Knockout
Buy any four Knockout packages for $499.00!
How to use
Knockout
Marrying the warmth of printshop bricolage and the performance of a well-organized type system, Knockout’s nine-width, four-weight family offers a range of typographic voices that’s impossible to achieve with even the best Modernist sans serifs.
Following a tradition from nineteenth century wood type, Knockout’s styles are organized by width instead of weight, and gathered into seven different series.
While Knockout avoids conventional regular–bold relationships, the lighter styles in Knockout Series A and B can be paired with darker styles in Series E and F, to provide the correct visual contrast to emphasize text. To find the appropriate companion boldface for any style, choose the style numbered 41 higher:
Knockout is ‘a headline face that can function at small sizes.’ The dense weights in Series G are intended for subhead sizes and above; the lighter and wider styles in Series A are legible at sizes even smaller than text.
For setting text, the Ringside family revisits Knockout and introduces the optical adjustments, character set, and family tree necessary for setting complex content at small sizes. For digital applications, Ringside ScreenSmart is an adaptation specifically designed for use on screen at text sizes, and engineered to deliver superior rendering in web browsers.
2.1Fitting to Width
Knockout’s subtle gradation of widths offers a typographic solution to the problem of text that runs long or short. In many contexts, the substitution of a slightly narrower or wider font can pass unnoticed by even the most attentive reader.
The following tables offer some conservative guidelines for the smallest sizes at which the fonts can comfortably be reproduced and read, assuming typical reading conditions, and conventional contrast between type and background colors. The recommendations for sizes on screen are based on the coarser resolutions of older, entry-level monitors: at the higher resolutions available on modern phones, tablets, and laptops, type is viable at even smaller sizes.
Headlines
Text/Headlines
Headlines
Text/Headlines
Headlines
Text/Headlines
Headlines
For decorative applications, Knockout’s cousin Cyclone is an inline typeface designed for headline sizes.
The Cyclone typeface (available separately) is a set of inline capitals modeled on Knockout No. 67, and provided in chromatic layers for creating two-color typography.
Many of Knockout’s special characters and alternates are grouped into Stylistic Sets, an OpenType feature available in many applications that makes it easier to apply related substitutions together.
4.1Stylistic Sets
4.2Additional Characters
Knockout automatically adjusts spacing and character choices to improve typography.
5.1Kerning
Knockout is spaced and kerned to perform in most circumstances without the need for manual intervention. In applications that offer multiple options for kerning type, always use the default kerning that’s native to the typefaces (labeled auto in Illustrator, and metrics in InDesign) — never use the setting for optical kerning.
So-called ‘optical kerning’ was originally developed as an automated assist for fonts that lack kerning. But applied to a professional typeface, it overrides the visual decisions made by the font’s designers, and instead spaces characters using a mathematical model. It routinely misjudges common pairs and ignores important context, creating erratic and disruptive rhythms. Because its algorithms are subject to change with each software update, ‘optical kerning’ can cause text to be reflowed without notice.
5.2Contextual Substitutions
An alternate lowercase t, whose crossbar is lowered to align with the lowercase f, is automatically inserted whenever the two letters appear next to each other.
Knockout features H&Co’s Expanded Latin character set.
Knockout supports 503 languages including Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Basque, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Cebuano, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kurdish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgeois, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Sardinian, Scots Gaelic, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Welsh, and Zulu.
