Typography Brooke Vaske Fall 2015
Typography
Copyright Š Brooke Vaske 2015
Table of Contents 06 Projects 07 Shadow Type 15 Placard Phrase 27 Book Cover 41 Mailer Invite
50 Exercises
51 Form and Counterform 53 Contrast 61 Matching Type 65 Kerning 73 Gridwork
82 Class Work
83 Helvetica Response 85 Gill Sans Presentation 95 Handgloves 101 Class Reflection
Projects
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Shadow Type The Beginning This project required me to create letter forms with my body. Before class, I experimented in the mirror to get an idea of what I wanted to do. I was nervous that my letters would look similar to everyone else’s, but I learned that different body types and different levels of flexibility made for some diverse letter forms among my classmates and I (even if we used the same pose). My classmates helped me tweak my original ideas to receive the best outcome. We learned that the best way to capture our letter forms was to sit or stand on the table rather than the floor. Another thing we learned, was that the next time we do a project like this, we should stretch before hand.
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Shadow Type
Sketches After bringing my letter forms together in InDesign, I used a light table to trace them. I found that it was difficult to get the base line, cap line and kerning right since my letter forms were so organic. It took a few tries, but I think I was successful in the end. Throughout this process, I learned more about the anatomy of type and a little bit about the process type designers go through to create type faces. I also enjoyed watching my classmates throughout this project. It is amazing how we all go through a different process to reach the same outcome. After I was happy with my letters, I inked the final, scanned it and uploaded it into InDesign to being working on my anatomy chart.
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Shadow Type
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Shadow Type
Inspiration I tend to be attracted to simple designs. I liked how these were straightforward, but used a bit of color to emphasis certain parts. I also liked the use of arrows and circles used to guide the eye to the terms. However, once I hung up my first chart for critique I realized that my lines did not stand out. So I made the decision to make the strokes thicker for my final chart. I also made changes to some of the terms.
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Shadow Type
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Shadow Type
Final Sketch
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Shadow Type
Final
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Placard Phrase
The Beginning
The first step in this project was to pick a quote by a famous graphic designer. I chose Neville Brody’s quote...
“Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries.” I chose Brody’s quote for multiple reasons. Not only did I enjoy his work, I also enjoyed how the quote spoke to the idea that digital design is always changing. You can make many mistakes or changes before reaching a final product, and I think that’s the beauty of design. I then received a 12x12 canvas size. After that, I started doing some research on Brody’s work for inspiration.
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Placard Phrase
Inspiration I looked to Brody’s work for inspiration. His designs were all very different; however, two elements of his designs really stood out to me. These include: 1. Splitting the page with either a photo or a block of color 2. The red, black and white color scheme. Aside from his designs, I also learned about his professional life. He currently owns Brody Associates. This company designs for many predominant companies world wide!
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Placard Phrase
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Placard Phrase
Sketches
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Placard Phrase
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Placard Phrase
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Placard Phrase
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Placard Phrase
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Placard Phrase
Refined Sketches I thought it would be cool to use paint to put emphasis on the word DRIES. I experimented with puffy paint and acrylic paint splatters to convey the image I wanted. For the final project. This is one reason why I chose the top design as my final sketch. Another reason I chose this design is because I thought it accurately depicted the type of design Neville is known for. He usually uses type in a way that is very out of the box but still legible.
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Placard Phrase
Final Sketch
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Placard Phrase
Final
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Book Cover The Beginning After reading the book, I decided that I got a chaotic vibe from it. It was crazy, quirky and disorderly. Although the Fall Semester was fairly calm, allowing the reader to meet the characters, the Spring Semester was a mess. Some imagery that came to mind while reading the book was gesture-sketch-like images. No form had solid edges. I also imagined every scene as having a vintage, 50’s televisions screen filter.
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Book Cover
Inspiration Before I started creating my sketches, I did some research on the time period. I looked at popular art and typefaces from the late 1950’s and tried to find pieces of work that conveyed a chaotic feel. I found that neo-dada and abstract expressionism conveyed the right message for my work. Jasper John’s False Start (1959), inspired me to create a collage as the background for my cover. What better way to represent chaos than tearing pages of magazines apart and pasting them into a single composition? I also found an album cover from the time period with the font News Gothic on it. I thought that a bold, straight forward sans serif would create great contrast with a chaotic background.
