Typography : Task 1

 April 23, 2024

|| 04/23/2024 - 05/20/2024 (Week 1 - Week 4)

|| Bertrand Alden Gani / 0370471

|| Typography

|| Bachelor Of Design In Creative Media

|| Task 1: Exercise

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Lectures

2. Instructions

3. Task 1

4. Feedback

5. Reflection

6. Further Reading

LECTURES

Week 1

a) Introduction

Typography:

• The act of creating letters.
• The creation of typefaces or type families.
• The process of designing typefaces in a way that makes written language readable, visually appealing, and easy to read.

Calligraphy:

• Refers to the writing, the writing style, there are many different writing styles such as black letter, round hand, etc.

Figure 1.0 Example of Calligraphy

Figure 1.1 Example of Round Hand Calligraphy

Font:

• Refers to the individual font or weight within a typeface.
• Refers to set of characters of the same style of letters.

                                       

Figure 1.2 Type of Fonts

Typefaces: 

• Refers to entire family of fonts or weights that share similar characteristics or styles.
• Refers to variation of particular style of writing.

Figure 1.3 Types of Typefaces

b) Early Development of Letterforms

Phoenician to Roman

• Most written letters are derived from the Phoenician alphabets.

Figure 1.4 Letterform Development

Figure 1.5 Phoenician Alphabets

• Etruscan carvers used to draw out letter on slabs of stones.
• The tool has a very important influence on the type of writing that is created.
• Phoenicians, like other semetic people, wrote right to left.
• The Greeks developed a style of writing called "boustrophedon" (the text read alternately from right to left and left to right).

Figure 1.6 Direction of writing for the Greeks, "boustrophedon"

Hand script from 3rd - 10th century C.E.

• Square capitals

seen in Roman monuments, featured serifs at the end of the main strokes. Strokes width variation was achieved by holding the reed pen at an angle of approximately 60 degrees off the perpendicular.

• Rustic capitals

a condensed version of square capitals, facilitated quicker writing with less parchment and a tilted pen angle of 30 degrees. However, their compressed style made them slightly more challenging to read despite their efficiency.

• Roman cursive

usually used for daily transactions, written in cursive hand in which forms were simplified for speed. The lowercase letterform was a result of writing fast.

• Uncials

"Uncia" is latin for a twelfth of anything, uncials incorporated some aspects of the roman cursive hand. Uncials did not have a lowercase and uppercase letterform. The broad forms of uncials are more readable at small sizes than rustic capitals.

• Half-uncials

A further formalization of the cursive hand, replete with ascenders and descenders, 2000 years after the origin of the Phoenician alphabet.

• Charlemagne

The first unifier of Europe, Charlemagne, entrusted the task of standardizing all ecclesiastical texts to Alcuin of York, Abbot of St Martin of Tours. The monks rewrote the texts using both majuscules, miniscule, capitalization and punctuation which set the standard for calligraphy for century.

• Blackletter to Gutenberg's type

After the dissolution of Charlemagne's empire, northern Europe started using a condensed strongly vertical letterform known as Blackletter or textura. In the south, a rounder more open hand gained popularity. It was called 'rotunda'. Gutenberg marshaled them to build pages mimicking the work of the scribe's hand - Blackletter of northern Europe. This required each letterform to be of different brass matrix, or negative impression.

Figure 1.7 Hand script from 3rd - 10th century C.E.

Text type classification

• 1450 Blackletter: The first printing type was based on the hand-copying techniques employed in northern Europe at the time for books.
• 1475 Oldstyle: Based on the capital and lowercase letterforms discovered written on Roman ruins, as well as the lowercase forms copied from books by Italian humanist scholars.
  
• 1500 Italic: Echoing contemporary Italian handwriting, condensed and close-set.
• 1550 Script: This typeface class isn't totally suitable for long text situations because it was initially designed to mimic engraved calligraphic shapes.
• 1750 Transitional: An improvement on traditional forms: brackets were made lighter and thicker relationships were emphasized.
• 1775 Modern: Serifs are unbracketed, and the contrast between thick and thin are extreme.
• 1825 Square Serif / Slab Serif: Originally heavy bracketed serif with little variation between thick and thin strokes.
• 1900 Sans Serif: These typefaces eliminated serifs altogether.
• 1990 Serif / Sans Serif: Contains alphabets in both serif and sans serif.

