Typography Magazine 2017 Semester 1 by kevindiepart

Typography Design Layout

April 2017

Contents 1. Letter to the Editor 2. Ampersand Study 8. Type Profiles 13. Letraset Factoid 14. Festival Poster 15. 1st Text 21. 2nd Text 25. Letterpress Project

(a) Magazine Direction (b) Ampersand Study (c) Type Profiles (d) Festival Poster (e) Two Texts

Letter to the Editor

Kevin Diep Fulltime Gangster

(a) The art direction of the magazine is a modern clean theme, where I tried to extend the use of one colour block as much as possible. (b) To showcase the ampersands as some deserve to be admired, i showcased the normal ampersand and placed thin, bold, and italicised versions underneath. I then put my commentary underneath the ampersands as it is the least important information. The yellow blocks are used as a background, mimicking post-it notes. (c) Josefin Sans uses the yellow blocks as highlights, conveying her ordered attitude. Debby uses the yellow blocks as stickers to paste her

notes to the wall. This shows her thoughts are unorganised and spontaneous. Elephant shows patterns that mimic the way he likes to immerse himself in music. Slab uses the yellow block to build a tower image. Deutsch Gothic takes up the whole page and uses red to highlght his confronting and aggressive personality. (d) I used a painting I did last year to play on the words ‘Headway’. Date, time, and location were placed underneath the title as many other festival posters have done the same and it is the next element a viewer will notice after the title. Next was the lineup, with international acts first. Lastly

is the entry fee as it is the biggest barrier to entry, even if it’s just a gold coin. Beneath that are the website details and sponsors. (e) With the texts I explored different columns and options in the ‘Text Frame Options’ function. This involved different column numbers and sizes. I also tried to creatively place some of the words that had some imagery to them.This can be seen on page 17.

&mpersand Study The ampersand is a ligature for the Latin word ‘et’ which means ‘and’. This study looks at 30 different typefaces and how their ampersands differ in style, and whether italics change them.

http://www.1001fonts.com/aileron-font.html

Myriad Pro

& &

Aileron

Suitable for book type as it is sans-serif and clearly legible. Does not stand out enough to be a display font.

& &

Suits both applications, the Ampersand for this font can definitely attract the eye as it is very different from other ampersands.

https://befonts.com/brusher-font.html

Bell MT

Brusher

The italicised ampersand could only be used for display purposes as it is too complex for text.

A display only font, this one has a natural and grounded emotion.

Century Gothic

& &

Very simple and suitable for both text and display. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a bit too round to be text. Creating too much space in sentences.

Courier New

The ampersand in this one resembles the original except the loop is cut off in the top right. This could be to enhance the thin serif look.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Forum

Forum

& A webfont that is very suited for text.

Cooper Std

& &

Display font only. Quite a nice retro font. The ampersand looks like the one in Bell MT, a common one for display fonts.

Elephant

& &

A striking font on its own and the italicised ampersand makes it even more striking. the added bottom tail makes it a display font.

Haettenschweiler

A great display font that reminds me of retro Russian text.

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Josefin+Sans

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Josefin+Slab

Josefin Sans

Josefin Slab

& &

Suits display and text. The small variation in ampersand means it can be used in text easily.

Makhina

Niagara Solid

Display only. Too blocky and complex for text.

A pretty nice font. Can see this being used for headings. The ampersand is quite tall, not something seen in others.

Orator STD

Could be used as a text font in certain cases but is mostly a display font. Surprised that the ampersand isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t long and straight like the font style.

Old English Text Mt

Nice blocky and sharp ampersand. In this day and age, it should just be a display font.

Parchment

http://brittneymurphydesign.com/downloads/perfectly-amicable/

This font uses the actual letters that the ampersand ligature stands for, meaning that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s very traditional. A display font.

A thick font that could be used for either display or text.

perfectly amicable

https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Quicksand

Roboto

Quicksand

Clean text font with a taste of traditonalism and serifs seen in the ampersand.

Minimal text font.

