An A to Z of Graphic Language
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VISUAL and Contextual Theory
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Experimental Typography
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literary and artistic fields. Dada played a big part the history of experimental typography. For all of its outrageous behaviour, chaotic imagery, cacophonous sounds, and humorous wordplay, Dada held at its core a serious ethical stance against contemporary social and political conditions. Its assaultive strategies, the exploitation of non-traditional artistic materials, mining of mass media, attack on the traditions of art history, destruction of language, exploration of the unconscious, and cutting and pasting of photomontage, were a form of protest that echoed the aggressive tactics witnessed in World War I. The Dadaists pushed the boundaries of what qualifies as art, paving the way for much of what has followed. Dada questioned and affected what art can look like, as well as what art can do, and set the stage for many avant-garde movements, including surrealism, pop art, and performance art. Dada and Futurism also changed the landscape of popular culture, influencing graphic design, advertising, and film, and breaking down barriers between high and low art. Looking back at these movements nearly a century after, it is clear that they are still very influential today.
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Typography has always been of huge interest to me in my study of graphic design, so I decided that this would be my main focus in my graphic design education. The study of typography is very broad topic so I decide to focus on finding out more about experimental typography. We live in times where once again we have started to appreciate the classic materials and techniques of making type which nowadays of course are very much linked with modern technology. Before desktop computers, type design had been a physical act, requiring special machines and expertise. Computer software, apart from simplifying the process of type design, moved the craft from the physical to the virtual existence of type. Lately people are coming back to printing’s roots and getting their hands dirty. We appreciate hand-made graphics, I think, more then ever, using letterpress, screen print, linocut, woodcut etc. The goals of experimental typography are to shock and amaze by pushing the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm, by modifying already existing type fonts, using asymmetric layout, and contrast, scale, and colour in most surprising ways. Typographic experiment, particularly the visually striking work of experimenters within Dada, Futurism, and other artistic movements of the 1910’s and 1920’s, offered the opportunity to move between the
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sually interesting ways. Playfulness is shown in free experimentation with shapes, colours, structures and handling random events. It is the omnipresent craving for identity, originality and individuality that drives designers to create those unique type solutions. Influences in this typographic field of constructing letters can be anything from simple geometry to 70’s posters, organic shapes to vectored graphic patterns. This trend has been influencing so many brand identities and even the redesigning of the whole editorial publication on newsstands, like the “Observer” identity. In material letters what attracts me the most is: simplicity and spontaneous arranging of any sort of materials into letters, words or sentences. This makes it the most liberated and playful part of typography.Use of familiar materials like leaves, flowers, pieces of wood, office materials or ribbons gives the feel of authenticity and humanity and allows the viewer to relate to design in a more real way. There certainly is an experimental trend for graphic design moving into three-dimensional objects
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Firstly, I would like to analyse experimental typography today by looking at hand written typography. There is something special and natural that happens when typographers create hand drawn type, its unique personality brings design work to life. Still many of the big masters in typography swear by hand-drawn sketches that serve as a strong base for their digital font creation. Handwriting brings out more character, it reveals the character of the person creating it and fuels this very character into the actual design. Wobbly lines, imperfect spacing and welcome slip-ups are what give these works all their charm. Hand lettering gives you a view from another perspective and often reminds us of 60’s advertising or children’s books. Even when seen in a contemporary application, this untroubled charm of childish characters and playfulness remains. Readable or not, they certainly engage the viewer, trigger the eye through pulsating patterns and blur the line between letter and ornament, typography andnillustration. Another technique that caught my attention is constructed type. This technique of typography includes using existing type-fonts, shapes and patterns and arranging them in vi-
