TYPOGRAPHY

27/03/18 - 01/05/18 (Week 01 - Week 06)

Isaac Lee (0330747)

Typography

Exercise

LECTURE

27/03/18 (Week 01)

I did not attend class that morning because I was in a car accident, and I had to settle some things at the police station. Even though I missed the lecture and briefing, I diligently asked my classmates about what we were told to do, or were there any assignments given to us, or were there anything that we need to get for our Typography class.

What is Typography?

It is the visual component of the written word. It is a way to describe a message, and it consists of letters called fonts. A lot of work and effort is put into creating fonts; various types of fonts. Typography is crucial to the works of graphic designers, content writers, and also marketing professionals. It can be found almost everywhere, for example: books, magazines, advertising, billboards, and many more.

Why is it important?

Firstly, it attracts the individual's attention and it also delivers a particular mood or feeling. It affects the individual's concentration, level of interest, and willingness when they are reading. Secondly, it makes it easier for an individual to be engaged by using visually appealing fonts. Various types of font projects different functions such that it creates harmony, continuity, and simplicity. Lastly, it builds brand recognition for companies and organizations.

Typography development:

Calligraphy is anything that is written, and it consists of two types of styles: traditional (formal) and expressive (informal). Next, lettering is somewhat like calligraphy; but instead of writing letters, we draw letters. Lastly, typography is basically the art and technique of arranging type.

Terminologies:

A font is a set or a collection of types. The typeface is the design of type, a set of characters, such as letters or numbers. Variety of design gives each type different kinds of characteristics. A type family is a group of typefaces that are identical to each other. For example, bold, light, and italic versions of a typeface are part of the same family.

03/04/18 (Week 02)

This week, we learnt how to use the calligraphy pens (3.0). We were required to practice our strokes on a graph paper; horizontal, vertical, and ‘O’s, until we familiarize ourselves with it.

10/04/18 (Week 03)

In week 3, we learned about the history of typography, how the design of letters came about over the centuries. Earlier in the lecture, Mr. Vinod told us that the Typography books that we borrow from the library are of the Western perspective, and that if we want to delve into the Eastern perspective of typography, we have to do our own research; another thing to note is that, facts found from the internet and/or in books are based of the author's perspective.

Development and Timeline:

We learned the evolution of letter form from Phoenician all the way to Roman. The earliest development of letter form was Phoenician, it was the ancestor of letter form that we have up to this day. It's basically the drawings engraved on the walls of a cave, and it generally isn't easy to decipher the meaning of it; because everyone has different interpretations of it.

After that, the Greeks then changed the style of writing called 'boustrophedon'. Just like how the ox ploughs, the lines of text text are read alternately from left to right, then right to left on the next line, and so on. Not only did the direction of reading changed, the orientation of the letter forms changed as well.

Next, square capitals then came about, when writing it, the writing tool had to be in a 60° angle perpendicular. Later on, rustic capitals were developed, which was a compressed version of the square capitals, where the angle of the writing tool was changed from 60° to 30°. Not only was this easier to write with, it was faster too, but harder to read.

Both square and rustic capitals were reserved for documentations, whereas, the Roman cursive was widely used for daily transactions; due to it being much more faster to write with. Furthermore, uncial (uppercase) and half-uncial (lowercase) letters then came about from the development of cursive handwriting. Lastly, in Germany, black letter writing was used throughout the country during Gutenberg's era.

Note: A lot of the modern designers dedicated their work to the original letter form designers.

17/04/18 (Week 04)

No lecture for this week.



24/04/18 (Week 05)

No lecture as well for this week, we only reviewed our work on Type Expression and proceed to animate it.



01/05/18 (Week 06)

There was no class because it was Labor Day.



INSTRUCTIONS

EXERCISES

(Week 01 – 02)

Here are my works practicing strokes: horizontal, vertical, and ‘O’s.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.3

After getting used to the strokes, we then move on to alphabet writing. The typeface that I chose is Foundational because I felt that it suits me better.

