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Distinctive Characters
2 3 4
03... Introduction 04... Research 05... Fonts 06... Ideas 07... Ideas continued 08... Final Design
Vernacular Letterforms 10... Introduction 11... Images 12... Images 13... Images 14... Making of the book
Exhibition
16... Introduction & Poster ideas 17... Images
Lectures & Workshops
19... Transmedia 20... Notions of Taste 21... Propaganda 22... Letterpress: Working with Type 23... Japanese book binding 24... Silk screen printing
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DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS
03 Typography can be used as a powerful vehicle to transmit ideas and notions of culture, gender, history, materiality and value. The function of typography is to communicate a message so that if effectively conveys and reinforces meaning.
Y
After choosing the letter Y, me and my partner looked at words we could use to design our typeface. We looked in a dictionary for words beginning with Y that could possibly relate to typography. Here is what we came up with: -YUMMY -YOUTHFUL -YOUNG -YELLOW -YELLING -YES -YEARBOOK -YOURSELF -YUCK -YEAR
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YUMMY
Food is being constantly used in typography. From advertising to food itself. Alphabet spaghetti, birthday cakes etc. all use typography. Not only do you get typography in food but also the on packaging. It is simply amazing how big of an impact food can make. “I am interested in the way we perceive food and the way that design influences it. We as consumers are very adept at reading signs, even if subconsciously. We consume things visually before we consume them physically’. -Alexander Tochilovsky The development of written forms of expression includes a number of disciplined from the origins of language itself to the bits and bytes of computer technology. As we have become more complex as people, our means of communication have improved, and, rather than becoming or elitist, as might be expected, they have reached out to embrace a wider group. We saw this with the evolution of the alphabet, the development of the printing pess and the democrazation or typesetting through the introduction of off the shelf hardware and software.
YEARS
Yy Baskerville is a transitional serif typeface designed in 1757 by John Baskerville. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, positioned between the olf stye typefaces and modern style typefaces.
Yy
Yy
Arial is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts. The typeface was designed in 1982 by a 10-person team, led by RObin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders, for Monotype typography.
Yy
Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeMinion is a digital typeface designed by face developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface Robert Slimbach in 1990 for Adobe Sysdesigner Max Miedinger with Eduard tems. The name comes from the traditional Hoffmann at the Haa’she Schriftglesserel of naming system for the type sizes, in which Munchenstein, Switzerland. minion is between nonparell and brevier.
Yy
Georgia is a transitional serid typeface designed in 1993 by Matthew Carter and hinted by Tom Rickner for the Microsoft corporation, as the serif companion to the first Microsoft sans serif font, Verdana.
Yy
Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Garter for Microsoft corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at monotype. The name “Verdana� is based on Verdant, and Ana.
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YUMMY
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Our originial plan was to use to word Yummy and look at how food and typography relate. We took a picture of a mixture of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and cupcakes. We then layered and arranged them on Illustrator. After feedback from crits, we decided that from a far, it wasn’t clear what the meaning of our word was. Not many people in
the crit group could guess our word. Instead, we decided to use the word Years.
YEARS After finally deciding on a word to use for our letterform, we started experimenting with the idea of using dates of each typeface in the structure of a Y. We also experimented with just using Y’s in each typeface but did not feel that it related in any way to the word Year. It was also very boring a colourless.
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08
Our final piece of work came from the idea of using the letterforms and their dates in order from earliest to modern times. After making it with just a plain white background, we decided it did have the vintage look we were going for and was quite dull, so we added in an old style book background.
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VERNACULAR LETTERFORMS
10 Working as a group, we took a trip to Poole to identify, collect and photograph examples of venecular letterforms in our surroundings. There’s so much typography going on around Poole, whether it be hand painted letterforms, shop signs or just objects. The hand painted typography caught my eye the most as there was some beautiful letterforms.
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Using french fold technique, we folded each page with a bone tool on top of a light box so we could line up the crop marks. Using a Lumbeck Press, we clamped the sheets in with the wingnuts. We then glued what would be the inside edge of the book and left it to dry. After leaving it until it was completely dry, we then drew the cover on and trimmed it to make a neat looking book. This bookbinding system allows you to make professional looking books relatively quickly.
3 EXHIBITION
16 A one day exhibition that aims to explore our love of Graphics through a spectacular display of artefacts, texts and collections collated and curated by student and staff from the BA (Hons) Graphic Design course at the Arts University Bournemouth. This exhibition aims to investigate how we consider, position, love & cherish examples of Graphic Design. We needed an identity for the exhibition and were asked to create a poster to promote it. I wanted to create a design that would capture the eye using bright colours and felt that using uppercase letters made it stand out a lot more. IHowever, I feel that my design could of related to our love of graphics a bit more .
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I decided to focus my exhibition on my love for typography and used letterpress prints I recently made in a workshop. I love typography because it matters, you can incorporate a message into an image directly and aesthetically. Good typography can help attract your consumer to the message you are trying to send out, whereas bad typography can undermine your message. It is impossible to imagine a world without type. Overall, our exhibition was a success with some positive feedback from people who came to see it.
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LECTURES & WORKSHOPS
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Lecture 1 ... TRANSMEDIA
I attended this lecture as i thought that exploring the concept of transmedia and it’s application to a range of visual and media practises could be quite interesting. I found the lecture quite useful as it taught me about monomedia, adaptation and multimedia. It also taught me that each mediumis being taken, has it’s own affordance, potencial, commincative ability.
