From the course: Type Tips

Handling prepositions in title treatments

From the course: Type Tips

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Handling prepositions in title treatments

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- [Nigel] Welcome to Type Tips. I'm Nigel French. In this week's episode, I want to talk about possible ways to treat small words, articles and prepositions in title treatments. Having all the words the same size means that a disproportionate amount of space is given over to these small words, and that diminishes the overall impact of the type. I got the idea for this tip when I saw this poster in London, and I was struck by how effectively the designer had tucked the words of and a under the H of death. It's a simple thing, and once you've seen it, it seems like the obvious thing to do, but it must have involved some trial and error. So firstly, do you just reduce the vertical scale of the H and then tuck the words underneath that? The problem here is that the horizontal stroke of the H is reduced relative to the horizontal strokes of the E and the A. Alternatively, you could just leave the H at 100% size, put a white box over the bottom of the letters, and then have the small words on top of that. Or perhaps you could reverse those small words out of the vertical strokes of the H. I don't think this would work because it would mean that they would be so small. And a similar problem, if you try and fit those small words into the negative space of the H. So really, I think the best solution here would be the first one, but with a modification. So what I'm going to do is convert this type to outlines, and then I'm going to measure the width of the horizontal stroke of the A, position that over the H, and then adjust its width to make it the same. And then delete that box. We no longer need that, and there is our solution. Here's another example. Having and and the at the same size as beauty and beast really reduces the amount of space that we have available for those two important words. But take a look at how much bigger we can make those two words if we take and and the, rotate them, put them between the two words, and we see that this takes up no more horizontal space than the treatment above. Here's a slightly trickier one, but in a similar vein, we can stack the type, tight letting between the words and then fit of and the at the end of the first line for a much more impactful solution. So give this a try yourself whenever you come across a title with these small connecting words. Make them smaller or tuck them into an available space, giving you the chance to make the other words that much bigger.

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