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Overshoot (typography)

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, seeOvershoot (disambiguation).

High and low points of some letters

Overshoot is the degree that capital letters go below the baseline or above the cap height, and lowercase letters go below the baseline or above the mean line.

Intypeface design, theovershoot of a round or pointed letter (likeO orA) is the degree to which it extends higher or lower than a comparably sized "flat" letter (likeX orH), to achieve an optical effect of being the same size; it compensates for inaccuracies in human visual perception.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Formally, overshoot is the degree to which capital letters go below thebaseline or above thecap height, or to which a lowercase letter goes below the baseline or above thex-height.^[4]

For example, the highest and lowest extent of the capitalO will typically exceed those of the capitalX. Although the extent of overshoot varies depending on the design and the designer, perhaps 1% to 3% of the cap or x-height is typical forO. Peter Karow'sDigital Formats for Typefaces recommends 3% forO and 5% forA.^[5]^[6]

Similar design

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Typefaces are born from the struggle between rules and results. Squeezing a square about 1% helps it look more like a square; to appear the same height as a square, a circle must be measurably taller. The two strokes in an X aren't the same thickness, nor are their parallel edges actually parallel; the vertical stems of a lowercase alphabet are thinner than those of its capitals; the ascender on a d isn't the same length as the descender on a p, and so on. For the rational mind, type design can be a maddening game of drawing things differently in order to make them appear the same.

Jonathan Hoefler &Tobias Frere-Jones^[7]

Similar subtle adjustments to create an even appearance occur in other fields. For example, in thegame of go, thestones, which are black and white, are of slightly different sizes (black slightly larger), to give the appearance of being the same size.

References

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^Frere-Jones, Tobias (9 April 2015)."This Optical Illusion Tricks You Into Thinking That Typeface Letters Are the Same Height".Slate. Retrieved9 April 2015.
^Moore, Ian."Making Geometric Type Work".Typographica. Retrieved2 February 2016.
^Heidrun Osterer; Philipp Stamm (8 May 2014).Adrian Frutiger – Typefaces: The Complete Works. Birkhäuser. p. 333.ISBN 978-3-03821-260-7.
^Evans, Poppy; Sherin, Aaris (September 2013).The Graphic Design Reference & Specification Book. USA: Rockport Publishers. p. 28.ISBN 978-1-59253-851-5.
^"Glossary of (some) typographical terms".
^Peter Karow (19 January 2012).Digital Formats for Typefaces. Springer. p. 26.ISBN 978-3-642-78107-0.
^Devroye, Luc."Hoefler & Frere-Jones". Retrieved21 January 2015.

Typeface anatomy	Counter Diacritics Dingbat Glyph Ink trap Ligature Rotation Subscript and superscript Swash Text figures Tittle
Capitalization	All caps Camel case Initial Letter case Small caps Snake case Title case
Visual distinction	Blackboard bold Bold Color printing Italics Oblique Underline Whitespace
Horizontal aspects	Figure space Kerning Letter spacing Pitch Sentence spacing Thin space Word spacing
Vertical aspects	Ascender Baseline Body height Cap height Descender Mean line Overshoot x-height

Typeface
classifications

Roman type	Serif Antiqua Didone slab serif Sans-serif
Blackletter type	Fraktur Rotunda Schwabacher
Gaelic type	Insular Uncial
Specialist	Record type Display typeface script fat face reverse-contrast