Foundational hand

This is my first attempt writing an alphabet, the letter ‘a’ is the one I mostly struggle with a lot. It looks simple, but it’s not.

Figure 2.1

Below here, you can see some of my works where I practice my calligraphy writing from A – Z.

Figure 2.2

Figure 2.3

Figure 2.4

Figure 2.5

Figure 2.6

Figure 2.7

Figure 2.8

(Week 03)

These are just some quotes that I tried out after getting the hang of writing in calligraphy.

Figure 3.1

After that, I chose one of the quotes from above and proceed to write it in the center of the paper as we're told to.

Figure 3.2

Figure 3.3

This is my attempt to write it on a piece of A4 paper, where there are virtually no guides.

Figure 3.4

Final submission for Week 01 to Week 03: lines, alphabets, and quote.

Figure 3.5

(Week 04)


The exercises for this week are lettering. And, from the lettering, we have to choose one and make a GIF out of it.

Figure 4.1: I made a few types of Lettering for my name

Figure 4.2: Making a GIF out of the Lettering that I chose. As you can see, there's flow and spirals. The flow represents that I'm the type of person who just goes with the flow, and the spirals symbolizes the journey and changes throughout life.

(Week 05)


For Week 5, we did Type Expressions. What it means is that we express the words visually based on the words itself. The words that were given to us were: Drunk, Dead, Loud, Quick, Dark, Stress. After designing the Type Expression, we were required to choose one of the them and make a GIF out of it.

Figure 5.1: Type Expressions for the corresponding words

Figure 5.2: GIF for the Type Expression 'DARK'

FEEDBACK

Week 01: No feedback for this week.

Week 02: My feedback was fairly simple; make sure that the nib of the pen stays at the same angle, always, regardless of the stroke. It’s good to write fast but it’s not always about speed. I should take my time practicing my handwriting.

Week 03: Both Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul said that my blog was fairly good, it was just that I forgot to add in a picture of the book cover. Plus, I should arrange my work in a chronological order next time. Regarding my work, Mr. Vinod said to me that the x-height of each and every alphabet should be consistent; and that the spaces between each word should be the same as the x-heights. After that, I have to make sure that when I write my ‘O’s, it has to have no breaks and/or are connected. Lastly, I should label my work in the future so that I wouldn’t mix both practices and exercises together.


Week 04: Mr. Vinod said that my quote was off-center, and that the spacing between the sentences and words aren’t consistent. Plus, the words/sentences are horizontally unaligned.

Week 05: The type expression for drunk doesn’t look very drunk but instead, it looks clumsy; dead looks like it’s vanishing instead of looking dead; loud looks loud but the spacing between ‘L’ and ‘O’ pose a bit of problem as appose to ‘U’ and ‘D’; the type expression for quick doesn’t need to have a shadow/motion trail, just need to tighten the spacing between the letters; the word dark is against a dark background, and 5% black is not printable as it will just come out as black; the choice of typeface for stress is good, it just needs to be in a square.

Week 06: No feedback because it was Labor Day.



REFLECTIONS

Experience:

Week 01: I had no experience with it whatsoever because I did not attend the class.

Week 02: It was a struggle writing with calligraphy pens at first because some of us had never use it before. It was frustrating for me, I’m sure the others feel the same too. Even though I felt that way, I’d say that I had fun learning how to use a calligraphy pen.

Week 03: This week was okay for me, start off the class with a lecture about the history/development of typography, so it was pretty good to learn about it. After that, Mr. Vinod told us to practice writing quotes since we got the hang of calligraphy writing. During this period, he and Mr. Shamsul called us one by one to check on our work and blog.

Week 04: I feel like I'm getting more frustrated towards Typography. It's probably because of the amount of workload we're receiving, and the countless of times we have to redo our exercises.

