TYPOGRAPHY - EXERCISES
29.08.2018 (Week 1 - Week 6)
Rausha Aminath (0337000)Typography
Exercises
LECTURES
Lecture 1: Introduction to Typography
29.08.2018 (Week 1)
We began the class with an introduction to the module and how the module is gonna be carried out. We were guided on how to create a blog and all of us were asked to create a blog during the class and send the link to Mr.Vinod. A sample of a blog by a senior student was posted for our reference and as a guideline for what we are supposed to post on our blogs and how to organize it. Mr.Vinod then started our first lecture with an introduction to what is Typography.
Typography originally known as calligraphy or lettering was defined as "the style and appearance of printed matter." by the oxforddictionaries. It is the work of typesetters, compositors, typographers, graphic designers, art directors, manga artists, comic book artists and many more. However Wikipedia states that "typography is now something everybody does."
Typography employees a number of terminologies, conventions and unwritten rules depending on deposition or influence with regard to own style. Terminologies included Font, Type family and Typeface.
TERMINOLOGIES
- Font refers to the individual font or weight within the typeface, I.e.: Georgia Regular, Georgia Italic and Georgia Bold. It comes from a French word "Foundry", which means melted and cast into something, mold. Font is the product of Foundry. "The process of creation of the typing" is referred to as a font
- Type family refers to the many weights within an individual typeface
- Type face refers to the the entire family of fonts that share similar characteristic. For example, Georgia, Arial and Times New Roman
He then showed us our assignment to be completed by next class. We were supposed to draw vertical, horizontal and circular strokes on the graph paper with the Calligraphic pen. We were told not to rotate the pen or the paper and hold the pen in position and to work on it preferably on a glass table. This assignment was given to get used to the pen.
Lecture 2: Looking at Basics
05.09.2018 (Week 2)
The class began with a recollection of the previous weeks class and then Mr.Vinod moved on to the lecture. This class focused on looking at the basics of Typography.
Upper case letters have cap height and letters such as l, k, b and d has Ascender height.
Baseline is the imaginary line that visual base of the letter forms, while the median is the imaginary line defining the x-height. X Height is the height in any typeface of the lowercase 'x'. The x height determines whether the font we design is eligible or not and is therefor very important. Readable typefaces should be higher in x height. eg: Ariel
Contrast is also important for readability. Contrast of a typeface is the thickness of the stroke.
The full font of a typeface contains much more than 26 letters, to numerals, and a few punctuation marks.
Mr.Shamsul said that upper case and lower case was first introduced when letter press printing started.
Below are the 10 type faces we will be studying which represents 500 years of type design. The men and women who rendered them all sought to achieve two goals: easy readability and an appropriate expression of contemporary aesthetics.
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| The 10 Types of Typeface we will be using |
With that, we moved on to discussing the Module information Booklet. Mr.Vinod explained what is consisted in Exercise, Project 1, Project 2, and Final Project. He also showed how to arrange these in our blog and showed an example of the things we should include on our blog. Then he looked through and gave feedback individually for our assignments of the strokes while we started working on our picked hand.
Lecture 3: Working on our Hand
12.09.2018 (Week 3)
We did not have a lecture. We were assigned to complete writing our chosen passage which was supposed to be noted down during the weekend. After the completion of the passage Mr.Shamsul asked us to start working on lettering. We were told to sketch our ideas onto an A4 paper. We were told to write our names with a lettering that shows our personality. At the end of the class the lecturer asked us to complete the work for next weeks class as we will be working on digitizing our lettering. He asked us to bring at-least 5 options for the next class.
Lecture 4: Development / Timeline of Typography
19.09.2018 (Week 4)
Since we were one lecture behind, Mr.Vinod jumped right into the lecture and he discussed the beginning and the development of Typography or the evolution of Typography.
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| Development of Alphabets |
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| Phoenicia to Greek to Roman |
Around 800 B.C.E the Greeks changed the the direction of the writing and also changed the orientation of the letter forms.