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stress of the hand on the surface. The scratch may currently be the most radical alternative to conventional type because it has considerable power to be interpretative yet curiously universal, expressive yet legible. A great example of this technique was its application in the title sequence for ‘Seven’ in 1995. This was designed by Kelly Cooper, was then precursor of current scratch lettering and led designers to use a similar esthetic for subsequent thrillers. Printed in black and white, the scratchy lettering put into rectilinear speech boxes represents the voice of the victim or survivor. The exclusive use of hand lettering gives the piece an immediate and emotional quality that computer-generated type could not extract. Designers often draw upon the artless vernacular for sophisticated design,that is where script type comes into play. I noticed that, particularly in Michael Bierut’s poster for the seventh annual book fair to help the homeless. He incorporates child-like script into an otherwise conventional layout. The script is not as free flowing as information handwriting, but Bierut conveys the idea that speaks in very simple and effective way. Regardless of this,
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and for work that interacts within a space. With photography playing a vital role in documenting the process of the work, type has never been as tactile as it is today. Materials play a vital role in all of experimental typography to produce images that will communicate messages. Alongside with materials context and space all that compose design solution. In the work of Karin Petterson we can see how important it is to intelligently set typography into a scene. She exposes various angles to allow the viewer to grasp its full dimension. Whilst her works can have a clear readability from one perspective, observed from a different point of view they literally decompose, collapse into abstract shapes lost in space. It is not the material alone that interests, but the idea behind it, which acts as a driving force. She chooses materials and customises them to fulfil their purpose. Scratching is another technique often use in handmade typography. This very human and physical act of creating letters has become so powerful because it is achieved by applying pressure. Generally, writing is done with an easy hand motion, whereas scratching requires the determined and continuous
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doesn’t need to be perfect. By simply applying pen on paper, typography is gaining uniqueness and eliminates the restrictions of the two-dimensional screen. Suddenly it dawned on me that using the simplest materials opens a wide range of possibilities and that designers were using those techniques long before the 21st century. That doesn’t mean that we should throw the computer out of the window. We can still make use of the benefits of computer technology in the handmade process. We can scan work, tweak it add to it or erase it. The computer is a useful creative tool, so long as it doesn’t take over the process and limit our creative thinking. Milton Glased, designer of one the world’s most recognizable and iconic logos IYNY, summed up the effects of computers on design perfectly when he said, “computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking”. ................................... ............................................. ............................................. ............................................. ............................................. .............
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the results are as natural as any personal signature. Many versions of script typography have a history in such big trademarks as ‘Coca Cola’ and have proved to be successful. This kind of typeface can be formal or informal, mannered or free hand and for that matter light or dark, and can be adapted to whatever design intention there is. Computers have the tendency to remove elements of chance materiality, and texture. The happy accidents that come with experimentation are lost and risk-taking is removed, resulting in images that are highly polished and homogenized. With the digital aesthetic becoming the norm, I think it is impossible to achieve really good results that have personality by starting to design without using pen and pencil, but instead starting on screen. For me good design has to become something else besides nicely polished type and glossy surfaces. It needs to be real; using a mix of different materials and media so that the viewer will be surprised and at the same time feel some kind of natural connection with the design. This could be a liberating experience for the designer simply by just drawing and understanding the whole beauty of this act, which
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can find it so illustrative that ther e is no need for reading actual letters or words, because the text exists almost as an image and can successfully communicate the message on its own. At the beginning I thought I wouldn’t have any problems with designing the 26 spre ads of ‘An A-Z of Graphic Language’. But I was entirely wrong! I started by choosing a common theme for all the letters, by pinp ointing a connection between them and by trying to find out to what degree they would be related within the overall design. It was extremely difficult. I was constantly chan ging my lists of words that were stand for an individual letter. This was the case even when my ideas for deciding on the theme (i.e . materials and techniques) were very clea r. It pays off sometimes when a designer restrains himself or herself while work ing on a brief. This will allow him or her to find crisp ideas more quickly. This makes the brief possibilities endless. The proj ect can be as much about everything as it can be about nothing, as long as the designer can contextualise it in a graphic design. But I have found a way to overcome the diff iculties. I realise that I should choose something that interests me because this looks like a quite a long project and I need to be