Week 05: It’s morning, and Mr. Vinod was mad at us; I wouldn’t say mad but more like upset with us. He was very upset with our work, more precisely our blogs. He says that we are slacking behind and we don’t put enough effort for this module, and that we aren’t any better than our seniors, let alone on par with them. The mood for the whole day was mostly ‘dead’, and I got crankier and pretty much unsatisfied.

Week 06: No experience because it's Labor Day.


Observations:

Week 01: I had no observations because I wasn’t around.

Week 02: A lot of us were struggling with writing in calligraphy, let alone how to use the pen. But I saw that there are a few who had experience with using calligraphy pens; and The whole class was dead silent because everyone was focusing on their calligraphy practice. But after doing a lot of practice, I’d say that we got used to it.

Week 03: I see that a lot of my classmates are getting used to writing calligraphy, and I noticed there are some who are still struggling with it. And that a lot of us used so much graph paper just for practice. For me, I guess I just need a little more practice with mine.

Week 04: Everyone looks very tired during this week. It seems like no one got enough sleep, and that some of the classmates are absent because they are unwell.

Week 05: So far, I’ve been walking around in class to see my classmates’ work and also to see what they are up to. To no surprise, our ideas for the Type Expression exercise are almost identical/similar yet different. And, some of their GIFs for the Type Expression are really good, to me at least. Also, most of my classmates are very good with using Illustrator, although there are some who struggle when it comes to Photoshop.

Week 06: No observations because it was Labor Day.



Findings:

Week 01: No findings for me because I did not come for class.

Week 02: I found that I write better without looking at the instructions, probably because I’m more of a “go with the flow” type of person. I seemed to write better when I just ‘do it’. Plus, another thing that I personally found is that the minute I put the nib of the pen on the paper, there’s no stopping until I finish the stroke or the letter; that is how you can achieve a nice-looking stroke or letter.

Week 03: It looks's like my calligraphy skills aren't quite perfect at all. My x-heights weren't consistent, and my 'O's have breaks in them. But it's a good thing that Mr. Vinod pointed it out. It just shows that I just need a little bit more practice and it'll all be good.

Week 04: It seems that my calligraphy writing doesn't have to be exactly the same as the hand. Like what Mr. Vinod said, my own handwriting style may influence my calligraphy writing, which is why it won't be exactly the same but it's good enough.

Week 05: I see that I can’t really do my work properly in class, not because I don’t focus or anything, it’s just that I wasn’t in the mood. Like, I wasn’t in my zone/environment to work. I feel better doing my work when it’s out of class, or when it’s after hours. Even though I do my work like usual, it just feels draining for some reason. Plus, I seem prefer doing most of my digital work on Photoshop rather than Illustrator. If there are work to be done digitally, I’d do it in Photoshop and then transfer the file to Illustrator.

Week 06: No findings because it's Labor Day.

FURTHER READING

27/03/18 (Week 01)

Design: Type: A Seductive Collection of Alluring Type Designs by Paul Burgess and Tony Seddon

I found out that doing less does not mean you’re not trying hard, it just means that you make things simpler. The greatest challenge for any designer working with a combination of images and text is to keep things interesting without losing its clarity.

The qualities of a layout are as important as the quality of the styling or choice of a typeface that represents the essence of a project and communicates directly to the reader. The problem is that there are too many typefaces to choose from. Massimo Vegnelli, a designer, proposes that you only need twelve good typefaces.

Typographic hierarchy is beneficial for designers who wants to create a clear navigation through a layout without having to coax too much effort from the reader. To achieve this, designers need to use different, or contrasting, typeface families. If you strive for simplicity, another way to do it is to lessen the range of typefaces and contrasting weights from the typeface family. A quick tip is to never choose a typeface for body text that doesn’t have at least a roman, semi-bold, and bold weight. To emphasize a name or a product, make sure that the weights are available in italics as well. By using a coherent set of geometric forms from a single typeface family, the reader is able to skim the texts and recognize those forms from one word to the next easily. Plus, the layout will look a lot slicker too if chosen wisely.

