sophistication to your work.

Book Review: How Typography Happens A small book of modest ambition, How Typography Happens is a compilation of the texts of the Sander Lectures given by Ruari McLean at Cambridge University in 1983. McLean is a noted practitioner of the typographic profession and the author of several more significant books on the subject, notably The Thames & Hudson Manual of Typography and Jan Tschichold, Typographer.