Week 2

Text/ Tracking

 1. Kerning and Letterspacing

• Kerning

is a typographical term that refers to the adjustment of space between individual characters or letters in a font.

• Letterspacing

is typographical term that refers to the uniform adjustment of spacing between all the letters in a block of text.

• Tracking

Addition & removal space in a word or sentence, if you are doing kerning and letterspacing in one word it called tracking.

Figure 1.8 Kerning and Letterspacing

2. Formatting Text

• Flush left

Each line starts at the same point but ends wherever the last word on the line ends. Generally, the most natural way of formatting.

Figure 1.9 Example of Flush Left

• Centered

The format of the text is centered, left and right are equal. Center text is sometimes difficult to read because the starting point is irregular.

 

Figure 2.0 Example of Centered

• Flush right

The format places emphasis on the end of a line as opposed to its start, each line ends at the same point on the right while the ragging on the left needs to be smoother.

 

Figure 2.1 Example of Flush Right

• Justified: 

This format forces the words to take on a symmetrical form. Both edges of each line are both aligned with both margins.

 

Figure 2.2 Example of Justified

3. Texture

Various fonts are appropriate for various messages. The ideal typeface for the message at hand must be known to a good typographer. Type with a heavier stroke width or a more generous x-height creates a darker mass on the page than type with a lighter stroke or a smaller x-height. A layout's ability to be sensitive to these color variations is important.

Figure 2.3 Anatomy of A Typeface

4. Leading and Line Length

• Type size: The font size should be large enough to read at a distance of one arm's length.
• Leading: A reader may quickly lose track of text that is placed too tightly because it stimulates vertical eye movement. An overly loose group of characters results in distracting striped patterns.
• Line Length: Less leading is needed for shorter lines and more for longer lines. Aim for a line length of 55–65 characters. Extremely long or short line lengths impair reading.

5. Type Specimen Book

• Typeface examples in a range of sizes are displayed in a specimen book. Its purpose is to provide an accurate reference for things like type, size, leading, line length, etc.
• A field that can fill a page or a screen should be created using text. Instead of being a sleight of hand, ideal writing has a median gray value.

Figure 2.4 Type Specimen Book 

Week 3

6. Indicating Paragraphs

• Extended Paragraphs: create unusually wide columns of text. Despite these problems, there can be strong compositional or functional reasons for choosing it.
• Pilcrow: A holdover from the medieval manuscripts.
• Line space: Between the paragraphs. If the line space is 12pt, then the paragraph space is 12pt. This ensures cross-alignment across columns of text.

7. Widows and Orphans

• Widow: A short line of type left alone at the end of a column of text.
• Orphan: A short line of type left alone at the start of new column.

Widows may be acceptable at times, but orphans are unacceptable.

8. Highlighting Text

A particular piece of text can be emphasized in a few different ways, such as by making it bold, italicized, bold + typeface change (notice that serifs tend to look smaller than san-serifs), or by changing the color. Putting a colored field behind the text is another technique to draw attention to it.

9. Headline within Text

• A head indicates a clear break between the topics within a section. 
• The B head here is subordinate to A heads. B heads indicate a new supporting argument or example for the topic at hand. As such they should not interrupt the text as strongly as A heads do. Here the B heads are shown in small caps, italic, bold serif, and bold san serif.
• C heads highlight specific facets of material within B head text. They don't interrupt the flow of reading.  C heads in this configuration are followed by at least an em space for visual separation.
• Putting together a sequence of subheads = hierarchy 

Figure 2.5 Headline with text

10. Cross Alignment

Cross aligning headlines and captions with text type reinforces the architectural sense of the page—the structure—while articulating the complimentary vertical rhythms.

Figure 2.6 Cross Alignment

INSTRUCTIONS

TASK 1

Task 1: Exercise 1 - Type Expression

For the first task we're given a few words for type expressions. The words are Jump, Laugh, Roll, Crash, Flow, Panic, Balance, Exhaust, Spark, Formulate. We're assigned to pick out four words and sketch them. Distortion of any of the letters is not allowed, but only rotate, flip or scale them proportionally. No color may be used in the exercises. Use only the 10 typefaces given.