Lecture notes
-Monomedia: The book, spoken word, the image i.e traditional media forms. Music being the purest form of monomedia -Adaptation: Remaking one media product into another i.e book to film -Multimedia: Combination of mediums working together. Multimedia being richer content (film/animation) -Multimodality -Transmedia: coexisting, open ended, adaptable -Transmedia relies on a culture of converge -Different channels of communication telling a story. -Unique contribution of each medium is key -Each medium is being taken, has it’s own affordance, potential, communicative ability -Connection of mulitple texts between each other.
Lecture 2... NOTIONS OF TASTE
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I attended this lecture as i felt it could be quite useful in learning about how we respond to objects and notions of taste. It opened my eyes up to how our aesthetic judgements affect our purchase decisions. It also made us look into function & form, use. ergonomics, size. handling, storage, recylicng, shape, colour and style of objects.
Lecture notes
-Relationship with objects and how we respond -How our aesthetic judgements and purchase decisions affect us -Coolhunting.com A daily update on ideas and products -Alluring advertising to seduce and persuade -Taste could be a metaphor for judgement -Cultural communication- different tastes in different countries -Mass production- proliferation of standardised goods -Consume - Dispose - Waste -Prestige - Status - Luxury -How we judge design: subjectively, objectively, influence, education -Form follows function -Function and form, use, ergonomics, size, handling, storage, recyling, shape, colour, style -Materials, production, process, manufacture, cost, target audience, competitors, marketing -Less is more- Mies van der Rohe -Less is not more, Less is a bore -Kitsch: visual pleasure, cheap, mass produced, non functional, superficial, personal Things to look at: -Clement Greenberg -Avant Garde -Kitsch -Bourdieu- Taste -A marker of class
-What’s so intoxicatng about bad taste is the artistocratic -Tretchikoff -Pierre and Gilles -Victor Papanek, Design for the real world
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Lecture 3... PROPAGANDA
I learnt a lot about propaganda from this lecture as it was never something i had looked into. It taught me how propaganda is the spreading of ideas, information, or rumour for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person. We also looked at the techniques in propaganda as well as black, white and gray propaganda.
Lecture notes
-Information to assist or damage the cause of a government or movement -The spreading of ideas, information, or rumour for the purpose of helping or injuring and institution, a cause, or a person. -Censorship -Organisations: Respect for animals, Greenpeace, Liberty, PETA, Amnesty International -Propagate: To grow and spread. -Black propaganda comes from an unreliable source, lies, artificial. -White propaganda can come from a reliable source -Grey propaganda is questionable, half truths -Big lie- adapted by Hitler and Stalin. The state controlled Egyptian Press has been spreading a big lie. - “It doesn’t have to be the truth, so long as it’s plausible” -Tell the truth but withhold the other side’s point of view -Most productive is to tell the truth -Propaganda can be concealed -Techniques rely on some element of censorship or manipulation, either omitting significant information or distorting it. -Use of nation icons, flags, national anthem -Using selective stones that come over as wide- covering and objective -Partial facts, or historical context -Narrow source of “experts” to provide insights into the situation - “False flag terrorism” occurs when elements within a government stage a secret operation whereby government forces pretend to be a target enemy while attacking their own forces/people. The attack is then falsely blamed on the enemy in order to justify going to war against the enemy. -Negative imitative learning- GTA, Hip-hop. Language reinforces stereotype
LETTERPRESS... Working with Type
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Relief printing happens when a raised, inked surface is smashed against paper, resulting in a printed area on the page. Wood cuts and engravings, linoleum blocks and even text and images from rubber stamps are all examples of relief printing. A flatbed cylinder press like the Vandercook is basically composed of four things, the feedboard, the bed, the rollers, and the cylinder. Everything in the bed of the press is designed to be a certain height so that the ink coats evenly over all of the surfaces that are supposed to print. This was the first time i had ever used a letterpress machine. I really enjoyed this workshop and got a lot of prints done as shown below. We used a lot of techniques to create prints such as using pressure pads and different letterform materials.
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JAPANESE BOOK BINDING
This technique of book binding is ideal for binding single sheets of paper with a soft card cover. Stab bindings allow you to make books with differen scraps, weights and colours of paper. This workshop allowed me to understand the history of Japanese book binding and the techniques used. It is a simple way of making a little book that can be used as a diary etc. Stacking the sheets of paper and the covers either side, I clipped them together. Using the marking template, I used the bookbinding drill to drill the holes needed in order to stitch it. Using white linen thread, I measered 6 times the length of the book and cut the thread. I then stitched through the holes in order to make it strongly held together.
SILK SCREEN PRINTING
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As i have done Screen Printing before, i knew a little bit about it. However, this workshop taught me how to transfer and image onto the screen and then to print it. It was a lot more technical that what I had done before. With the traditional silk screen printing process, you start with a square wooden or metal frame. Over the fram is a tightly stretched piece of sheer fabric. This is the screen. Using a liquid plastic coating that’s sensitive to ultraviolet light, you can transfer an image onto the screen to be printed onto either fabric or paper. To print on fabric, you’ll need to use a textile based paint. Creating a line of paint above the image on the screen, place the screen down. With a squeegee above the line of ink, drag it towards you while applying a little bit of pressure onto the screen. Once done, pull the screen up and the image should be printed.