The Etruscan who ruled early Roman adopted the Greek alphabet which was modified overtime to become the Etruscan Alphabet, to finally reformulated to produce the Latin Alphabet - which is now the standardized script of the English language and is often referred to simply as the alphabets.
THE TIMELINE OF TYPE CLASSIFICATION
1450 - Blackletter (eg. Cloister Black)
1475 - Oldstyle (eg. Bembo)
1500 - Italic
1550 - Script (Eg. Mistral)
1770 - Transitional (eg. Time Roman)
1775 - Modern (eg. Walgaum)
1825 - Square Serif/ Slab Serif (eg. Serifa)
1900 - Sans Serif (eg. Franklin Gothic)
1990 - Serif / Sans Serif 9eg. Rotis)
Lecture 5: Lettering
26.9.2018 (Week 5)
No lecture today, we continued to animate our lettering instead. We were briefed on our next exercise and words were chosen for the Type Expression.
Lecture 6: Type Expression
03.10.2018 (Week 6)
No lecture today, we were told to continue our work on type expression while the lecturers went around giving feedback. At the end of the class Mr.Vinod explained our first project and briefed us on the software we will be using.
INSTRUCTIONS
Calligraphy | Week 1 - Week 3
These week's classes focused on getting ourselves familiarized with the calligraphic pen by completing horizontal, vertical and circle strokes. The aim of this exercise is to achieve consistent straight lines with the consistency in the gaps while getting used to the calligraphy pen.
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| Fig 1.1 Attempt at Strokes |
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| Fig 1.2 Final Work on Strokes |
After completing the strokes we moved on to work on our chosen hand. I chose Uncial as I liked the the hand and I found it a bit more easier than other hands. We were asked to write the alphabet using our chosen hand.
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| Fig 1.3 My Chosen Hand |
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| Fig 1.4 Alphabetic Drills |
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| Fig 1.5 Alphabetic (A - L) |
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| Fig 1.6 Alphabetic (M - Z) |
Once the alphabetic letters were written, we were assigned to find a 3 sentence poem / quote / phrase which is around 3 lines long. We were tasked to practice on graph paper and present our final work on A4 paper.
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| Fig 1.7 Attempts on Quote |
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| Fig 1.8 Final attempt on graph paper |
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| Fig 1.9 Attempt on A4 |
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| Fig 1.10 Final Outcome of Quote on A4 |
Animated Lettering | Week 4 - 6
We were asked to create 5 types of lettering of our name to create an animation of one chosen lettering. We supposed to create lettering which shows our personalities. At first I had difficulties. I did more straight and thin lines and Mr.Vinod did not like my approach and asked to think more and really choose one word and then start lettering. I decided the word for describing myself would be 'incomplete', as I had a tough time trying to figure out myself and how to describe myself.
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| Fig 2.1 Letterings of My Name |
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| Fig 2.2 Selected Design Created on Adobe Illustrator | "Incomplete" |
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| Fig 2.3 First Attempt at Animation |
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| Fig 2.4 Second Attempt at Animation |
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| Fig 2.5 The Multiple Artboards I created on Illustrator |
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| Fig 2.6 Third attempt Animation of my Name Lettering | "Incomplete" |
Type Expression | Week 5-6
We were given 6 words (Sparkle, Heavy, Tall, Float, Rage, Blur) to do a type expression. 10 fonts were provided and we were to use these fonts without distortion. We were supposed to present the expressions in boxes fitted into 1 A4 paper, created on Illustrator.
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| Fig 3.1 First Attempt at Type Expressions |
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| Fig 3.2 Final Work on Type Expression |
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| Fig 3.3 1st Word Chosen for Animation |
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| Fig 3.4 Art boards used for Animation of Blur |
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| Fig 3.4 First Animation for Type Expression |
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| Fig 3.6 Second Word Chosen for Animation |
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| Fig 3.7 Art Boards used for Animation of Float |
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| Fig 3.8 Final Animation for Type Expression |
FEEDBACKS
Week 2: General feedback: We were all instructed to improve the gap between our strokes
Specific feedback: My work was relatively good and I am on the right path but I need to adjust the angle I hold the pen to a 45 degree angle. My gaps were also okay but needs a little bit of improvement.
