Hi all,
Last year I took a type design course and I was taught that when setting up the vertical metrics, I shouldn’t use all the 1000 units per em when designing the font. I should leave a bit of room – say use a total of 970 instead.
If that makes any sense, could someone point me to a source that I could read more and try to understand why? And how can I calculate this number.
P.S: I’m new to the forum, I hope I created the topic within the appropriate category.
It sounds like you are confusing some things. I recommend reading this article: Vertical metrics | Glyphs
Hi Sebastian, thank you for sharing the link.
I am familiar with that article, but that doesn’t seem to touch upon what I am trying to understand.
Say you’re using 1000 units per em for a font. I was told that the distance between the Ascender and the Descender should be a little less than 1000. Like below:
745 Ascender
-195 Descender
That would be a total of 940 units instead of 1000.
Did I miss this in the article?
It depends how big or small your font will appear compared with other fonts.
If you have a font, you can change the UPM to see the effect. E.g. set the UPM to the sum of you ascender and descender and see what happens. If you find a good combination of vertical metrics and UPM, use the arrow button next to the UPM field to scale the font back to 1000.
What you described is the so-called UPM dogma, and there is a whole section of the article dedicated to it.
Quick answer: no, you don’t have to fit your ascenders and descenders within the UPM.
I think I understand now, thank you all who replied to the thread.