CHARACTER STUDIES Five Projects Exploring Typography
Amanda Hinton
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“
Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.
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– Carol Burnett
ABOUT THIS BOOK Character Studies is a collection of projects completed in the Winter 2019 session of Typography Fundamentals. This book presents work focused on typesetting, exploring typeface characteristics, and visualizing a study of typography history.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Amanda Hinton is a creative and marketing professional with a passion for art, color, and design. She loves to make things that help others make things, nerd out over art supplies, and learn about the history of how humans throughout time have left their visual marks on the world.
CONTENTS
ANATOMY 6 TYPEFACES 12 TYPOGRAPHER 18 TYPE DESIGN 20 TYPESETTING 26
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ONE
ANATOMY
An extensive study of Bembo was translated into an infographic booklet with an informative and engaging introduction to the typeface. The content details Bembo’s history and evolution, describes defining characteristics, points out anatomical elements, compares Bembo to other fonts, and shows typesetting examples. The interior presents all material across a six-foot-long accordion banner; the interior back is patterned with overlapping characters in varying opacities; the cover features Bembo’s uppercase B.
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TWO
TYPEFACES
This poster series showcases a trio of typefaces with descriptions of their history, identifying characteristics, and classification. Characters are enlarged until they become shapes with personality as much as they remain language symbols. The negative space and the points where glyphs meet highlight the idiosyncrasies of each typeface chosen. Futura’s sharp points hit at acute angles; Serifa’s blocky serifs meet at 90° corners; Caslon’s elegant curves kiss one another at tangents.
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THREE TYPOGRAPHER
Bauhaus and The New Typography inspired research into the prolific creators of the period. Though works of the genre hang together across designers, there is a fascinating divergence of details in how each person uniquely interpreted the rules of the style. This one-pager shares the life and work of Swiss typographer and graphic designer, Emil Ruder.
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FOUR
TYPE DESIGN
Big Boots is a playful, bottom-heavy take on a slab serif. Each character is built within a 3x3 grid using monoweight diagonal, vertical, and horizontal lines in the top two thirds with solid fill and squares in the lower third. Strict adherence to construction rules kept it all cohesive and created fun problems to solve. A pair of postcards display the full set and a few representative characters, the former with bold color and the latter in a striped monochrome pattern to reflect its slightly OCR-ish qualities.
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FIVE
TYPESETTING
Alignment, paragraph indicators, emphasis, and hierarchy were explored through a series of typesetting exercises. The goal was to follow an extensive list of best practices while experimenting with many typefaces, achieving a pleasing rag, and developing a consistent color. Each layout reveals how different choices impact the readability and feel of the text for the reader while exposing new design challenges for each option.
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ALIGNMENT
These hyphen-free, short paragraphs show five alignment options. 21 Justified 8/12 Adobe Garamond Regular +20 22 Left-aligned 7/11 Acumin Pro Regular +20 23 Right-aligned 7/11 Proxima Nova Regular +20 24 Centered 8/12 Bembo Regular +20 25 Type in shape 8/12 Univers Light +20
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PARAGRAPH INDICATORS
These five passages demonstrate ways to signal paragraph breaks. 27 Extra leading (50% more) 8/12 Adobe Garamond Regular +20 28 Indent (2 ems) 9/13 Baskerville Regular +20 29 Outdent/hanging indent (3 ems) 9/13 Scala Sans Pro Regular +20 30 First sentence or two 8/12 Bembo Regular +20 9/13 Syntax Bold +20 31 First word or phrase 9/13 Bodoni 72 Book +20 9/13 Bodoni 72 Small Caps Book +20
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INITIAL EMPHASIS Within a two-column grid, these five exercises explore ways to emphasize the beginning of a body of text, such as a chapter opener or the start of an article. 33 Initial cap 9/13 Centaur Regular +20 60 Clarendon Regular 34 Drop cap (3 lines) 10/14 Akzidenz Grotesk Roman +20 35 Drop cap (3 lines) outdented 9/13 Centaur Regular +20 36 First paragraph 9/13 Times New Roman Regular +20 9/13 Times New Roman Bold +20 37 First paragraph outdented and spanning 9/13 Times New Roman Regular +20 9/13 Times New Roman Bold +20
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HIERARCHY Within a modular grid, these three layouts utilize increasing complexity to establish hierarchy among title, subtitle, byline, and body copy. 39 Scale change 9/13 Baskerville Regular +20 11 Baskerville Regular +20 18/25 Baskerville Regular +20 36 Baskerville Regular +30 40 Scale and typeface change 8/12 Museo 300 +20 12/16 Museo Sans 700 +20 24 Museo Sans 700 +40 41 Scale and typeface change with a graphic element 8/12 Univers 55 Roman +20 10/16 Serifa Regular +20 13/18 Serifa Regular +40 40/48 Serifa Regular +30
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Designer AMANDA HINTON Typefaces ACUMIN PRO REGULAR ACUMIN PRO BLACK Course TYPOGRAPHY FUNDAMENTALS GRAPHIC DESIGN PROGRAM UC BERKELEY EXTENSION Instructor AYCA KILICOGLU
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