338.03 Type Journal by Michelle Lin by Michelle Lin

My Type

JOURNAL

This journal belongs to: Michelle Lin

My Type Journal Winter 2016 Art 338.03 2

Introduction This journal is an accumulation of all the notes from class lectures, discussions and readings that were given during this quarter of Type II, taught by Ms. Charmaine Martinez at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Included are also in class exercises and assigned projects and the thought process going into them, along with a brief recap of the final critques. I treated this journal as a notebook I personally would own and also as playful way of documenting my feelings through out this quarter, which are depicted by some of the doodles throughout the journal. This was designed to be a type of keepsake that I can look back upon in future years.

01 week

Lecture • • • • • • •

Line length is to around 8-13 words per line Line spacing is about 125-145% of the point size of the type Quotes are always in the curly quotes, straight ticks are dumb quotes, and the prime marks are used for measurements know your dashes: en dash, em dash, and regular hyphens Fix rags and do not adjust tracking any tighter than -10 Fix kearning by pressing option+left arrow/right arrow spell check everything using command+i

In Class Exercise Serif

Sans Serif

Without typography, one could argue, messages will still be legible, but if one really wants to comunicate rather than simply display a heap of alphanumeric data, some consideration would be helpful. Paul Watzlawick’s first axiom of communication—“one cannot not communicate”—puts it very succinctly. If you fail to consider the effect of your message on the recipient, you may inadvertently communicate that you do not care how your message may be received.

ADOBE GARAMOND PRO, 9/13

FRUTIGER, 9/13

Without typography, one could argue, messages will still be legible, but if one really wants to comunicate rather than simply display a

Without typography, one could argue, messages will still be legible, but if one really wants to comunicate rather than simply display a heap of alphanumeric data, some consideration would be helpful. Paul Watzlawick’s first axiom of communication —“one cannot not communicate”— puts it very succinctly. If you fail to consider the effect of your message on the recipient, you may inadvertently communicate that you do not care how your message may be received.

In this exercise, we analyzed text set in paragraph form (“body text” or “text blocks”). Using serif and sans serif text typefaces, we created different versions of those settings by altering the leading and point size.

FRUTIGER, 9/12

heap of alphanumeric data, some consideration would be helpful. Paul Watzlawick’s first axiom of communication—“one cannot not

Without typography, one could argue, messages will still

communicate”—puts it very succinctly. If you fail to consider the

be legible, but if one really wants to comunicate rather

effect of your message on the recipient, you may inadvertently com-

than simply display a heap of alphanumeric data, some

municate that you do not care how your message may be received.

consideration would be helpful. Paul Watzlawick’s first

ADOBE GARAMOND PRO, 9/15

axiom of communication —“one cannot not communicate”— puts it very succinctly. If you fail to consider the

effect of your message on the recipient, you may inadvertently communicate that you do not care how your message may be received. FRUTIGER, 9/15

succinctly. If you fail to consider the effect of your message on the recipient,

Without typography, one could argue, messages will still be legible, but if one really wants to comunicate rather than simply display a heap of alphanumeric data, some consideration would be helpful. Paul Watzlawick’s first axiom of communication —“one cannot not communicate”— puts it very succinctly. If you fail to consider the effect of your message on the recipient, you may inadvertently communicate that you do not care how your message may be received.

you may inadvertently communicate that you do not care how your message

FRUTIGER, 9/13

ADOBE GARAMOND PRO, 9/13

may be received. ADOBE GARAMOND PRO, 8/13

Without typography, one could argue, messages will still be legible, but if one really wants to comunicate rather than

simply display a heap of alphanumeric data, some consideration would be helpful. Paul Watzlawick’s first axiom of communication—“one cannot not communicate”— puts it very succinctly. If you fail to consider the effect of your message on the recipient, you may inadvertently communicate that you do not care how your message may be received. FRUTIGER, 8/13

Without typography, one could argue, messages will still be legible, but if one really wants to comunicate rather than simply display a heap of alphanumeric data, some consideration would be helpful. Paul Watzlawick’s first axiom of communication—“one cannot not communicate”— puts it very succinctly. If you fail to consider the effect of your message on the recipient, you may inadvertently communicate that you do not care how your