Rockwell

Serendipity

MOON

& &

Verlag

Stellar

https://www.behance.net/gallery/23468357/Moon-Free-Font?utm_content=bufferb5759&utm_medium=social&utm_ source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

https://www.behance.net/gallery/27499203/Stellar-Free-Typeface

Sitka Display

Sitka Text

http://www.dafont.com/kitten.font

Kitten Swash

Adobe Devangari

& &

Seems like ampersands in italics are different to indicate that if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s italicised it has signifcant meaning?

Garamond

Hi,

I’m Josefin Sans. Josefin Slab’s sister? Sure you’ve heard of him. I’m married to Comic Sans and that’s why my last name is different from my brother. I met Comic Sans at my local theatre’s B-Movie marathon night and he’s really cheesy but I still love him. I like to take photos of my cat with my camera, and pretty much just my cat. His name is Alfalfa. I’m currently an accountant at PWS, yes, famous for the Oscars screwup. I’m not sick of hearing about it

• I'm 22 years young •It's pretty cool!

•I love to draw food! It's my favourite thing ever.

• Currently studying at University of Canberra for Graphic Design • Work part time as a graphic designer for Her magazine Canberra.

•I love to read and draw. You can find my musings also on instagram.

Debby

A NT ELE P H A NT ELE Hello. I am Elephant. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m 25, nearing the end of my degree in Engineering at the ANU and am looking for someone to hang out with. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m really into audio visual stuff. Immersion is my only escape from reality.

Hi, I am

Josefin

Slab I’m Josefin San’s brother and unlike her, still single. I’m 30 and looking for a woman who is adventurous and outgoing so I can experience new things. I’ve been working in the public service for 8 years and I’m starting to grow a bit on the sides, so an active person will encourage me to loose these slab flabs.

M G N Y VE O IT O IT IN LE

MY NAME DEUTSCH GOTHIC, I HAVE HOUND NAMED FRANKOFF 16 YEAR OLD FOR SALE VERY STRONG. CAN KILL ON COMMAND I LEARN IT WHEN JUST BORN OUT OF MOTHER I TAKE IT AND LEARN IT. LOOKING FOR STRONG FRAULEIN FOR FRANKOFF. 12

Letrasets are sheets that contain a typeface and several characters that can be transferred to artwork if prepared. Originally the process involved wetting the letters that had been pre-treated with gum arabic which

Gable, G. (2010). Scanning Around With Gene: When Letraset Was King - CreativePro.com. CreativePro.com. Retrieved 8 March 2017, from http://creativepro.com/scanning-around-genewhen-letraset-was-king/# 13

which would then activate the glue. In the 1960s this process developed into the cleaner and more accessible dry transfer technique. The special property of dry transfer sheets (also known as rub-ons or rubdowns) is that the designs can be transferred without water or other solvents.

Letraset in the 1970s was very prominent in the graphic design industry and dry transfer sheets were a staple of graphic design at the time that ‘You could tell serious graphic designer by whether they had a special tool just for burnishing dry-transfer type.’ (Gable, 2010)

The dry transfer is applied by facing the back of the transparent sheet on a surface, then by ‘drawing over’ (burnishing) the character and applying pressure, the ink transfers onto the surface. When the sheet is peeled off, the character sticks to the surface.

Letraset made more than just type sheets, they developed images, icons, symbols and for big brands they developed customised logo sheets. Although images and drawings were not used very often, it shows how effective and accurate dry transfer sheets are.

Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favourite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.

Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates fingerprints on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and the fiery heart of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-page? Again: the glass is colourless or at the most only faintly tinged in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its colour and is impatient of anything that alters it.

1. ‘The Crystal Goblet, or Printing Should Be Invisible’ by Beatrice Warde Speech given to the British Typographers’ Guild, 1930. 15

There are a thousand mannerisms in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted; you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader subconsciously worried by the fear of “doubling” lines, reading three words as one, and so forth.

Now the man who first chose glass instead of clay or metal to hold his wine was a “modernist” in the sense in which I am going to use that term. That is, the first thing he asked of his particular object was not

“How should it look?” but

“What must it do?” and to that extent all good typography is modernist. Wine is so strange and potent a thing that it has been used in the central ritual of religion in one place and time, and attacked by a virago with a hatchet in another. There is only one thing in the world that is capable of stirring and altering men’s minds to the same extent, and that is the coherent expression of thought. That is man’s chief miracle, unique to man. There is no “explanation” whatever of the fact that I can make arbitrary sounds which will lead a total stranger to think my own thought. It is sheer magic that I should be able to hold a one-sided conversation by means of black marks on paper with an unknown person half-way across the world.

