字体设计基础（1）视觉均衡

100% practical. Sketches have been made to explain some basic issues in type design during the workshops. They get used to point out some problems which raise while creating a new typeface. Only some foundations are shown, no deep sophisticated details.

100%实用。这一系列关于字体设计的讨论文章来自typeworkshop.com，每篇文章都配有手绘的插图，以阐明字体设计的一些基本事项，指出设计新字体时可能会遇到的一些问题。这里只讲述一些最基础的东西，未涉及复杂的技术细节。

Same size for all! To optically align all characters on a line, they cannot not have exactly the same mathematical height. For example the triangle on this drawing has to be higher than the rectangle. If this is not the case, the triangle will for sure look smaller than the rectangle. While creating a typeface, you want all the letters to have the same height.

为了让所有字符在视觉上对齐，它们就不能采用同样的物理尺寸。比如说，下图中的三角形的高度就必须大于矩形。否则，三角形看起来就要比矩形小很多。 而我们在设计字体的时候，往往想给它们定义同样的高度。

Also round forms have to exceed the baseline to be optically the same. If the circle would have exactly the same mathematical height as the rectangle, it would look smaller than the square. This doesn't only count for basic forms like triangles, circles and squares. It's essential in type design, because they apply to every single character in a typeface. Then it even doesn't matter if you're designing a latin, cyrillic or greek font. It's a basic principle for any kind of shape.

同样的 ，为了使圆形看起来和矩形同样大小，圆形就必须超出基线。如果圆形和矩形物理尺寸一样，圆形看上去就会比矩形小。这一规则不仅仅适用于三角形、圆形、方形这样的基本形状，这是字体设计的基本原则，整个字体中的所有字符都适用这一原则。不管你设计的是拉丁字体、还是斯拉夫或者希腊文字体，这是所有形体都必须遵循的基本准则。