<h3 style="line-height: 0.7em;"><em>By Casey Reas</em></h3>

<p class="license">This tutorial is Extension 35 from the second edition of <em><a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/processing-1">Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists</a></em>, published by MIT Press. Copyright 2013 MIT Press. This tutorial is for Processing version 2.0+. If you see any errors or have comments, please <a href="https://github.com/processing/processing-docs/issues?state=open">let us know</a>.</p>

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Throughout this book, everything has drawn to the primary display window. Sometimes, however, there is an advantage in drawing to another graphics surface. All of the drawing features available in the display window can be applied to an offscreen drawing surface and then drawn back into the display window as an image or texture. This technique makes it easier to imagine a program as a stack of layers similar to the technique used in photo editing and vector drawing software. Similarly, drawing surfaces in Processing can be moved around, drawn using blending effects and transparency, and drawn in different orders to change how the layers combine. Before the discussion moves to multiple drawing surfaces, this chapter starts with a discussion of the different renderers used by Processing.

<h1>Typography</h1>

<p class="license">This tutorial is for Processing version 2.0+. If you see any errors or have comments, please <a href="https://github.com/processing/processing-docs/issues?state=open">let us know</a>. This tutorial is from the book, <a href="http://www.processing.org/learning/books/#shiffman">Learning Processing</a>, by Daniel Shiffman, published by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Copyright &copy; 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.</p>

The evolution of typographic reproduction and display technologies has and continues to impact human culture. Early printing techniques developed by Johannes Gutenberg in fifteenth-century Germany using letters cast from lead provided a catalyst for increased literacy and the scientific revolution. Automated typesetting machines, such as the Linotype invented in the nineteenth century, changed the way information was produced, distributed, and consumed. In the digital era, the way we consume text has changed drastically since the proliferation of personal computers in the 1980s and the rapid growth of the Internet in the 1990s. Text from emails, websites, and instant messages fill computer screens, and while many of the typographic rules of the past apply, type on screen requires additional considerations for enhanced communication and legibility.

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textSize(32); // Set text size to 32

fill(0);

text("LAX", 0, 40);

textSize(64);

fill(0, 140); // Fill black with low opacity

text("8", 0, 60);

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<h3>Notes</h3>

1. Ellen Lupton, Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004), p. 29.

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