03/04/18 (Week 02)

Basics Design 03: Typography by Gavin Ambrose and Paul Harris

Basics Design 03: Typography front cover

Basics Design 03: Typography back cover

The standard printing method used to produce paper-based publications and documents, such as books, is offset lithography or offset printing. There are, however, other printing methods exist for getting ink, and/or the design, onto the substrate. These includes letterpress, hot metal, silk screen, and gravure.

Each of these techniques imparts qualities into a design that are more than just simply putting ink on the page. Differences in the pressure used to apply ink can add individuality, uniqueness, or tactility to a design.

In letterpress printing, an inked and raised surface is pressed against the substrate. This was the first commercial printing technique employed, and it’s the source of many printing terms. The raised surface that makes the impression is made from pieces of type, but photoengraved plates can also be used.

Modern designers are attracted to the defect produce by letterpress printing; when improperly inked patches appear in the letters as so that each impression created is slightly different and the type is unique, and they also use this technique as it can add tactile qualities to a piece.

Hot-metal printing, also known as cast-metal composition, was developed from letterpress printing and originally involved the casting of lines of type in molten metal. This made it possible to make large quantities of type in a relatively cheaper method. Nowadays text is typed into a machine to produce a punched paper type, which then controls the characters cast by a casting machine. The resulting block can then be used to print form. Unlike lithography, the impression made is richer in texture and depth. The results are very apparent and steeped in historical reference when combined with a suitably pulpy paper stock.

Silk-screen printing forces ink through a stencil, pattern, or a template that has been produced on silk, or any other similar cloth, and is stretched across a frame. The primary advantage of this printing method is that it can be used across a wide range of substrates, particularly those that are unsuited to other printing techniques.

Gravure printing, also known as rotogravure printing, is a high-volume intaglio print process in which the printing area is etched into the printing plate, ink is then transferred from the plate and onto the substrate.

10/04/18 (Week 03)

Advertising Design and Typography by Alexander W. White.

Advertising Design and Typography front cover

Advertising Design and Typography back cover

Text needs to be visually appealing in order to have a higher chance of attracting the reader. It deserves as much craftsmanship as any other part of an ad, make it easier to read without having to use much effort: set it perfectly by knowing what makes small type invisible as a content delivery system.

Art directing is like catching a fish: prepare a bait that will attract readers; make them stop and take in the headline; get them to continue on to a secondary type opportunity; and finally land them by getting them to read the text.

Text takes time and energy to read it, it is the test of a reader’s commitment. So, the biggest design challenge is to get readers into the text. A message that appeals to them, a design on which they can get snagged, and the effortlessness to read once they get there. Text is no place to challenge readers to decipher text or make the least effort to read.

To make text type inviting, set it a point size larger than you should. Next, choose a medium weight of a quality space. After that, give the text a comfortable size and column width. Lastly, give it invisible spacing attributes.

Space and text typography is space management. It is balancing space as a separator and a connector. It is highly visual and computer defaults cannot be relied on for fine spacing craftsmanship. Space in text appears in five places: between characters, words, lines, paragraphs, and columns.

Character spacing is achieved in two ways: tracking and kerning. Tracking is setting paragraph-wide spacing attributes. The text should tend more towards open spacing rather than tight spacing to compensate for text’s smaller size. This extra bit of space helps letterforms stand apart. Kerning is adjusting the space between specific pairs of letters where individual characters can be readily seen.

Word spacing is perceived in proportion to character and linespacing. Word spacing should be almost invisible or just enough to separate words without looking either too tight or too open. Good word spacing maintains the integrity of the line so it doesn’t break into individual word chunks.

Linespacing must be larger than word spacing, so the eye reads across the line rather than downwards. It should be increased as line length expands beyond the optimal 52-60 characters per line to ease returns to the leading edge of the next line.