Week 3: Mr.Shamsul liked my work and asked to write the final passage but to improve writing of letter h and t and adjust the sizes of all upper case letters and ascender letters as Uncial does not have uppercase and ascender is supposed to be very short.
Week 4: Mr.Vinod Checked my passage and immediately said that is was excellent and is very good. He said that he himself couldn't have done it any better and later mentioned to another student that I have set the bench mark for this work. He said that the spacing between my lines are just a bit narrower than how it is supposed to be and that makes it more nice.
He then checked my work on the lettering of my name. I chose rigidness as a characteristic as I hate change and I have difficult time adjusting and being flexible in things I am familiar with. He asked to include a part that shows it more, like adding a larger stroke to make it look more rigid.
Week 5: Mr.Vinod did not like my first animation. He said he did not really see the incompleteness in the GIF created. And the GIF seemed a bit off at the end and makes him confused as to what is really happening.
Week 6: Mr.Vinod Liked most of my type expressions, however he did ask to work a bit more on the word Rage and Heavy. He was happy with my final outcome and likes the animation of the word Blur. However he asked me to challenge myself a bit more and animate Float. He was happy with the final outcome of animation of the word Float.
Week 7: Mr.Vinod said he liked my animation of Float and is a relatively good work.
REFLECTIONS
EXPERIENCE
Week 1:
The lecturer mentioned that this would be the toughest class and has alot of work, whihc made me nervous but as we got into the work we would be doing, I got excited to learn everything. Everything seemed so fun and exciting.
Week 2:
The lecture was long and I was a bit tired. Even-though the first few hours was a bit boring the rest of the class was fun as we got to practice more of calligraphy and I liked getting feedbacks for the work I did.
Week 3:
The class was pretty fun as I got to interact with my classmates while everyone of us were working hard to get our chosen hand to perfection. It was fun to do the work in class while getting feedbacks.
Week 4:
The class was pretty frustrating for me as I was not able to come up with good ideas for lettering which shows my personality. I was having a hard time trying to express myself. One of the most frustrating classes I had since I started here at Taylors.
Week 5:
The class was a bit hectic and it was difficult for me as I was doing something new, creating gif. It was frustrating to the most part.
Week 6:
Actually enjoyed the class as we all got most of the class time to finish our work and as the lecturers actually liked my work I was satisfied and felt less hopeless.
OBSERVATIONS
Week 1:
I noticed that this class was alot more strict than other classes and therefor requires my full attention and documentation of all works.
Week 2:
from the exercise I noticed that I am okay with strokes and have more problems with straight lines.
Week 3:
I felt like I was improving day by day with the using of Calligraphy pen. It did require alot of practice and alot of ink.
Week 4:
I noticed that I had a trouble time explaining myself to others. It got me quiet frustrated.
Week 5:
I noticed that animation is one of my weakness and my transitions were not so smooth while most of my classmates were getting used to it pretty fast
Week 6:
I noticed I got better at getting ideas and improved a bit more on expressing emotions on type and animation.
FINDINGS
Week 1:
I found out the importance of documenting everything we are learning and doing
Week 2:
I found out that calligraphy pen requires alot of practice
Week 3:
I found out that I was not the only one who was having difficulty keeping up with all the work
Week 4:
I realized that I get frustrated easily during animation. And that I dont know myself well enough to choose one word to describe myself. I had conflicting ideas of who I am.