Before asking what this statement leads to, let us see what it does not necessarily lead to. If books are printed in order to be read, we must distinguish readability from what the optician would call legibility. A page set in 14-pt Talking, broadcasting, writing, and Bold Sans is, according to the printing are all quite literally forms laboratory tests, more “legible” of thought transference, and it is than one set in 11-pt Baskerville. A the ability and eagerness to trans- public speaker is more “audible” fer and receive the contents of the in that sense when he bellows. mind that is almost alone responsi- But a good speaking voice is one ble for human civilization. which is inaudible as a voice. It is the transparent goblet again! I need not warn you that if you begin listening to the inflections and speaking rhythms of a voice If you agree with this, you will from a platform, you are falling agree with my one main idea, asleep. When you listen to a song i.e. that the most important thing in a language you do not underabout printing is that it conveys stand, part of your mind actually thought, ideas, images, from does fall asleep, leaving your quite one mind to other minds. This separate aesthetic sensibilities statement is what you might call to enjoy themselves unimpeded the front door of the science of by your reasoning faculties. The typography. Within lie hundreds fine arts do that; but that is not of rooms; but unless you start by the purpose of printing. Type well assuming that printing is meant used is invisible as type, just as the to convey specific and coherent ideas, it is very easy to find yourself perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of in the wrong house altogether. words, ideas. 17

We may say, therefore, that printing may be delightful for many reasons, but that it is important, first and foremost, as a means of doing something. That is why it is mischievous to call any printed piece a work of art, especially fine art: because that would imply that its first purpose was to exist as an expression of beauty for its own sake and for the delectation of the senses. Calligraphy can almost be considered a fine art nowadays, because its primary economic and educational purpose has been taken away; but printing in English will not qualify as an art until the present English language no longer conveys ideas to future generations, and until printing itself hands its usefulness to some yet unimagined successor.

There There There There There There is no

end end end to the maze of practices in typography,

and this idea of printing as a conveyor is, at least in the minds of all the great typographers with whom I have had the privilege of talking, the one clue that can guide you through the maze. Without this essential humility of mind, I have seen ardent designers go more hopelessly wrong, make more ludicrous mistakes out of an excessive enthusiasm, than I could have thought possible. And with this clue, this purposiveness in the back of your mind, it is possible to do the most unheard-of things, and find that they justify you triumphantly. It is not a waste of time to go to the simple fundamentals and reason from them. In the flurry of your individual problems, I think you will not mind spending half an hour on one broad and simple set of ideas involving abstract principles. 18

I once was talking to a man who designed a very pleasing advertising type which undoubtedly all of you have used. I said something about what artists think about a certain problem, and he replied with a beautiful gesture: “Ah, madam, we artists do not think — we feel!” That same day I quoted that remark to another designer of my acquaintance, and he, being less poetically inclined, murmured: “I’m not feeling very well today, I think!” He was right, he did think; he was the thinking sort; and that is why he is not so good a painter, and to my mind ten times better as a typographer and type designer than the man who instinctively avoided anything as coherent as a reason. I always suspect the typographic enthusiast who takes a printed page from a book and frames it to hang on the wall, for I believe that in order to gratify a sensory delight he has mutilated something infinitely more important. I remember that T.M. Cleland, the famous Amer-

ican typographer, once showed me a very beautiful layout for a Cadillac booklet involving decorations in colour. He did not have the actual text to work with in drawing up his specimen pages, so he had set the lines in Latin. This was not only for the reason that you will all think of; if you have seen the old typefoundries’ famous Quousque Tandem copy (i.e. that Latin has few descenders and thus gives a remarkably even line). No, he told me that originally he had set up the dullest “wording” that he could find (I dare say it was from Hansard), and yet he discovered that the man to whom he submitted it would start reading and making comments on the text. I made some remark on the mentality of Boards of Directors, but Mr Cleland said, “No: you’re wrong; if the reader had not been practically forced to read — if he had not seen those words suddenly imbued with glamour and significance — then the layout would have been a failure. Setting it in Italian or Latin

is only an easy way of saying ‘This is not the text as it will appear.’”

