varying leading within a document

[yugyug]

Recently started working on larger page count documents (financial reports, corporate magazines) than what I'm used to. Which is a little zzzzzzz but its a new challenge working with so much text. Anyway, the studio I freelance for has a house style that is

"no leading variation within a document" and especially not within a page.

I always thought that this was acceptable, within reason. I mean obviosly not in a something like a book but in a document/magazine with reasonably different page layouts/articles.

Anyway I think I mostly slept through my typography classes at uni. :rolleyes: so I was wondering what people here thought.

If anybody has any links/references that would be great. I have a book by Jan Tschishold (that I never read :rolleyes: :rolleyes: ) that would have (orthodox) answers but its in storage and I don't have access to it.

cheers!

[obesebee]

I think it's ok so long as it is well done. Robert Bringhurst in "The Elements of Typographic Style" (the typographer's bible) says:

"For the same reason that the tempo should not change arbitrarily in music, leading must not change arbitrarily in type... ...Headings, subheads, block quotations, footnotes, illustrations, captions and other intrusions into the text create syncopations and variations against the base rhythm of regularly leaded lines. These variations can and should add life to the page, but the main text should also return after each variation precisely on beat and in phase. This means that the total amount of vertical space consumed by each departure from the main text should be an even multiple of the basic leading. If the main text runs 11/13, intrusions to the text should equal some multiple of 13 points: 26, 39, 52, 65, 78, 91, 104 and so on"

This refers mainly to book typography, but can, and should, be applied to all typography. Hope that sheds some light on the matter.

[Broacher]

Grid. Leading grid. For multi-page documents it's one of the greatest ways to achieve typographic consistency as it forces you to plan your styles (and consequentially, your layout grid) much more carefully. Some people think it imposes too much on their creativity, but done correctly, it's unbeatable for establishing a much cleaner, refined 'feel' to any piece.

It might be worth losing some sleep and studying some of that type stuff you slept through.

[PrintDriver]

It might be worth losing some sleep and studying some of that type stuff you slept through.

ditto

[Zendada]

Dittoed.

Typography is a craft in and of itself. Go pick up a Rolling Stone and check out how they treat hierarchies, display titles, spreads and articles. Yes its a magazine format which varies greatly from a financial report but it is a great example of good typography.

Also dittoing the grid method. Setting up a grid right at the start is such a simple thing that can lend so much to unify your look and make it easier to layout your whole product.

[urstwile]

Ditto on the leading grid also. It makes a huge difference, particularly with stuff that has multiple columns on the page, where cross-alignment should be a goal. Thus obesebee's multiples of the leading comment.

There's nothing that annoys me more than seeing multi-column text where in column 1 the text is at a different vertical alignment than the text in column two (and three and so on).

You can use the software to assist you with this a little. In Quark, you can define your style sheets to snap to a baseline grid (which you define). Not sure how it's done in InDesign, since I'm still learning it, but I'm sure there's also a method for that as well. What I generally do is set my text style sheets to snap to the baseline grid, and my subhead style sheets to not snap. I can quickly see where I've made a calculation error because the text will have huge amounts of space above it or below it in order to accommodate the snap, and then I adjust the leading of my subheads and space above and below them accordingly, to hit the multiple of the text leading.

[yugyug]

ah thats great info everyone thanks. I've been boning up on leading grids - the most useful thing I found in indesign is that if I do want to vary the type size/leading I can set up custom baseline grids in the text frame options -

(and urstwile in answer to your comment, to snap text to the baseline in indesign is found in Paragraph Style Options > Indents and Spacing > Align to Grid.

all of this should save me heaps of time in the long run so cheers.

and if anyone else has more tips then please post!

[urstwile]

Figured it'd be somewhere like that. Thanks yugyug, happy gridding! :D