If you want to print small type on uncoated paper inktraps do a good job.

They also help when designing a font to get equal color.

Inktraps are commonly added to fonts that will likely fill with ink at their intersections. Newspaper and phone book types like Retina and Bell Centennial are the most extreme cases. They have extensive and deep traps because they’re meant to be printed on the worst paper available at damn near the highest speeds possible. Narrower fonts tend to have more traps because tight intersections form dark spots, and in some very condensed display faces traps are added just to equalize the balance of light and dark without breaking the rhythm of the design by making a letter too wide or adding extreme tapers. A book face like Adobe Garamond is fairly wide and was not commissioned to deal with specific printing problems so it doesn’t need much trapping. A more extreme example is ITC Giovanni—also by Slimbach—which has little or no trapping but can still hold up to printing on cheap pulp because it is very wide and has a huge x-height. And this does not mean that there are no traps in the design of Adobe Garamond. There are, but the entire French renaissance book type genre has its own style of trapping dark intersections with tapers and angles rather than the notch traps people tend to think of.

So, as inktraps can be distracting at display sizes, would it not be better to leave them out?

They may provide visual interest at headline size (decoration, dare it be said), which is true of all fine details, whatever their function in small text.

Freight Micro is another face which, like Bell Centennial, has been exploited for this quality in display settings by clever art directors.

More "ink-trapped" faces: Amplitude and Griffith Gothic, and my Worldwide and Walburn.

…with the current printing technology, I wonder if inktraps are still needed.

Yes; there is huge press gain on newsprint, a close cousin of blotting paper.

I've always liked inktraps as an interesting element for display sized type. But I also know that the opinions on this vary widely on these boards. :)

I have to admit, I would be in favor of fonts designed so that the inktraps of the sort noted go away gradually as one goes to larger point sizes - and can be dialed away, or the face comes in variants, so that the same typeface can be used, with the same resulting visual appearance, either on glossy paper or on newsprint.

There's a very simple reason why the distraction of traps at large sizes is irrelevant: you're not supposed to set a text font large! If you do, much worse things happen than mere distraction. What you're supposed to do is design special cuts for large sizes, and those shouldn't have trapping (except possibly for style).

A corollary: any font that looks good large isn't an optimal text font. And for a sub-optimal text font you can forego traps, sure. :-)

Trapping is increasingly more common these days. Why? The same reason optical sizes are more common now than at any time since the beginning of the 20th century: because people care more now. Not everybody, but enough people.

BTW:
http://themicrofoundry.com/ss_trapping1.html

> And this does not mean that there are no traps in the design of Adobe Garamond.

Actually, it is important to note here that Slimbach does not believe in trapping.

hhp

I think I have said before but the trapping flower is a neat little trick.

Is it reasonable to have inktraps on fonts designed for reading on screen? It seems this might be a nice way to help avoid clumping at joints, particularly in fonts with PostScript curves that lack the fine control of TrueType hinting.

Hinting or no, it does make sense (if it's grayscale).

hhp