Discussion True letter height vs. software

[Bobby H]

Points and picas are normal for setting type in layouts for printed pages (newspapers, magazines, etc). In that realm the baseline grid, columns, etc matter more than the physical size of letters.

That points and picas stuff doesn't translate well to sign design. The physical size of the letters matters more there. If a customer wants a set of 24" tall channel letters the physical cap letter height has to be 24" tall, not some fraction of 24" and the remainder being varying amounts of invisible space depending on what typeface was chosen.

CorelDRAW doesn't have an option for sizing letters according to cap letter height, much less any added options for lowercase height. It isn't difficult to manually size a dummy cap letter like "E" to a desired height and copy the values to other text objects. I like how CorelDRAW allows text objects to be aligned to other objects via their baselines (as well as distribute multiple artistic text objects via baselines). I wish Adobe Illustrator could do that. Gotta fart with Smart Guides and manually snapping text objects to other things instead.

A couple or so versions ago Adobe Illustrator added some font height options; it defaults to the normal Em box but has options for cap letter height, lowercase letter height and the ICF box. Illustrator's implementation works reasonably well, but not always. It depends on the chosen font. The same has been true for Flexi and CASmate before that.

Every font file has built in dimensions to define baseline, cap height line, ascender and descender. At first glance it would seem easy for a graphics app to compute the difference between baseline and cap line and arrive at a solution for sizing letters according to physical cap letter size. Unfortunately not all fonts have their cap letters align neatly to the cap letter line. Plenty of sans serif fonts will undershoot or even overshoot the cap letter line. Certain scripts, such as Bickham Script Pro dramatically undershoot the cap letter line; I guess that is done to make room for all the big swooshes in those alternate characters.

So, in the end, there is no neat, one-size-fits-all solution to this problem.

 

[myront]

Here is what I do that works most of the time when using Illustrator. First, under Preferences / Unit - set type to inches (instead of points). Then in the Character menu, click on the 3 bars to fly out options and make sure that "Show Font Height Options" is checked. Then in the box that appears on the Character menu, pick Cap Height (see attachment). Usually when I convert to outlines, it is very close to the correct height in inches on the capital letters.

Thank you Marie, that's awesome. Took me a bit to find it, illustrator isn't my go to.

 

[myront]

Here is what I do that works most of the time when using Illustrator. First, under Preferences / Unit - set type to inches (instead of points). Then in the Character menu, click on the 3 bars to fly out options and make sure that "Show Font Height Options" is checked. Then in the box that appears on the Character menu, pick Cap Height (see attachment). Usually when I convert to outlines, it is very close to the correct height in inches on the capital letters.

Too bad you can't set it as default.

 

[Boudica]

Here is what I do that works most of the time when using Illustrator. First, under Preferences / Unit - set type to inches (instead of points). Then in the Character menu, click on the 3 bars to fly out options and make sure that "Show Font Height Options" is checked. Then in the box that appears on the Character menu, pick Cap Height (see attachment). Usually when I convert to outlines, it is very close to the correct height in inches on the capital letters.

Sweet! Thanks for sharing this. I've never tried it before just now, but your right - it works!

 

[ElfringbE]

Its always been like this with font sizing going back for me tu using cad link & dos.
I setup up the text, copy it, outline one of the copies, figure out the the proportion of the scale needed & scale. Double check the results of the outlined version. Good luck

 

[Ronny Axelsson]

This is how I usually do it in CorelDRAW:
Create a text containing nothing but an "H" and resize it to desired height in mm (value in Property Bar).
Now that you know the exact height of the uppercase H, switch to the text tool and type whatever you want,

 

[kcollinsdesign]

I don't understand the question. The vast majority of well designed fonts are designed for clarity, compositional balance, and readability. "O" and other rounded characters will typically extend beyond the height and baseline of characters with flat bottoms and tops. Same is true for lower case letters, with rounded letters extending beyond the baseline and mean height (X-height is the measure of lower case characters with flat tops and bottoms). Ascenders and descenders will all be different.

The best solution is to determine the space available, and design accordingly. Always take into account margins to separate the message from the background. What looks good on a monitor or piece of paper will change when placed in an environment.

Letter spacing is also an important consideration. Most signs benefit from increased letter spacing. One of my pet peeves (and a common beginner mistake) is tightening letter spacing to fit more characters into a given space. I don't want to even get started with distorting character shapes to fit a space!