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cecilia serafini
VISUAL SUMMARY pgdipdvc
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5 TYPOGRAPHY 15 VISUAL GRAMMAR 23 COLOUR 29 INFORMATION DESIGN
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typography -
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“ Any man who
would letterspace blackletter would steal sheep ” Frederic Goudy
During one of our first days of class, we had to hand render our names. I picked a serif font that I thought was quite stylish and I thought I could it give it some air by spacing it a bit. Bad idea. It was after looking at my name hanging on the wall that Tony asked if anyone knew what “stealing sheep” meant in typography. Now I know. That’s when I learned about kerning and tracking. I always liked to increase the interletter space, but I most certainly never stole any sheep!
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“ The essence of the
New Typography is clarity, as opposed to the old typo whose aim was beauty and whose clarity did not attain the high level we require today ” Jan Tschichold
After reading Helen’s Armstrong’s Graphic Design Theory, one of the essays that I found most interesting was Jan Tschichold’s and how he talks about clarity in typography. ‘The essence of the New Typography is clarity, as opposed to the old typography whose aim was beauty and whose clarity did not attain the high level we require today. Today we need a greater economy of expression as a result of the amount of claims for our attention made by all the print. The beautiful type can never produce the pure form we demand today. The central axis, that started in the Renaissance runs through the whole like an artificial, invisible backbone: its raison d’être is today pretentious. The whole is a form that is predetermined and therefore must be inorganic. Every piece of typography that originates in a preconceived idea of form (also those of the pseudoConstructivists) is wrong. The new typo is distinguished from the old by the fact that its first objective is to develop its visible form out of the functions of the text. Form must be created out of function, only then can we achieve a typography that expresses the spirit of modern man.’ The New Typography, 1928
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geometric alphabet - When I thought about creating a geometric
alphabet my mind went straight to the lines. After making different and failed versions of letterforms based on lines, I decided to try with circles. It worked. I used -yet again- the rule of thirds and tried to make the letters as much lower-caselooking as I could. Tough job. I think it looks quite good, though.
Poster
First attempts!
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FAT FONT: ANATOMY OF A TYPEFACE ascender line ascender
x height
descender descender line
THE BASICS
SOME EXAMPLES
All the letters of the alphabet are created after the template below. It’s a circle divided into 3 parts horizontally and vertically. The final product is a 9-part circle and based on cancelling certain parts and/or adding smaller circles, I tried to find the proper shape for each letter.
}
}
}
}
EXCEPTIONS
The smaller circles are used usually for ascenders and descenders. In this case, one of them is within the x-height as part of the bigger circle and two are below or above the x-height.
Rotated
Double
Though I tried to be as consistent as I could through out the whole alphabet, there are some exceptions to the basic rules. This happened because of aesthetical and functional reasons. Examples are letter C and V (see below)
Almost every letter is based on the single circle, except for the W and the M, which are “double units”. They measure 1 unit and 2 thirds, because they are formed out of two circles that overlap in the middle. Example is letter M.
45˚ rotation
}
}
Rotated & double The only example is the letter W.
»
APPLICATIONS Thought it is a lower case alphabet, Fat Font is a display font due to its characteristics. The roundness of it reminds me of candy, therefore the
THE ALPHABET lower case
»
}
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Found Alphabet -
I love London. I seriously think it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world. One of the many, many things I love about it, is how beautiful everything is. The old, the new, the simple, the extremely decorated. Walking around central London I came across a ridiculous amount of beautiful signs with all varieties of fonts. Even though I quote Jan Tschichold a few pages ago saying how the objective of good typography is clarity, I don’t always agree with it. A sign needs to be powerfull, it needs to speak. It needs to invite you inside and sell you something. That is why my collection of found letters is quite loud and colourful. Take as an example the W. I don’t need to say that that letter was taken from a japanese food place, do I? Call it food, or whatever, but the point is that typography is also used to convey a concept or an idea.