02 week

Discussion • The design of the butterfly ballot and we talked about how the design of it made the whole voting process very difficult. The fact that they made the names zigzag from across another making some type of zipper structure was nothing but confusing. The type was all bunched up together and there definitely was not enough leading between the lines of text. There were many misalignments and negative space that could have been utilized better. Overall, if people our age had trouble understanding how the ballot worked, it must have been even harder for older folks whose eyes aren’t as keen as ours. • Trixie’s resume was better because she didn’t have any excessive bars that only took away from the information presented. Choices of typeface made a difference and Trixie utilized the idea of white space nicely. Her sense of hierarchy was more successful and her paragraph width/line length was just right in that it seemed to the point and not excessive. • The main argument of “The Crystal Goblet” was that typography was to be invisible and not seen by the public eye. Butterick disagrees because he believes that good typography should be acknowlegded and seen because that is what draws people to it. Being able to be recognized as good typography and good design is what all type should strive for.

Project One: Typesetting: Rules Typography 1. “Knowing the right font to use takes an understanding of the emotional response your audience will have to it.” David Kadary. Design For Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty. 2011. p 38

2. “Typography is mostly an act of dividing a limited surface.” - Will Baumeister Ellen Lupton. Graphic Design: The New Basics. 2008. p 175

type talk

3. “A quality font family will range

in weight form extra-light or hairline, through roman, medium and bold into extra bold and black versions.” Kathryn Coates. Introduction to Information Design. 2014. p 86

Research and document as many rules, ideas, or principles about typography as possible. Findings must be typeset on one side of an 8.5" × 11" piece of paper. A minimum of five examples must be presented on the page. Each entry must come from a different source. Consideration should be given to the typesetting and design of the page.

4. “Digital typography now teems

with the diveristy of a tropical rainforest — and it is littered with more trash than an underpass.” Ellen Lupton. Design Briefs : Type on Screen : A Guide for Designers, Developers, Writers, and Students. 2014. p 11

5. “Design is the one of the basic

characteristics of what it is to be human, and an essential determinant of the quality of human life.” John Heskett. Design: A Very Short Introduction. 2005. p 2

My process behind this project was to keep it simple and to have it easily read by viewers. I wanted to emphasize the title of “Type Talk” to draw viewers in and then used colors to distinguish between the quotes and the author. However, it being the first project, I definitely still had a lot of difficulty with this project.

Critique • • • • • •

line lengths were too short, made composition a little awkward hierarchy was not utilized to full potential type size was way too big, could definitely go smaller author’s name and title of book gets lost because they are the same as the quotes tracking is too tight on the paragraphs good treatment of title, good size, catches the viewers attention

• Causes of legibility/readibility problems: • typeweight (too light or too bold): a “regular” or “book” or “medium” or “Roman” weight is typically best for text • not enough leading • setting body text in a monospaced typeface • line length too short Problems of Hierarchy • title lacks strength/ visual weight

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author’s name gets lost/ is not prominent enough unimportant elements or words are given too much emphasis

Problems with Composition • margins too small • awkward negative space • lack of strong focal point • a little boring

03 week

Discussion • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Shortcuts for curly quotes/smart quotes white space characters and tabs, to align everything, space before and after ligatures, used as literary tones – option + hyphen — option + shift+ hyphen • option 8 option k ˚ option g © option r ® option 2 ™ option semicolon … shift return hard line break, soft return tab: command shift t

Lecture Design factors to consider • content • how long is the text • what is it about • audience • what is the age/ demographic • format/context • what is the size of the page/screen technical factors • full character set, including punctuation and glyphs • multiple weights and styles • small caps • web font version Google Fonts has free fonts for print and web Lost Type Co-Op pay what you want type foundry 10

League of Moveable Type type movement that provides well-made free, open source, @font-face ready fonts Font Squirrel free fonts for commerical use My Fonts has a wide range of fonts and excellent newsletter on font trends and design Font Files User: ~/ Library/Fonts each user has complete control over the fonts installed in their Home Local: /Library/Fonts any local user of the computer can use fonts installed in this folder Network: /Network/Library/Fonts shared among all users of a local area network System: /System/ Library/Fonts/ mac os x requires fonts in this folder for system use and displays. they should not be manually altered or removed organize your fonts! FontExplorer X Pro Suitcase Fusion

