Giving letters perspective in Font by Zaweba

Some lettering looks as if it's rushing towards you or stretching away into the distance. Old film posters did it, so did fairground signs and comic book titles. The effect comes from perspective: the tops of the letters are narrower or wider than the bottoms, as if seen from an angle.

Perspective is one of the operations in the style stack of Font by Zaweba. It has a slider that sets the width at the cap height compared with the width at the baseline, from 0.3 to 1.7. Below 1 the letters narrow towards the top, as if they were standing up and leaning away from you. Above 1 they widen towards the top, as if looming over you. You also choose where the vanishing point sits: centre, left or right.

How the vanishing point changes the look

With the vanishing point in the centre, each letter narrows or widens evenly on both sides. A word set this way looks like it's standing on a flat surface seen from the front, a classic poster look.

Put the vanishing point on the left or right and the letters lean in that direction as they narrow. That gives the feeling of letters seen from one side, like the name painted on a building you're walking past. It also adds a sense of direction, which can help a headline point the eye towards something else on the page.

Starting from the Perspective Poster preset

If you want the look without building it up yourself, the Perspective Poster preset sets the stack up for you. Perspective works best with a heavy weight, because thin strokes become very thin indeed where the letter narrows. Starting from the preset gives you a sensible combination, and you can then adjust the perspective amount, change the vanishing point, or swap in a serif.

Presets aren't locked in any way. Once chosen, the stack is yours, and every operation can be changed, switched off or reordered.

Where it works and where it doesn't

Perspective is a display effect through and through. It looks best large: on a poster, a title card, a logo or a book cover. At small sizes the change in width from top to bottom is hard to see, and letters can simply look oddly shaped. Body text set in a perspective font is hard to read, so keep it for headings of a few words.

It also suits capitals more than lowercase. A word in capitals has a clean top line, so the narrowing reads clearly. Lowercase letters have ascenders and descenders of different heights, and the perspective, which is measured against the cap height, affects them unevenly. That can look charming or untidy depending on the word, so check the real text in the live preview.

Combining with other operations

Perspective works well with width and vertical shear. A condensed font with strong perspective looks tall and dramatic. Adding a little vertical shear on top makes the lettering seem to sweep upwards. Outline and inline effects can look striking with perspective, since the borders follow the changing shape, but check that the hollow parts don't close up where the letters are narrowest.

Order in the stack matters here. Serifs and decorations are attached at points on the letters. If perspective comes first, they attach to the already narrowed shape and keep their own proportions. If it comes after, they're squeezed along with the letter. Moving the operation up or down and watching the preview is the easiest way to see which you prefer.

Spacing a perspective font

Because perspective changes the width of the letters near the top, the visual gaps between letters change too. Font by Zaweba redoes spacing and kerning after every change, so you start from a sensible fit. For a headline that matters, look closely at pairs with diagonals, such as AV and VA, and at round letters next to straight ones. The kerning pair editor lets you adjust a single pair and lock it.

Perspective is the operation that most quickly turns a sensible alphabet into something with drama. Used with a heavy weight and a short word, it gives you poster lettering that would take hours to draw by hand.