Week 5:
I noticed that my approach to animation at first a bit difficult. I started copying the art boards as I was progressing
Week 6:
I realized that I am getting a bit familiar on the type-expressions and it was starting to be less difficult and frustrating
FURTHER READINGS
Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works by Erik Spiekermann
Week 1 - Week 2
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| Book Cover |
Chapter 1 : Type is Everywhere (Week 1)
This chapter talks about how important type is and how this has been increasing. How difficult it would be to get around without having a little knowledge of the type around us. Take for example walking around Japan an not knowing how to read any of the Street signs. More and more people are reading news on screens and the type and layout has to be reconsidered for these applications. As things are starting to evolve the use of type is also becoming more broad and now there are prints on raw eggshells are vast differences are noticed on the way it is being printed. The road signs on our streets are also chosen by groups of experts which would include not just one typographer as these all require serious thinking on making it perfect.
Chapter 2 : What is Type (Week 2)
This chapter talks about the history of Type, how it began and how it has evolved.
Ever since people started writing things down the audience has to be considered and letters have to look different depending on where they were to be read. There were no room for mistakes in the old days as it was written down on stones and there was a bit more planning then went into if they were to be read by a large group of people. Eventually these "official" Styles of writing influenced how hand writing was looked at and how it was taught schools and monasteries. Even though its is difficult to read things written 500 years ago, the basic shapes and proportions are still valid today and is being used now also. While the basic shapes of the letters remains the same, cultural differences have been manifested into the way people write. Fountain pens, pencils, and felt tip pencils have done their part to change the way we write. Roman alphabet has however survived all these developments well.
Even though fashion has evolved our body has not, basic things such as t-shirts, socks and trousers remain same but wool, silk and leather are being used. Our classic typefaces also conform to those rules; if they dont, we regard them as strange, at the least fashionable, and at the worts illegible.
If current trends are tend to go by, by the year 2023 the look of typefaces are bound to change more than it has since the 15th century and what we consider as ridiculous might be highly legible.
Just My Type by Simon Garfield
Week 3
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| Book Cover |
Chapter 3 : Legibility vs Readability
This chapter talks about the difference of legibility and Readability and their importance.
One difference between legibility and readability is that as small sizes, Cooper Black is legible but not very readable.
One of Dr Javals theories is that the most legible type is also the most beautiful seems particularly absurd now. In the 1940s the most popular test for the legibility of of a font was the 'blink test'. Our eyes blink more when tired or under strain and a familiar typeface will cause less fatigue. according to John Biggs the types that fared best in blink test were those that has survived for centuries and were always slightly modified and revived: Bembo, Bodoni, Garmound. However, most recent findings show that people found type with strong distinctive strokes easier to read than flattened styles; and a greater distinction between letters led to a clearer and faster digestion of information.
Zuzana Licko states that every letter of the alphabet must be distinct from one another to avoid confusion. She states that the readability is judged by the overall shape of the combined letters. Such readability will be aided by regular paragraphs and sufficient margins and acceptable line lengths, the space between the letters should be regular proportion and there should be a contrast between thick and thin strokes.
Exploring Typography by Tova Rabinowitz
Week 4 - Week 5
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| Book Cover |
Chapter 2 : Type in a Digital Environment
This chapter discusses the issues that are specific to type in a digital environment, including font formats, display resolution, and legibility and readability issues as they pertain to screen typography.
Access to the right hardware lets any designer or amateur to become a type founder quick and easy. Many new designers are finding it difficult to use old types as it is inadequate or inappropriate for the new digital environment, and are changing and adjusting to new changes in technology.
In digital environment readers focus on the screen that is emitting light waves which tires the eyes and low resolution computers cannot produce details such as in high resolution computers. Therefor screen typography differs from different screens.
The readability of type on screen depends on size, typeface, type style, spacing, color, screen contrast and color temperature.
When typography entered digital age fonts had to exist in a digital form so that electronics could understand. The first font that was introduced to digital age was the Bitmap (or Raster) Fonts, which was letters constructed by the pixels on the screen and then later Outline (or Vector) fonts, which the computer later understood to form an outline to the shape of the letter. And then hinting was introduced instructing the computer to modify the character outline to better align the pixels.
Later of fonts new fonts were just available on the internet created by people around the world.
Printing fonts were also introduced for work done for printing.
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