10 Fonts given were: 

1. ITC New Baskerville Std 

2. Janson Text LT Std 

3. Gill Sans Std 

4. Bembo Std 

5. Serifa Std 

6. Bodoni Std 

7. Futura Std 

8. Univers Lt Std 

9. ITC Garamond Std 

10. Adobe Calson Pro

The I chose these four words to create： 

1# FLOW

2# CRASH 

3# SPARK 

4# BALANCE

Research:

-What is expressive typography? Expressive typography is an art form that conveys emotions and meanings through the design and layout of text. In this type of design, elements such as the font, size, color, spacing, etc., are carefully chosen and arranged to emphasize the emotions, content, or themes conveyed by the text.

-What's the use of expressive typography? I think through expressive typography styles, we can enhance the meaning of the text and attract the attention of the audience, thus better conveying information and emotions.

Sketches:

I tried to find suitable font style for "SPARK" and tried to express the word by adding lines

I tried to use the letter "L" or "A" as the center point to express the words by mimicking scales.

I got some inspirations from internet and tried to add my own ideas 

I was inspired by graffiti font styles so I added slashes/scratches to express the word.

Digitization:

After I did my sketches, I proceed to digitalize them. This is my first time using Adobe Illustrator. I watched the lecture video and came up with the results shown above.

Type Expression Animation:

I chose the word "SPARK" to animate. I watched the lecture video then I made the frames in Adobe Illustrator and made it to a gif in Adobe Photoshop.

Final Type Expression:

This is my final type expression after some feedback and revision.

Task 1: Exercise 2 - Type Formatting

For the second task, I have been given multiple paragraphs of text to format using the guidelines in the video tutorial from (text formatting 1:4 to 4:4A). This exercise will help me practice and develop my skills in spatial arrangement and information hierarchy. I am required to use Adobe InDesign for this exercise.

Kerning and Tracking:

Text formatting without kerning

Text formatting with kerning

Comparison

References:

Final Type Formatting Layout:

Formatting Details:

HEAD LINE
Font/s: ITC Garamond Std Bold (Headline), ITC Garamond Std Light (Subheadline), ITC Garamond Std Light (Byline)

Type Size/s: 85 pt (Drop Cap), 55 pt (Headline), 25 pt (Subheadline), 17pt (Byline)
Leading: 102 pt (Drop Cap), 66 pt (Headline), 30 pt (Subheadline), 20.4 pt (Byline)
Paragraph spacing:-

BODY
Font/s: Bembo Std Regular

Type Size: 10pt, 8pt (Caption)
Leading: 12 pt
Paragraph spacing: 12 pt
Characters per-line: 40
Alignment: Left aligned

Margins: Top, Left, Right (3p0), Bottom (15p0)
Columns: 3
Gutter: 1p2.173

FEEDBACK

Week 2

General Feedback : Some of the words expression is already overused

Special Feedback : Try to think more ideas

Week 3

General Feedback : Don't use shapes to express the words, try to find suitable font

Special Feedback : The "SPARK" is better off without the lines

Week 4

General Feedback : Approved to animate the word "SPARK"

Special Feedback : Add more frames to make the animation smoother

Week 5

General Feedback : The gif animation is fine

Special Feedback : Start working on Task 2

REFLECTION

Experience : 
This is my first time using Adobe Illustrator. Luckily, the menu and tool is quite similar to Adobe Photoshop so it wasn't too confusing. However, there are a few things that I'm not quite familiar with, but by watching the lecture and tutorial videos, it did really help me to get familiarize with Adobe Illustrator.

Observations :
Listening to lecturer's feedback and seeing other students' works helped me to improve my skills and ideas.

Findings :
After completing the first task, I gained knowledge on how to communicate better with words and how to make basic animation.

FURTHER READING

"The Vignelli Canon" by Massimo Vignelli

According to the book, there are three aspects in Design that are very important: Semantic, Syntatic, and Pragmatic. Semantic, is searching for the meaning of the design. Syntatic means that the syntax of design is provided by many components in the nature of the project. Pragmatic means to make everyone understand the meaning of the design. Beside those, there are other aspects as well such as Discipline, Appropriateness, Ambiguity, Design Is One, Visual Power, Intellectual Elegance, Timelessness, Responsibility, Equity.

Overall, by reading this book I get a glimpse of Vignelli's understanding of good design, its rules and criteria. He uses numerous example to convey applications in practice - from product design via signaletics and graphic design to Corporate Design.