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Graphic Dialogue
11.12.13
Graphic Dialogue A series
of visual conversations
10.00
Kenya Hara
Sioleong Chao
12.00
Helmut Schmid
Hong Chong Ip
10.00
Kenya Hara
Sioleong Chao
14.00
April Philippe Greiman Apeloig
12.00
Helmut Schmid
Hong Chong Ip
16.00
Edward Tufte
14.00
April Philippe Greiman Apeloig
16.00
Edward Tufte
David McCandless
Main Lecture Theatre London College of Communication To book email: t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB
Graphic Dialogue
10.00
Kenya Hara
Sioleong Chao
12.00
Helmut Schmid
Hong Chong Ip
14.00
April Greiman
Philippe Apeloig
16.00
Edward Tufte
David McCandless
To book email: t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
10.00
Kenya Hara
Sioleong Chao
12.00
Helmut Schmid
Hong Chong Ip
14.00
April Greiman
Philippe Apeloig
16.00
Edward Tufte
David McCandless
To book email: t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Kenya Hara
Sioleong Chao
12.00
Helmut Schmid
Hong Chong Ip
14.00
April Philippe Greiman Apeloig
16.00
Edward Tufte
David McCandless
Main Lecture Theatre London College of Communication
Main Lecture Theatre London College of Communication Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB
December 11, 2013
To book email: t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
10.00
Kenya Hara
Sioleong Chao Hong Chong Ip
12.00
Helmut Schmid
11.12.13
14.00
April Philippe Greiman Apeloig
A series of visual conversations
16.00
Edward Tufte
11.12.13
David McCandless
To book email: t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Dialogue
Dialogue
Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB
Graphic
Kenya Hara
Sioleong Chao
A series of visual conversations
12.00
Helmut Schmid
Hong Chong Ip
December 11, 2013
14.00
April Greiman
Philippe Apeloig
16.00
Edward Tufte
David McCandless
10.00
Kenya Hara
Sioleong Chao
12.00
Helmut Schmid
Hong Chong Ip
14.00
April Philippe Greiman Apeloig
16.00
Edward Tufte
David McCandless
Graphic Dialogue 10.00
Kenya Hara
Sioleong Chao
11.12.13
11.12.13
12.00
Helmut Schmid
Hong Chong Ip
A series of visual conversations
14.00
April Philippe Greiman Apeloig
A series of visual conversations
16.00
Edward Tufte
Dialogue
David McCandless
Main Lecture Theatre London College of Communication Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB To book email: t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Main Lecture Theatre London College of Communication Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB
A series of visual conversations
Main Lecture Theatre London College of Communication Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB
To book email: t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Main Lecture Theatre London College of Communication
A series of visual conversations
Graphic
Main Lecture Theatre London College of Communication Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB
A series of visual conversations
David McCandless
December 11, 2013
Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB
10.00
11.12.13
A series of visual conversations
Graphic
Graphic Dialogue 10.00
hicGraphicGraphicGrap DialogueDialogueDialog
To book email: t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Main Lecture Theatre London College of Communication Elephant & Castle London SE1 6SB
To book email: t.pritchard@lcc.arts.ac.uk
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grids, grids, grids The image on the right is a piece by Joseph Müller Brockmann. The one on the left is a guidance as to how to create the ‘swiss grid method’ that I found from a class back home. Müller-Brockmann was part of the Swiss International style. He was influenced by different design and art movements such as Constructivism, De Stijl and Bauhaus.
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visual grammar -
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visual grammar and the city A 2nd project I had for the visual grammar book was to trace (by hand) different cityscapes and find in them shapes and activities. I thought the tracing would help convey the concept of all cities being created by the same basic shapes, so it would not matter if the image was from London or from Prague.
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“ the point is thought
as ideally small and round, but it can assume an unlimited number of shapes � Wassily Kandinsky
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circles & lines When I started to think about the visual grammar assignment, I wanted to express different concepts related to visual grammar in a fun way. Though I finally did not use these images for the final project, I thought it would be interesting to express these concepts in a really accesible and down to earth way.
Random structures, frequency and rhythm.
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colour -
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so what is colour? -
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, colour is the ‘Aspect of any object that may be described in terms of hue, lightness, and saturation. It is associated with the visible wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, which stimulate the sensor cells of the eye. Red light has the longest wavelengths, while blue has the shortest, with other colours such as orange, yellow, and green between. Hue refers to dominant wavelengths. Lightness refers to the intensity or degree of shading; it corresponds to the subjective sensation of brightness. Saturation pertains to purity, or the amount of white light mixed with a hue. The colours red, yellow, and blue, known as primary colours, can be combined in varying proportions to produce all other colours. Primary colours combined in equal proportions produce secondary colours. Two colours that combine to form white light are said to be complementary’.
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“ Color... thinks by
itself, independently of the object it clothes � Charles Baudelaire
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“ Color is all. When
color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration ” Marc Chagall
So, when it came to talk about colour, I was a bit bored. I thought “what else is there to know? Primary, secondary, tertiary”. However, I realized how much colour makes or breaks a design. How, through the correct use of colour, a simple design can really shine. Concepts like receding and advancing colours are particularly useful for a composition, and analogous colours can create beautiful palettes.
When the time was for me to start thinking about the colour assignment, I had absolutely nothing in mind, so I thought I could go simple and start trying different combinations with squares and circles. Though these pieces on the left did not make it to the final project, I thought they were worth showing.
information design -
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mapping -
The piece abive is a mapping of our class. I wanted to express graphically different data: how many students we were, what whas the femalemale ratio and where do we all come from.
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“ Information design
is the discipline of laying out and displaying information, whether it be simple or technical, so that it is easy to understand and is usable � -
UK Design Council
Tube maps from London, New york, Tokyo and Vienna.
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This book was designed and written by Cecilia Serafini as a project for the Postgraduate Diploma in Design for Visual Communication. The fonts used are Bebas and Palatino, regular and italic. The book was printed at the London College of Communication in March, 2013.