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What amazes me most is the incredible balance between typography and illustration which is capable of creating a unique
visual communication. Sometimes the view er
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I am always looking forward to new projects, and ‘An A to Z of Graphic Language’ sounded very interesting from the very beginning. The design part has always excited and challenged me in new ways and despite various problems that have arisen it has always been great fun. The essay writing part, on the other hand, has always been very hard for me, especially as English is not my first language. As a result, I did not feel as confident writing in English as I would be in Polish and it is sometimes difficult to find appropriate words. But with this particular project, once I had gathered all the necessary materials and read relevant books and articles on the subject of experimental typography, I simply started writing. The process of writing about typography felt surprisingly natural for me. After reflecting on this, I came to the conclusion that typography is slowly becoming my great interest in graphic design. Reading about typography and seeing it being described by professional typographers has been very inspiring for me. I have found lots of great designs that I can learn from:(put in some examples)
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passionate about it. I am alr eady interested in typography so it was only simple and natural for this project to be a unique chance to experiment and study typograph y in a greater detail. I have focused on dif ferent materials and techniques as well as dif ferent approaches in using them. I was trying to analyse and experiment with both obv ious as well as surprising solutions in type design. I didn’t want my spreads to be generi c and lacking sophistication and therefore I did my best to look for various ways to mak e them truly interesting. I came up with the idea of having a children’s story as the bac kground for the main word in the spread. Thi s whole idea of the PDF(children’s story) has inspired me to create a spontaneous and a pla yful childlike look for my typography.
I have obviously started to generate my ideas for typography with my sketchbook. When I started to do my first sketches, it almost became an obsession, which even now, when the project is over, will surely be one of the long-term benefits that I have gained through this project. Thanks to this experience I have created a greater base for my future designs, and I feel justified in saying that even some of the doodling can be developed further in order to create, for example, display type.
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Starting the project was ver y difficult, as I am not used to writing chi ldren’s stories, but I found the entire proces s very funny and extremely enjoyable. I hav e spent a lot of time making crucial decisi ons about this project, and as a result I sta rted to feel quite stressed about the who le task and got worried that I wouldn’t be abl e to finish it on time. Since my spreads wer e not in alphabetical order, as I was workin g through my story I occasionally bumped into some pretty difficult words. I then had to make a decision about moving to another word that I already had an idea for. It was important for
me to simply spontaneously ‘bring my ideas to life’. This way of sorting out problems was to some extent bringing back that childlike spirit of not worrying about consequences, limits or norms. I really wanted to try whatever solution came to my mind. This allowed me to keep an open-minded approach throughout the project as well as to see typography possibilities through really simple techniques, like drawing or embroidering, or using objects found in everyday life, like pearls or a banana peel.
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Biblography The End of Print: The Graphic Design of David Carson by Lewis Blackwell, David Carson 1996 LIFT AND SEPARATE Graphic Design and the Vernacular, Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design & Typography, 1993
Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far by Stefan Sagmeister, 2008 http://www.grafikmag.com http://vimeo.com/6382511 http://www.typotheque.com
Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design, by Stephen Heller, Karen Pomeroy New York City NY: Allworth Press, 1999
http://www.swisslegacy.com/
The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers (World of Art), by Alan Livingston, Isabella Livingston, 2003
http://www.typotheque.com/articles/experimental_typography_ whatever_that_means
Graphic Design: A Concise History (World of Art) by Richard Hollis, 2001 What Is Graphic Design? (Essential Design Handbooks) by Quentin Newark, 2002
http://www.bankassociates.de/index.php?lang=en http://www.karinapetersen.com http://www.haja.com.pl/ http://www.creativereview.co.uk/ cr-blog/2009/march/students-begborrow-and-auction-artworks
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The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher, 2001
http://www.posttypography.com/alphabet/store.html
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Design by Meg Sikon, sustainable eco friendly product, London College of Communication, January 2010