Learn about the units of measurement used with type.
- [Instructor] Whatever measurement you use in your day to day life, and work, when you're working with text, you're likely to be using its measurement system of points. You'll sometimes see it written in full, like so, but it's much more common to see that abbreviated down to a lower case P and T for points. There are 72 points in one inch, and it might surprise you to know that that didn't become a standardized measurement until the beginning of the desktop publishing revolution in the 1980s, despite it being around for hundreds of years since.
And just as we have collective words for groups of things, we have some for type as well. The most common of which is the pica, in which there are 12 points. And you'll see pica abbreviated also down to P. So if that's made of 12 points, you could say that there are six picas in one inch, and you see it saves a little bit of writing. You haven't got to write 72pt, you can just write 6p.
And occasionally you will see measurements expressed in that shorthand way. 27 points, for example, 27pt, is equal to two pica three, that means two picas, 24 points in total, plus three points on the end to make the 27. And you don't need to write the PT after that, in the same way that if someone asked you how tall you were and you said I'm five foot 10, very rarely do people say I'm five foot 10 inches, because you know what the next smallest unit of measurement is.
Author
Released
2/27/2018- The creative process
- Layout and composition
- Grids
- Typography
- Color
- Transforming images and assets in Photoshop
- Drawing logos in Illustrator
- Designing graphics and documents in InDesign
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
Views
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Introduction
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Welcome1m 52s
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What is graphic design?1m 40s
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1. The Creative Process
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The creative brief1m 35s
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Research54s
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Ideation2m 41s
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Production2m 21s
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2. Layout and Composition
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The design space2m 50s
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Principles of layout2m 30s
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Grids1m 57s
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Exercise: Layout analysis1m 16s
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3. Typography
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The language of type2m 18s
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Type terminology3m 4s
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Type anatomy4m 41s
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Basic type classifications4m 47s
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Ligatures2m 17s
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Type measurement1m 59s
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Text elements: Character8m 4s
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Text elements: Paragraph6m 32s
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Selecting type4m 35s
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Basic typography guidelines6m 41s
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Type crimes4m 59s
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4. Color
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Color components3m 32s
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Monochrome and temperature3m 24s
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Color harmonies4m 23s
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RGB and CMYK4m 48s
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Process and spot colors4m 37s
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Color associations1m 19s
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Color blindness2m 51s
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5. Photoshop
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Photoshop quick start tour4m 14s
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Selectively changing colors4m 45s
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Cropping an image3m 24s
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6. Illustrator
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Illustrator quick start3m 18s
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Importing a rough sketch6m 7s
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Drawing the logo6m 20s
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Creating a color theme5m 44s
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Using the Touch Type tool3m 32s
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Creative Cloud libraries6m 40s
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7. InDesign
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InDesign quick start tour1m 54s
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Creating a new document1m 43s
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Working with master pages6m 53s
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Importing text into InDesign5m 58s
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Creating tables in InDesign7m 58s
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Finalizing the design5m 37s
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Conclusion
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Recommended courses1m 10s
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Video: Type measurement