04 week

Project Two : A Dialogue

Using the dialogue provided, you will design a diptych that utilizes all of the text and emphasizes the fact there is more than one voice. Please consider all your choices and decisions carefully. Everything matters. Think about and utilize the various typographic families,and typographic hierarchies. You can use color, and images to help support your design, but care must be taken to make sure your typography is flawless. Think about how all of the typographic elements influence our interpretation of the text and how you, as a designer, can influence the viewer’s reading of the text.

This project definitely had it’s challenges in that it had so much text we had to deal with. The concept of my final diptych is playing on the idea of the myth and how facing the dragon with in yourself will eventually allow you to follow your bliss and achieving that ultimate happiness. I used the graphics of a dragon and warrior to illustrate this confrontation and a subtle maze in the back to elude to the myth again. For the type, I treated the speakers with different weights to distinguish between the two so it’s evident a conversation is being held.

critique • • • • • •

good bold title found a way to relate the two panels together better there’s still some problems with leading, it’s a bit too tight in some paragraphs more spacing betwen the paragraphs, to distinguish the questions kearning issues needs to work on a better concept/ way of presenting concept/ design process

Lecture save time by automating your text formatting paragraph styles • affect paragraph level attributes • leading • tabs • indents • space before and after • hyphenation and justification settings • rules above and below • most styles in your document will be paragraph styles general settings • shows overiew of the style settings and if the style was based on an existing style • paragraph style options in general • do not change in adavanced character formats, itll skew and stretch • indents and spacing • span columns, changing from one to two column Character Styles • are used for styling text within a paragraph, for things like bold, italic, run in

05 week

Discussion • • • • • • •

Grids are important in making a layout that is pleasing to the eyes use of 1-3 column grids are very common ALWAYS use a grid for layout projects the golden ratio and the rule of thirds should be kept in mind when it comes to composition unethical downloading of fonts is a concern among typographers apparently a license is needed sending fonts is illegal, but it happens every day

Project Three: The Elements of Style Booklet The Elements of Style is a classic grammatical reference book for students and conscientious writers. Thefocus of the book is on composition, the effective use of plain English, and the principles of composition most commonly violated. The text is full of examples and comparisons, which necessitates the effective use of indents and shifts in typographic style. The text, written in 1918, is quirky, and, at times, a little archaic. Your job is to develop a design that would appeal to high school and college-aged students. We will be breaking up the text into smaller sections, and each student will be assigned a portion of the text to be used in the creation of a small reference booklet. The second phase of the project will require you to work in teams to create a single related series of booklets.

For this project, I wanted something to seem sophisticated and classy, which is why I went with the Bodoni typeface to get that feel. Because my section was more or less a glossary, I was dealing with lots of words and definitions instead of numbers and tables. I decided to style my content with Bodoni as my header and then Gill sans as my body text. I didn’t make a complicated structure because glossarys are usually very straight forward.

Critique • • • • • • • • • •

Cover: Elements of Style Section number # Title Page: everything paganation should be spaced out clearly margins make it seem more friendly/ inviting footer needs to be isloated and enough breathing room inconsistent leading indenting, changing weight can indicate its different style of information smaller subtle shifts in typefaces are better check for italics tables need more breathing room in cells

06 week

Discussion •

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the history of typography seems to limited to only Western Europe even though history notes that the Chinese and Koreans have developed ways of type way before typographic classifications seem to only focus on Latin type exclusively the term “Roman” is customarily used to describe serif typefaces of the early Italian Renaissance period. introduction of the Unicode system and OpenType font format have inspired type designers to consider the previously overlooked domain of “non-Latin” typography. traditions of typography from Greece, the Middle East, India and elsewhere can help us to rediscover how we understand Latin type today.