Let me start my specific conclusions with book typography, because that contains all the fundamentals, and then go on to a few points about advertising. The book typographer has the job of erecting a window between the reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author’s words. He may put up a stained-glass window of marvellous beauty, but a failure as a window; that is, he may use some rich superb type like text gothic that is something to be looked at, not through. Or he may work in what I call transparent or invisible typography. I have a book at home, of which I have no visual recollection whatever as far as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three Musketeers and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets of Paris. The third type of window is one in which the glass is broken into relatively small leaded panes; and this corresponds to what is called “fine printing” today, in that you are at least conscious that there is a

window there, and that someone has enjoyed building it. That is not objectionable, because of a very important fact which has to do with the psychology of the subconscious mind. That is that the mental eye focuses through type and not upon it. The type which, through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of “colour,” gets in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed, is a bad type. Our subconsciousness is always afraid of blunders (which illogical setting, tight spacing and toowide unleaded lines can trick us into), of boredom, and of officiousness. The running headline that keeps shouting at us, the line that looks like one long word, the capitals jammed together without hair-spaces — these mean subconscious squinting and loss of mental focus. And if what I have said is true of book printing, even of the most exquisite limited editions, it is fifty times more obvious in advertising, where the one and only justification for the purchase of space is that you are conveying a message — that you

are implanting a desire, straight into the mind of the reader. It is tragically easy to throw away half the reader-interest of an advertisement by setting the simple and compelling argument in a face which is uncomfortably alien to the classic reasonableness of the book-face. Get attention as you will by your headline, and make any pretty type pictures you like if you are sure that the copy is useless as a means of selling goods; but if you are happy enough to have really good copy to work with, I beg you to remember that thousands of people pay hard-earned money for the privilege of reading quietly set book-pages, and that only your wildest ingenuity can stop people from reading a really interesting text. Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography

never effaces itself; you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else. The ‘stunt typographer’ learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair- spaces. Nobody (save the other craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.

2. ‘Discovery by Design’ by Zuzana Licko First published in 1994 in Emigre 32.

"...Can new design – like new science – discover phenomena that already exist in the fabric of typographic possibility? If so, who owns discovery?" – Ellen Lupton, The 100 Show. The sixteenth Annual of the American Center for Design. Although science and design are both based upon experimental investigation, the comparison is not altogether straightforward; science investigates naturally occurring phenomena, while design investigates culturally created phenomena. But if such a parallel is to be made, then we might replace a falling tree by a typographic possibility and thereby ask the question "Does a typographic phenomenon exist if no one recognizes it?" Potentially, if every graphic and typographic possibility already exists, and each is waiting to be discovered, then we need only create an appropriate context in order to bring life to any of them. For example, consider the 26 letters in our alphabet and how they are combined to form words. There is a finite number of combinations, or words, if we limit ourselves to words of a certain length; say, five letters. Then, for the ease of pronunciation, let's omit all words that contain a string of three or more consecutive consonants. Even with these restraints to give some "meaning" within our understanding of words, there will 21

be many words that will have no meaning to us. Does this mean that these are not words? Does a sequence of letters not form a word when we do not recognize its meaning?

It is important to note here, that the meanings of words are not intrinsic to the words themselves; the meanings are arbitrary, since the same word may have different meanings in different languages. In fact, the entire concept of using 26 letters is an arbitrary one. We could just as well have used 20 letters, or 30 letters, or thousands of ideograms like the Oriental cultures. Although these systems of communication and meanings are arbitrary, once they are established, they serve as the foundation for the creation of new meanings, and therefore do not appear to be as arbitrary as they really are. As another example, consider the grid of a computer video display, or that of a laser printer rasterizer; each point on the grid can be on or off; black or white. Given a fixed resolution, again, there is a finite number of combinations that these on/off sequences will compose. If a computer is programmed to run through all of the possible combinations, some will appear to us