Paragraph spacing separates one idea from the next. Paragraphing may be achieved by indenting the first line, by indenting all but the first line, or by adding a half or full line space between paragraphs. Another method of paragraphing, and the first to be invented, is to use a dingbat or the paragraph symbol. This classic style gives text an uninterrupted shape for text warps. Never indent the first paragraph of text: it is an obvious beginning and indent is a typographic redundancy, which makes the designer look poorly informed.

Column spacing should be at least twice as large as word spacing, so readers don’t accidentally read across to a neighboring column rather than drop down the next line.

17/04/18 (Week 04)

Text on Type: Critical Writings on Typography by Steven Heller and Philip B. Meggs.

Text on Type: Critical Writings on Typography front cover

Text on Type: Critical Writings on Typography back cover

The old typography, both in feeling and in form, was adapted to the needs of its readers, who had plenty of time to read line by line in a leisurely manner. For them, function could not yet play any significant role. For this reason, the old typography concerned itself less with function than with what was called ‘beauty’ or ‘art’. Problems of formal aesthetics (the choice of type, mixture of typefaces and ornament) dominated considerations of form. It is for this reason that the history of typography is an embodiment of the development of historical typefaces and ornaments.

It was left to our age to achieve a lively focus on the problem of form or design. While up till now, form was considered as something external, a product of the ‘artistic imagination’. Today we have moved considerably closer to the recognition of its essence through the renewed study of nature and more especially to technology. Both nature and technology teach us that ‘form’ is not independent, but grows out of function, out of the materials used, and out of how they are used. This was how the marvelous forms of nature and the equally marvelous forms of technology originated. We can describe the forms of technology as just as ‘organic’ as those of nature. But as a rule, most people see only the superficial forms of recognizing that their perfection of appearance is due to the precise and economic expression of their function. In the process of giving form, both technology and nature use the same laws of economy, precision, minimum friction, and so on. Technology by its very nature can never be an end in itself, only a means to an end, and can therefore be a part of man’s spiritual life only indirectly, while the remaining fields of human creativity rise above the purely functional of technical forms. They are drawn towards greater clarity and purity of appearance.

24/04/18 (Week 05)

Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography by Christopher Burke.

Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography front cover

Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography back cover

From the beginning of 1925 Tschichold was compiling material about Constructivism in typography for a special issue of Typographische Mitteilungen (Typographic news), the journal of the Bildungsverband der Deutschen Buch­drucker (Educational association of the German printing trade union), which was based in Leipzig. The project inevitably took longer to prepare than Tschichold had planned: by Easter 1925 he lamented that it was already delayed and hoped that it would appear in July,' but it was finally published under the title Elementare Typographie (Elemental typography) in the issue of Typographische Mitteilungen for October 1925. In the meantime, Tschichold worked on another, shorter text about New Typography, a manifesto which predates the one he published in Elernen­tare Typographie. This earlier manifesto has not previously been mentioned in literature about Tschichold (not even by Tschichold himself). It was published in a small, cultural review called Kulturschau, subtitled Allgerneiner Anzeiger fur die linksgerichtete Literatur' (General advertiser for left oriented literature). Along with his connection to the Bil­dungsverband, Tschichold's association with this magazine confirms his affinity with the socialist movement in Leipzig at that time. Kulturschau was edited by Arthur Wolf, a mem­ber of the Communist Party and director of the important socialist publishing house in Leipzig called Die Mille.

Tschichold’s sixteen-point manifesto here was entitled `Die neue Typographie' (New Typography, fallowing the first published use of the term by Moholy-Nagy in the Bauhaus exhibition catalogue of 1923). Although it overlaps to some extent with `Elementare Typographie', it is worth quoting here in full as the first, concise statement of his modernist position (Tschichold's pencil correction opposite has been taken into the translation):