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Book Cover
Sketches I tried to explore themes such as chaos, gesture sketches, flames and the 1950’s in my sketches.
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Book Cover
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Book Cover
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Book Cover
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Book Cover
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Book Cover
Process In order for the chaotic background to work, I needed to explore ways to make the type stand out on the page. I decided to experiment with spilling paint on it.
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Book Cover
Rough Final
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Book Cover
Rough Final
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Book Cover
Front Matter
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Book Cover
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Book Cover
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Mailer Invite The Beginning The first part of this project consisted of choosing an event, three concepts and doing research. I chose the event Dam to Dam, a half marathon that takes place in the Des Moines area. I wanted to achieve the concept of health and fitness by designing a clean and crisp looking invite that encourages runners to use activities such as the Dam to Dam road race to promote a healthy lifestyle.
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Mailer Invite
Sketches I also wanted to emphasize the change of scenery during the race, since it begins in the country and ends in the city. From that concept, I designed three different invites. I ended up choosing the invite with the Accordion fold to work towards the final.
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Mailer Invite
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Mailer Invite
Refined Sketch The biggest flaw in my first sketch was the Des Moines skyline cut out being upside down on one side. To solve this problem, I created a handout insert with a clever “dam� pun. I also designed a map behind the highlighted landmarks. In the end; however, I decided that these two elements were unnecessary. Instead of creating the handout, I incorporated the copy from it into the landmark map.
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Mailer Invite
Final Sketch I really struggled transferring my design onto the computer. The biggest obstacle with this step in the process was figuring out how I wanted to design the inside of the invite. I found it difficult to create a detailed map and I couldn’t decide how to design the icons. I also needed work on my “Contact Us” spread.
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Mailer Invite
Rough Final First, I tried using a Wicom tablet to hand draw each icon. That worked for the corn, but was not successful for all five landmarks. Next, I drew each landmark, scanned it and used Image Trace to bring it in to Illustrator. I finally achieved the look I was aiming for.
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Mailer Invite
Final
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Mailer Invite
Envelope Sketch
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Mailer Invite
Envelope Final
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Exercises
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Form and Counterform
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Contrast
How to create contrast
century gothic regular + century gothic bold italic
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Contrast
How to create CONTRAST avinir next ultra light + IMPACT CAPS
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Contrast
How to create contrast
snell roundhouse regular + helvetica neue ultra light
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Contrast
How to create contrast
garamond regular + futura condensed medium
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Contrast
how to create
contrast avenir next ultra light + avenir next ultra light
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Contrast
how to create c o n t r a s t
american typewriter condensed light + american typewriter bold
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Matching Typefaces Brooke Vaske Futura was created by Paul Renner in 1927. It is classified as a geometric sans-serif typeface. Gill Sans
was created by Eric Gill in 1928. It is classified as a
humanist sans-serif typeface. These typefaces mix,
because they were created in the same time period.
The differences here are that Futura has a more geo-
metric, mechanical feel, as it stems from the Bauhaus movement, whereas Gill Sans’ proportions stemmed from Roman caps. They are similar in their x-height,
stroke and axis. These similarities, along with sharing the time period make them a good pair.
