Monday, January 27, 2014

Chapter 1 Reflection-Katelyn Pesola

Chapter 1- The Evolution of Typography

The book defines typography as “an intensely visual form of communication.” This makes sense because we are such a visual society that a lot communication of our thoughts and ideas are done through sight. This chapter shows the progression of type from the invention of movable type in 3150 B.C. through the twenty first century. The overall timelines throughout this chapter were very interesting, they did a really good job of painting a picture of the evolution of typography. 
I found it really interesting to be able to see the first alphabet and to see some of the same letterforms that we still use today. It seems that the first alphabet had very little variations between the letters, many of the letters look like a form of E, P, A, M, or N. It wasn’t until around the 1400’s that I started to be able to recognize most of the letterforms, while I wasn’t about to read any of the words, I was able to pick out most of the letters. I also enjoyed being able to see some of the first typefaces. It was interesting to see that many of the typefaces that we use today are very similar to the typefaces that were invented in 1800’s.
Once the timeline got into the 20th century, I started seeing more use of typography in interesting and creative ways. Typography went from being only used for communication to being also used for creative expression. This is when I noticed that typography was starting to take off as an art form. Some of the posters that I found interesting were #154, Brockmann’s concert poster and #196, Stephan Sagmeister’s poster. Brockmann’s poster was very miminalistic but I really liked his use of geometric shapes to create a design. I also really enjoyed Sagmeister’s use of a handwriting type font on the image of the face, it almost made it look like it was carved in.


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