- [Voiceover] Hello and welcome to
The 33 Laws of Typography.
My name is Jill Butler and I own a design studio
in Houston, Texas.
One of my favorite parts about design
is taking long, really boring looking spans of text
and turning these spans of text
into beautiful, easy to read documents
and it's really fun and it's pretty exciting
because it doesn't take much.
You just need to follow the laws of typography.
Most of these laws have existed for a really long time.
It's just that a lot of people are not familiar with them.
Typography is just one part of a document
and just one part of document design.
But it's a really important part
that often gets overlooked or even ignored.
Steve Jobs who was the founder of Apple Computer
studied calligraphy at Reed College
and then went on to change the world forever
with the invention of the Macintosh Computer.
One of the Macintosh computer's biggest innovations
was the ability to create beautiful typography.
This is something that a lot of us nowadays
take for granted.
Because of the personal computer and the desktop printer,
all of us can create documents.
But because of Steve Jobs, all of us can create
beautiful documents with gorgeous typography
and that's huge.
It's revolutionary
and this ability for all of us
to create beautiful documents
simply did not exist before 1984.
You may create documents as your primary job function
or maybe as part of your larger job duties.
You may create documents as a hobbyist, or as a volunteer,
or maybe as a student.
You may be creating resumes, web sites, e-books,
presentations, student assignments,
business cards, posters, brochures.
But no matter what type of documents that you're creating,
they'll be more effective when the typography
is both professional and beautiful.
Documents with professional, beautiful typography
are more legible and that simply means
that they're easier to read
and that makes them better at communicating,
which is the whole purpose
of creating a document in the first place.
Documents with professional, beautiful typography
are also more aesthetically pleasing.
They look better and because of this,
these documents with beautiful typography,
they create a good first impression
and they set a positive tone for your audience
before a single word is ever spoken or read.
This course is going to introduce you to the foundations
of beautiful typography
by explaining the 33 laws of typography
and these 33 laws have been broken down
into five categories.
How to format a document,
how to format large bodies of text,
how to format smaller blocks of text,
how to use punctuation properly,
and how to choose typefaces.
So if you are ready
to start creating more effective documents
with beautiful typography,
then you're in the right place.
I really hope you enjoy this course
and come to appreciate good typography as much as I do.