Project Three: The Elements of Style Booklet (B) For this part of the project, we were put into groups of 3 and had to come up with a style sheet to make a series of The Elements of Style. Together, our group members looked through our individual booklets and pulled out elements that we all liked and put it on our final style sheet. The process was long and tedious because there were complications where some styles didn’t work out as well when it came to individual content, but in the end, we pulled through and came up with our final series for the Elements of Style booklets.

07 week

Discussion • •

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talked about zine concepts and ideas of what we wanted to put in our final zine lots of ideas were thrown out and we eventually narrowed it down to a good amount where each person was responsible for one topic Lava was design to bridge the digital and print editions of a newly designed magazine. Making a single-purpose font is a relatively quick process, but creating a versatile tool like Lava that works across different platforms, languages, sizes and styles is a lot more complicated. Gratuitous is a self designed magazine by Elana Schlenker and it’s all about type helped launch her career, great portfolio piece graphic design focused magazine

In Class Exercise In class, we got into groups and looked through magazines with different grid layouts. We chose two spreads and then analyzed their grid strucutre and discussed what was working and what wasn’t. We looked at how grids were mathematically related, which structure was being used the best, and other things such as alignment issues and spacing. Overall, it helped us understand different grid structures better and allowed us to be more confident when going in to work on a grid structure for our magazine project.

08 week

Discussion •

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looked at an article that critiqued the typeface Gill Sans and we discussed how it might not be the best type face in terms of proportions, etc, and can be easily replaced with other similar typefaces Beauty and Ugliness of Karloff, connects the high contrast Modern type of Bodoni and Didot with the monstrous Italians. The difference between the attractive and repulsive forms lies in a single design parameter, the contrast between the thick and the thin was important in the project beauty + ugliness = neutral

09 week

Reading Summary/ Lecture •

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Neutral uses design principles to examine timelessness, archetypes and neutrality in graphic design, and specifically in type design. Neutrality to be an elusive, ambiguous quality, removal of anything that will divert focus Neutrality is determined by the expectations and norms of a group of people Designer Mark Jamra was moved by the need for a typeface that would help preserve a nation’s language and culture and began by adapting a Latin typeface he already had in the works Phoreus is the ancient Greek word for bearer or carrier and refers to type (and the Cherokee syllabary) as a vehicle of language and visual culture. This serif face is a harmonious mix of closed and open shapes, straight strokes, and playful curves. It is designed for use in the Cherokee language with a Latin word or phrase added here and there. Phoreus’ clear, simple shapes are well suited to the very young readers needed to keep the language alive. Picking typefaces for the screen Needs contrast, notice the x heights, character distinctions, optical sizings Find alternatives for overused typefaces Pairing: notice the distinction of the two Take advantage of display typefaces Look for harmony: lay them on top of each other to see their relationship in their skeletons

10 week

Project Four: Type Zine

In this project, you will be creating a digital magazine. The theme of the magazine is: Typography and the Everyday. Students in the class will be responsible for collecting and creating all the assets for the magazine, including: text, illustrations, and photographs. All found images and text (articles, interviews, etc.) must be properly credited.

For this project, my concept was creating a magazine that catered to a more visually inclined audience, designers who also appreciate beautiful photography as well as type. With that in mind, I focused a lot on large full spread and page photographs so the viewers would have more to enjoy instead of just focusing on the written content. The title of my zine is â&#x20AC;&#x153;Baselineâ&#x20AC;? and with that I used the elements of bars that reoccurs throughout the entire magazine. I also used a bracket motif that is used in all of the spreads as well. Overall, the concept of this zine was to spread the art of type in different mediums, parts of the world, and to focus on educating the viewers on how versatile and interesting type can be.

Critique • • • • • • •

needs to change Airsoft to a different font, its too thin and it’s not legible needs more breathing room, there is too much text and makes people not want to read it table of contents need to be more “magazine like” , add some pictures to make it cohesive with the rest of the zine have secondary introduction headers, treatment of titles can vary style your paragraphs Don’t go crazy on the boxes, it can be distracting focus on large pictures, readers want to be able to look at details and not have to figure out what they are trying to see

The End

Michelle Lin Butler Frutiger Winter 2016 31

My Type

JOURNAL