Futura Condensed Extra Bold 12 pt
Futura Medium 36 pt
Gill Sans Italic 16 pt
Breaking
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A Gill Sans Light 10 pt
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Matching Typefaces
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Matching Typefaces
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Kerning
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Kerning
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Kerning
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Kerning
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Kerning
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Kerning
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Kerning
Bad Kerning
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Typography
Grids
ART 051
Carnegie Hall Room 200
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Grids
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Grids
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Grids
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Grids
Grids in the Real Life
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Grids
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Grids
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Grids
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Grids
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Class Work
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Helvetica Response Brooke Vaske Helvetica Response August 31, 2015 The film Helvetica was about the history of typefaces (largely helvetica) and how they have been used and continue to be used by corporations and designers throughout the world. Facts and opinions were shared by many talented graphic and type designers throughout the film. The designers all reiterated the importance of typography within their designs. Many artists use their designs to communicate a message, and it only makes sense that typography remains an important part of graphic design. I think that the film did a good job of incorporating a variety of visuals to help tie typography into not only the world of art and design, but the world of everyday people in general. Even as a design student, I never realized how much of an impact typography has on me as an individual in my everyday life. This film has surely made me aware of the importance of type and different ways I can impact others with the typeface I choose in my future designs. I was also never aware of the popularity of the font helvetica and the debate surrounding it. What kind of mood does it set? Is it becoming a passive font? Lars Muller describes my overall reaction to the font helvetica best when he says, “It is just something we don’t notice usually, but we would miss very much if it wouldn’t be there.” Throughout the day I found myself thinking about the fonts that surround me--what their purpose was and how it differs from the next typeface. Not only did I become aware of the relevance of typography after watching this film, I also became of more aware of the history behind typography and also graphic design. I loved learning about some of the older designer’s backgrounds in typography. Their process of creating typefaces amazes me. I enjoyed learning about how they would create typefaces before type was thought of as just letters on a computer screen. Learning about their creative process was very interesting to me. However, the designer who stood out to me was David Carson. It was clear that Carson understood taking risks as a designer. He was straightforward when he talked about how he chose fonts. I was shocked when he said he decided to print an entire article in the font Dingbat because he felt that the content was boring! I agreed most of what he said though. I think that it helps to communicate words in typefaces that make sense. For example, he thought greyhound typed in helvetica makes sense because it’s boring. However, a word like scream in helvetica might not get the point across. The way he experiments with typography is very intriguing to me, and I would like to learn more about him and his ideas on typography and the “grunge typography” era. Overall the film opened my eyes to typography as a communication tool and an art form. I learned about how one of the most popular typefaces came to be and how early designers came to find their place in the design world. I think there is still a discussion to be had about helvetica and how designers will continue to use it in the future.
What was this film about? What is the film’s relation to graphic design? What did you learn from the film? What did you find interesting? What did you find most surprising? The example with the font “Dingbat”. What designer would you like to know more about?
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Gill Sans Presentation
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Gill Sans Presentation
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Gill Sans Presentation
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Gill Sans Presentation
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Gill Sans Presentation
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Gill Sans Presentation
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Gill Sans Presentation
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Gill Sans Presentation
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Gill Sans Presentation
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Handgloves
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Handgloves
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Handgloves
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Handgloves
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Handgloves
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Final Reflection This class has changed my perspective of typography immensely. Ever since the first week of class, I have recognized the importance of typography in my every day life. I have also gained an appreciation for the artists who have worked to design and improve typefaces throughout history. Before this class I never thought of the work that went into designing typefaces. I thought of type as simply words on a computer screen or a book. Now, I see typefaces as another form of communication. Each typeface has a different feeling or meaning to convey to a specific audience, even if it is just a sign on the side of the road. Through my experiences in this class, I now have the ability to communicate these emotions in my work. Even though I still have a lot of learning to do, I am confident that I have learned enough to see success in my designs. After reviewing my work, I can recognize a lot of strengths, but also many weaknesses. Throughout the semester, I think my biggest weakness was hand drawing letter forms. Although I did not do poorly on the handglove quizzes, I felt I really struggled with A’s and G’s. With that being said, I also struggled with sketching out my ideas. I typically have one or two really strong ideas and work with them to get to the final outcome. It was very challenging for me to come up with 20+ sketches for each project, but I think overcoming those challenges has been a positive learning experience. I think my biggest strength during the semester was developing my ideas. I felt that each of my final projects effectively conveyed what I was trying to communicate. The project I enjoyed the most was the book cover project. Since reading has always been a hobby of mine, I’ve always payed close attention to book covers. I thought that The Cheese Monkey’s was a weird, sarcastic read, so it was fun to design a cover for it. I thought that creating the front matter for the book was fun also! The project I enjoyed the least was the mailer invite project. At first I was really excited about it, but once I go started some of the visions I had in my head weren’t realistic. It was also very challenging to design a envelope. Even though this was my least favorite project, I think that it was a project with challenges that allowed me to learn and grow. If I could change anything about the class, I think it would be the Issuus. I think it would make more sense to make the final issuu an ongoing project throughout the semester instead of adding that extra bit of work for each project. One thing that I would like to learn more about is what all goes into creating a new typeface today. We saw a little bit of that in the Helvetica video, but I would like to learn more. I see new fonts on the Internet all the time, so I’m curious as to how much time and work goes into it! Overall, I had a lot of fun in this class and I learned a ton! It’s exciting to walk outside and identify multiple fonts such as Helvetica, Gill Sans and Futura.
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Copywrite Š Brooke Vaske 2015