1. Typography is the precise graphic form of communication in the realm of graphic processes.
2. This communication can be: advertising and/or editorial.
3. Examples of Advertising Typography: posters, advertisements, prospectuses, book jackets. Examples of Editorial Typography: articles, essays, literature.
4. A communication should have the BRIEFEST, SIMPLEST, and MOST URGENT FORM.
5. The more a communication distances itself from literature and approaches the nature of a poster, the more compelling becomes the necessity for brevity, simplicity and urgency.
6. New Typography is oriented towards purpose.
7. Typography, in the sense of New Design, is construction with the most suitable materials in the simplest FORM, with the minimum MEANS, according to the function of the kind of communication to be achieved.
8. The exclusive materials of New Typography are those given by the task: the letters and rules in the type case.
9. The simplest and therefore only persuasive form of European SCRIPT is the Block-(sanserif)-type.
10. The strongest differentiation can be formed through the use of bold and light weights and different type-sizes.
11. In continuous text setting the current form of Sanserif is less legible than the Old Style Roman type mostly used until now. Technical reasons of reading, compounded by economic considerations, compel us to retain temporarily text typesetting in Roman.
12. All important elements (headings, numbering, important parts of the text) will be typeset in Sanserif of the most contrasting grey-value.
13. National typefaces (Fraktur, Textura, Old Slavonic) are excluded as generally incomprehensible and as leftovers from history. Economic considerations compound this necessity.
14. In order to heighten the sensational effect of New Typography and at the same time to compensate for static, horizontal and vertical elements, diagonal line directions are also possible, even diagonal placement of whole line groupings.
15. Photography is more persuasive than drawing. With increasing usage and the corresponding reduction in cost of the new reproduction technologies, there is no further obstruction to the exclusive and expanded application of photography as a means of illustration, which we fundamentally aspire to.
16. The realization of these principles, with increasing technological development, will result in a completely new form for the book.

01/05/18 (Week 06)

An A–Z of Type Designers by Neil Macmillan.

An A–Z of Type Designers front cover

An A–Z of Type Designers back cover

Things have changed in the past 20 years. Once an expensive, time-consuming process only undertaken after seemingly decades of pious study and self-flagellation, it has now become something which is available to all. Typeface design has become open to all kinds of influences and now has a role to play as a valuable signifier of the current ideologies and fashions in design generally – typefaces can now last a moment or a century, be authoritarian or subversive, playful or serious.

As with many other areas of design, this change was because of the introduction of the Apple Macintosh. It did what technology should do – make something ‘new’ possible, and make a difficult, expensive process easy. Typeface design exploded into a massive creative force that became the lifeblood of contemporary graphic design for over a decade.

The late 1980s and early 1990s became a time when anybody could start a foundry and release their fonts. There were some bad and good ones. Boring, dusty old font design was being directly influenced by contemporary philosophy. Postmodernism and deconstruction were being talked about. People wanted to subvert type history, to include their own immediate environment in their work.

The digital font industry has matured, many have realized that there is little financial return for the effort, and it takes a good deal of time and knowledge to construct a font well.

Typeface became incredibly important as a means of self-expression. In the past, it seemed that typefaces were either named after a place, the designer, a hero, or were a kind of ‘funny one-liner’ that crassly explained the concept behind a font. Now, they showed the ‘attitude’ of the designer – a place to intellectualize or preach to a very specific audience of other designers

Type design is such a valid means of self-expression that we continue to do. You can express the spirit of the age, the ever changing state of language, subvert the whole of the design industry, turn a thousand years of history on its head or make a political statement. Drawing and releasing a typeface means that you have shaped a new voice that is uniquely yours with which to speak to the world on your own terms.

CITATION

Burgess, P. & Seddon, T. (2012). Design: Type: A Seductive Collection of Alluring Type Designs. Massachusetts: Rockport Publishers.

Ambrose, G. & Harris, P. (2005). Basics Design 03: Typography. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA Publishing.

White, A. W. (2007). Advertising Design and Typography. New York: Allworth Press.

Heller, S. & Meggs, P. B. (2001). Text on Type: Critical Writings on Typography. New York: Allworth Press.

Burke, C. (2007). Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography. London: Hyphen Press.

Macmillan, N. (2006). An A–Z of Type Designers. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.