Page Composition

Carl Shank • September 2, 2022

Guidelines for Good Layout*

If you ever read any of these disclosure and privacy agreements that you agree to, although written in plain English, they are dense and difficult to fathom.Even if they are on the internet and if given to you in paper form, they give a visual impression that can render a subscriber or applicant frustrated, suspicious and defensive. Take a look at the sample on the top below. To be honest, most of the time we simply don't bother to read the agreements. The problems come when we have an issue with the service or product that requires us to search through these massive and poorly composed pieces.


In real life, we use gestures, body language, tonal changes, and emotive elements that allow the message to get across accurately yet kindly to those who agree to the terms stated. This is done with composition and changes in type style, spacing, weight and size. It might be argued that such agreements and notices are written the way they are to save space or paper or internet usage. However, if we REALLY want the customer or subscriber to read these agreements, there is another and better way to go. This is the composition seen on the bottom below.


Type makes the message visible. The sample text is divided into conversation size pieces. Several techniques are used: (1) an obvious and strong header and beginning; (2) clear topic markers; (3) bold section markers that are easily identified; (4) visual shifts in direction using italicized type. What's changed? Text size and leading are the same (10/12) but everything else is new:


Wide margins. White space is often unused and underrated in such publications. Wide margins, according to John McWade (from which I borrowed and adapted this piece of page composition) are like "fresh linen; they set an open, inviting table." Margins are set at 1 inch all around with 1.5 inches on the left, in case the customer wants to do a three-holed punch and put them in a permanent binder (remember those?).


Medium length lines. They are the easiest to read and usually go about 5o characters or so per line.


Typographic contrasts.  Two type families are used here. Select a bold sans-serif (without feet) font for the vivid flags that point to each section. Here I am using a font called Formata, but any strong bold font will do. This conveys the authority of prominence without shouting (all CAPS type) or closing with the subheads. Notice that the numbers are also gone in these headers. The text is still Times New Roman. Italics are used to change your emphasis or tone of voice. Set each section apart from the rest using eye-pleasing space between the headers and textual elements.


*Adapted from "Guidelines for Good Layout," John McWade, Before & After, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1994, p. 7

Successful Layout & Design

German Typography History

By Carl Shank • August 31, 2026
German Typography History German typography has a particularly distinctive history because Germany was central to the invention of European movable-type printing, the development of Gothic/Blackletter typography, the rise of Fraktur, and later the modernist rejection of traditional German type. The story therefore moves dramatically from manuscript Gothic forms to highly ornate Fraktur, then to Bauhaus modernism and finally to contemporary digital typography. The history can be understood as a series of major transformations, as noted in ChatGPT, Gothic manuscript → Gutenberg → Schwabacher → Fraktur → Roman/Gothic duality → nineteenth-century industrial typography → Bauhaus modernism → New Typography → postwar modernism → digital pluralism. What makes German typography particularly fascinating is that the political and cultural meaning of type was unusually strong. Fraktur was not simply a letterform; over time it became associated with German language and identity, while the twentieth-century modernists deliberately sought to replace that historical visual language with an international, functional one. If you're studying European typography comparatively, German typography makes an especially useful contrast with Italian, French, Dutch, and English typography, because Germany's long attachment to Gothic type produced a very different trajectory from the Roman-type tradition that developed in Italy and subsequently dominated much of Western Europe. A number of Blogs I have written gives one an insight as to German historical typography and its central typographic characters, including typefaces and notes about Johannes Gutenberg, Marin Luther in Gothic type, Fraktur type and its extensive use in Germany, Rudolph Koch, the Bauhaus period with Herbert Bayer and Paul Renner, Futura, Jan Tschichold and Die Neue Typographie, and the influence of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font and its relationship to Helvetica, Univers, Neue Haas Grotesk, and Arial. Blogs that inform — Advance in Typography: Twentieth Century (Part 1) Type After Gutenberg: A Historical Sketch Theology of Type (2): Gutenberg to Early 1900s Early German Typography (Part 1) Early German Typography (Part 2 ) Blackletter Type & Universities About Sans-Serif Fonts Typography: A History of Machines Contemporary German Typography. Contemporary Germany has become one of Europe's major centers of type design. Important contemporary designers and foundries include Erik Spiekermann. Erik Spiekermann (born1947)( is a German art historian, typographer, designer, information architect and writer. He divides his time between Berlin, London and San Francisco. He runs Hacking Gutenberg, an experimental letterpress printing workshop in Berlin. He wrote Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works , a book on typography first published in 1993, revised 4th edition 2023. Spiekermann has designed numerous typefaces, both for sale and as part of corporate design programs. His typefaces include Berliner Grotesk (original is from 1913, digitization is from c. 1978), Fira Sans (designed in collaboration with Ralph du Carrois) for Firefox OS, released in 2013 under the SIL Open Font License), ITC Officina Sans and Serif fonts (1990), and FF Meta. FF Meta is especially interesting, as one of the fonts illustrated by axis-praxis for variable font use. It has 28 Instances offered through Adobe, from Condensed through Black, and a Variable font from Monotype. Spiekermann’s work emphasizes information clarity, signage, corporate identity, wayfinding, and digital typography. In German typography, wayfinding refers to the use of typography, symbols, color, spatial organization, and signs to help people navigate a physical environment. It is closely associated with Germany’s strong tradition of functionalist and systematic graphic design. Modern German typography is characterized by pluralism rather than a single national style. Contemporary designers freely use sans serifs, serif typefaces, variable fonts, neo-grotesques, geometric sans serifs, humanist sans serifs, contemporary revivals of Fraktur, experimental lettering, and digital display fonts. Fraktur remains visible in specialized contexts such as traditional breweries, historic businesses, newspapers and publications with historical associations, certificates, Blackletter music and cultural graphics, and Gothic/medieval-themed design, However, it is no longer the default German text type.

Italian Typography History (2)

By Carl Shank • August 29, 2026
Italian Typography and Futurism. One of Italy's most important contributions to twentieth-century graphic design came from Futurism. Beginning around 1909, Italian Futurists challenged conventional typography. The most important figure was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. His Zang Tumb Tumb and related works used typography dynamically rather than simply as a vehicle for continuous reading. Zang Tumb Tumb is a sound and concrete poem appearing in journals between 1912 and 1914, when it was published as an artist’s book in Milan. It is an account of the Battle of Adrianople. The poem uses Parole in libertà (words in freedom; creative typography) and other poetic impressions of the events of the battle, including the sounds of gunfire and explosions. The work is now seen as a seminal work of modernist art, and an enormous influence on the emerging culture of European avant-garde print. (Wikipedia)
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