S.Duran
Typography 230
Chapter 1 - Evolution of Typography
Written, there is not much to say about this chapter, but visually there is a lot to learn from the pictures and captions seen on every page. This chapter help me see how the art of typography came to be, starting off with the creation of writing, followed by the use of hand press type, to the Industrial Revolution, until this date and date where typography can be created using technology. It was interesting to see how written “fonts” looked like back then. They had specific letter or a symbol for each word, the earliest alphabet seemed to be the Greeks, while the Egyptians used glyphs for their “type”. The evolution of type and its practice has come a long way, from chip its letter form into stone, to a person’s manuscript in a book, advancing into the determine its mathematical and design properties of the early 19th century. The thing that mostly caught my eye, was how the handwritten letters later became the font type of printing press in later years. It went from a nice cursive script to the informative, serif, “Times New Roman” look we regularly see today. The periods of time where type starts to change is the very interesting, loosely being in the 1820s and early 1900s where point of typography experiments. But it is not until the 1950s modernism era and the 1990s expression of free type, does typography make a radical change. The thing that stood out to me the most was, how “little” type change before the 19th century. It seemed the one typeface where those similar to “Time New Roman” which would have been awful for a designer back in the day. Even though there are many fonts types to choose from nowadays, I believe that one needs to know what typefaces have been in use the longest, know the rules about which typefaces to use and avoid, and see how far we've come from the early font days.
Typography 230
Chapter 3 - Syntax and Communication
In this chapter, typography is explained as being words that should “make sense” in the context they are presented, so that the reader may have a clear understanding of what is they are “looking” at. These concepts are determined by how the type is displayed using the type space, visual hierarchy to point out the “heading” of items compared to the “subheading”, ABA format and how grid systems play a part in the organization of every page. From type syntax, I learned how each letter is well drawn so that it may be distinguished as being a different letter, but not too much so that one does not recognize its type family. It is explained how type and the interactions it has in its surrounding space give these letter forms meaning and clarity. This is done by evaluating how much white space should be used, in both the background and the foreground, so that it remains in balance. Space is one of the most important factors a designer must take into consideration when designing, each letter and group of letters need to have enough inter letter spacing between each letter form and leading above and below each line so that words can be clearly seen and read with a problem. Visual Hierarchy seems to be an easy concept to understand , but harder to practice. I feel like this skill is one learned from practice, at times I do not know what to emphasize and have to urge to point out everything. But this is not good practice, I need to keep in mind of pointing out only the necessary of the design while taking into account the layout of the design and the audience it is for. The practice of ABA form is one that helps organize and design type, that its visual structure is based on repetition and contrast on every page. To me this seems like a practical and useful approach to design, mostly because it is seen as very effective and good design. This textbook and the Type Specification project helped me see this, as books (like this one) and posters similar use this technique in had with visual hierarchy for an effective design.
Typography 230
Chapter 6 - The Typographic Message
Typography is the art of “getting the message’” out to people by making it pleasing to look at and clear enough to read and understand. In Chapter 6, typography is introduced as a “language” in which letter forms and symbols together, form “aesthetic beauty” for this purpose. By presenting words in a typographic way, the message one is trying to convey gains an extra expressive power therefore emphasizing the message. Depending on the “message” one is trying to “point out”, different type fonts can used to get the point across. The example in the book was Futurist Manifesto, which was used in Europe and Russia. There are different way people can format letter forms to convey message today, either choosing to be formal like the modernist style of the 1950s or the “free typography” style seen in the 1990s and today Typography and the meaning of the words it’s suppose to emphasize are only effective enough when logic and judgment on how these words are going to be interpreted and present are taken into account. This is useful since I will need to know how to format type in order to make sure the message is clear to the reader and is being transmitted correctly. This is why the color, type, and style of font used in typography is so important, all of these details can give type an extra meaning. There are multiple ways to communicated ideas by stylizing type as explained on page 115, the look of words can add extra meaning to its content, like how an eroded font can be seen as “destructive”. In addition, stylizing font can come from using visual transformation, visual exaggeration, visual substitution, or the simultaneity of letter forms in a group. A type of typographic styling I have seen a lot these days is form combination, in which imagery and type mesh together reflective its purpose of idea into the typographic design. I believe that one of the most interesting things learned in this chapter is how functionalism ties into design, based on the purpose, audience, and/ or feeling I want to invoke in a person determines the stylizing of my design. I see that typography does this a lot when designing pieces, logos, promotional pieces, or advertising, which makes typography a challenging skill to master, considering all of the possibilities type can invoke.
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