as pure gibberish, while others will be recognized as something that we already know or might be interested in getting to know better. Even though all these compositions are randomly generated, only those few that fit into our preconceived notions of context will have meaning. Therefore, it is the meaning, and not the form itself that has been created. New design is the creation of new meanings; that is, new contexts for typographic possibilities. However, must be linked to existing ones. Even that design which "pushes the envelope" must build upon existing preconceptions. For unless a critical portion is understandable, the entire piece will be dismissed as complete nonsense. On the other hand, if no portion of the design is new, then it will appear so uninteresting that it might result in boredom and therefore be equally dismissed. Intriguing consumers with just the right amount of unrecognizable information spurs their interest. By initiating these changes of meaning, design educates the

consumer to the changes in culture. Thus, design is a very powerful component in controlling our collective consciousness. However, design is also a subconscious process, and it is therefore nearly impossible for a designer to intentionally alter a specific cultural concept. This process of reassimilation and adding or changing of meaning with each step creates an environment in our popular culture that is conducive to the assimilation of particular ideas. As this environment changes, it makes certain ideas ripe, or "ready to be liked." In this manner, meanings change, and over time great shifts take place. Since the creation of new meanings usually results in the replacement, displacement or change of older meanings, we may also wonder if some meanings become obsolete. We may ask, "Does obsolescence exist in design, and can we plan obsolescence?"

It is possible to engineer the components of a car or refrigerator to break down after a certain duration of use, thereby defining the product's obsolescence. But is it possible to do this with a design style, typeface, or typographic form? Unlike industrial products that have a physical life, the lifespan of a typographic possibility is purely conceptual. Designs become obsolete as they are consumed by our culture, and subsequently forgotten in favor of other ones. Yet what was obsolete years ago is often revived from obsolescence to be

reassimilated or expanded upon as appropriate to fit into new cultural meanings. This process repeats itself again and again, making obsolescence a temporary state in the world of design possibilities. Because this ongoing change is affected by many different forces from numerous directions, it is impossible to predict what will happen next, or even how longor short-lived any particular design idea might be. Since the life, or lives, of a design idea are dictated by its appropriateness for currently accepted ideas, it would be impossible

to specifically plan the longevity of a design without also controlling these forces of style. This evolution of meanings is also unpredictable over time. Some meanings change very quickly, like the second hand on a stopwatch; others change so slowly that we don't even see them change, like the hour hand on a grandfather clock. These slow changing ideas are seen as timeless, while those that change quickly are perceived as being timely. The words "timeless" and "timely" often have very strong negative or positive

connotations, although neither is good nor bad, per se. The value of either of these qualities lies in the appropriateness of use, and appropriateness is usually a question of efficient use of design resources, or financial viability. For example, if it costs millions to change the signage in an airport or subway system, then a timeless design is appropriate. However, if a design can be changed every time it appears on, say, an interactive television platform, and especially if such change will stimulate interest and add levels of

meaning to the audience, then a timely design would be appropriate. However, more often than not, it is timelessness that is seen as most valuable. Timeless creations are seen as the result of the process of refinement, and give us the impression that we are always working towards an ultimate goal of perfection, independent of the whims of fashion. This may appear so because history is told as a logical and progressive development. However, histories are composed in hindsight; actual events do not occur with such

20/20 vision. For example, once we identify a design idea as being fully developed, historians then work to explain its development by referring to the appropriate chain of events. However, this process also involves the filtering out of inappropriate events; events that nonetheless occupy the same time line. The inevitability of design ideas is therefore never so apparent when weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re standing on the other end of the time line.

Although each development can be explained as an outcome of any number of preceding factors, this does not mean that any particular course of development is therefore inevitable. The sometimes arbitrary choices that are made along every step subsequently become a foundation for future developments, but there are usually many parallel, equally viable paths not taken. So, who owns these design discoveries, if we are facilitating their existence through the appropriate contexts? It may be true that all

designs exist in the fabric of typographic possibility. However, since not all possibilities can exist at the same time, there must be some way to intelligently choose possibilities that will have meaning; that intelligent force comes from designers. The discovery of a design possibility is therefore largely a matter of the designer being in the right place at the right time. However, it is the designer's ability to recognize the opportunity, the talent to apply the idea to a specific creative work, the willingness to

sometimes go out on a limb, and the perseverance to convince others that the idea has validity, that deserves claim to ownership. Because, in the end, it is the expertise to communicate new ideas to others that gives credibility to the designer's existence.