Process Journal: ARTS 246, UofSC

ARTS 246 Graphic Design II

Typography

Process Journal Matthew P. Ward 2019-2020

Table of Contents 1. Stationery Set Typographic Evolution Stationery Moodboard Letterform Anatomy Final Product

2. Book Covers The Grid Book Cover Moodboard Visual Hierarchy Final Product

3.Typographic Posters Digitized Type Interlude: 2 Hour Poster Active Type Poster Moodboard Graphic Identity Final Product Colophon

1.

Stationery Set Typographic Evolution Before I could start creating my own projects, I had to look back into the history of type. Whether it’s stories or receipts, humans have been writing things down forever. The Sumerians started by indenting clay; the Romans carved serif letters into stone tablets and buildings. Although movable type could be found in China as early as 1034 CE, it did not enter European society until the 1440s.

Reading into the past was really interesting because I could clearly see a transition in typography happening around the early 1620s. While many documents before then seemed illegible, newer scripts became recognizable as words, even if they were in another language. Discovering when different typefaces were developed and what they were used for was really cool.

Top: Sumerian cuneiform, consisting of wedge-shapes pressed into clay tablets.

Bottom: Caslon Old Style was used throughout much of the British Empire after 1720. Rob Carter, et al.

Process For my first project, I am designing a stationery set for a character or celebrity: my client is Spock, commander of the Starship Enterprise in The Original Series. The new role I’ve come up with for him is one of a business consultant, whose impeccable logic and empathy will make him perfect for advising others.

Above are two iterations of the logotype I’m developing for the stationery. Every letter in this font is based on a perfect circle, manipulated to match the letter in question. I’m finding that I’m having a lot of the same problems developing this font as the designers who struggled to create fonts in the early 1800s: is my font practical? Is it balanced?

Can I have both lower and uppercase letters?

Balance is tricky. At first, I designed the ‘S’ to be only semicircles, but visually it leaned too far to the left. Above, I have tested 3/4ths of a circle, and then 5/8ths. Which looks better to you?

Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock in the Star Trek episode “Spock’s Brain,” aired Sept. 20, 1968.

For each project, we’ll sketch, make a moodboard, then start our drafts. I determined the aesthetic I wanted here.

Letterform Anatomy I grew up with some familiarity with typography.

With a journalist as a mother, I was introduced pretty early to the idea of using different fonts to convey different ideas, as she helped me with school projects and art projects.

What I didn’t know until college was how deep the realm of typography is. Not only is the history rich, but the level of design consideration in every letter stunned me. I’d never considered that letters had named anatomy— but how else would past designers have discussed the contours of each one?

I also love the fact that most of the terminology we use for typography today (stroke, leading, lowercase) is the same terminology that used to refer to very concrete processes. The stroke of an R, naturally, became known as a stroke because it was made with the stroke of a pen!

Within this chart, every capital letter can be formed. The overlap of curves ensures uniformity and legibility. Rob Carter et al.

Anatomical diagrams 2.6, 2.7, and 2.9 from Typographic Design: Form and Communi-

cation, Rob Carter et al.

Process This stationery project marks the first time that I’m taking the history of typography into consideration. My first business card, for example, had all of the text in the small case Orator Std Slanted.

The effect was uniformity, but little to no visual hierarchy and decreased legibility.

In my second draft, I experimented with different fonts— I was looking for something light, sans serif, and more condensed than Orator. Although I wasn’t completely settled, the addition of a new font decreased in size definitely helped my business card. Reading the second chapter of Typographic Design: Form and Communication really got me thinking about the details of my letters and how I could manipulate them for the best effect.

I simplified the Vulcan symbol for “infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” first shown in Star Trek episode “Is There No Truth In Beauty?” aired Oct. 18, 1968.

A Note on Logotype Once I chose a font to compliment the geometric one I created for Spock’s logotype, I had to determine the positioning of his name, the byline, and my logo.

These are six “tryouts” I tested in Adobe Illustrator, including a repeated pattern in the background, twovariations of dimmed logo, the byline atop the logo, the byline centered over the ‘o’, and finally the logo upside down to make room for the byline below the name.

Testing these out allowed me to play with the spacing and the interactions of the letterforms without committing to a single design too early.

Final Product Here it is: my full stationery set for Star Trek’s own Mr. Spock. Although I’ve been manipulating digital images for a long time now, I’ve never done something like this. It’s so cool to see my stationery not only in the PDF, but in a mockup that makes it feel so tangible!

I based this design set off of Spock’s original character in the 1960s iteration of Star Trek. Though the actor who played Spock, Leonard Nimoy, passed away in 2015, he harbored a great love for the character. He was very gracious about fan appreciation, so I like to think he’d approve of this.

I chose the blue and gold as my primary colors not only because they’re the colors of Spock’s uniform, but also because they have ties to Judaism.

Nimoy brought a lot of his own Jewish culture into the show, and I wanted to honor that.

Similarly, the symbol I used for my logotype is a rendition of the Vulcan basis of philosophy: infinite diversity in infinite combinations. If Spock were to have his own business in our century, I knew he’d find it important to make sure those who were different from him knew they were welcome; just as Nimoy did in real life.

To book a consultation with Mr. Spock, please visit 415-555-2230 www.SpockIDIC.com 1701 N San Pedro Rd San Francisco, CA 94901 Earth, Sector 001 Alpha Quadrant

2.

Book Covers The Grid As I learned this week, the grid system has been part of typography and visual communication for a long time. The Sumerians and Egyptians used it; medieval monks used grids to calculate the most pleasing arrangement for calligraphy and images on their manuscripts.

Because it’s so ingrained in human communication, it can be hard to think of grids as creative— but as with fonts and imagery, they’re a crucial part of the design process.

The fourth chapter of Typographic Design: Form and Communication lays out innumerable ways grids can be altered for different effects, depending on the elements at play. A fanciful type may call for wider margins, while a page comparing lots of images might compress them for a unified effect.

Thoughtful grid design can enhance the meaning of a layout. The cross-shaped window in this grid forms the Swiss flag, which looks

Our finished projects will be submitted in both PDF form and as

out onto Swiss architecture. Rob Carter, et. al.

part of a Photoshop mockup.

Process This week, I’m working to redesign book covers for two classics: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and R.L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Since both were published in the UK around the 1800s, I’m taking inspiration from Victorian graphic design. However, I’ll have to do some tweaks and revisions before I take the designs any further.

When I initially drew up my book cover drafts, I had yet to write the text I’d be using. Pictured below is my first shot in the dark at reconciling my design with my text— I didn’t yet know if I’d made enough space for the text, or not enough.

As it turns out, having a grid to work within makes planning a lot easier. In my next draft, I split my blurb into two columns, making it easier to read and more pleasant to look at.

In my own designs, I borrowed color palattes, outlines, and diagonal typography from the Victorians. Click Americana.

I’m choosing not to put Frankenstein’s creature on my cover, for a fresh chance at design.

Both Frankenstein and Strange Case

of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde were published in the 1800s United Kingdom.

I found myself inspired most by Victorian graphic design on labels and medicine bottles. To evoke the age and genre of the books, I’m planning to create symbols of things like candles, brains or skulls. I like how busy a lot of these old advertisements are, but I don’t want to spend all my time filling in space.

Because of the fluid nature of a lot of Victorian type, I thought it would be easier to draw it by hand rather than fuss with the Adobe suites for my moodboard. The Victorians, had a lot of fun with their lettering as little of it goes just straight across. In order to creaate a cohesive book set, I’ll probably need to choose one style or the other-- it all depends on how the other elements I’m using fit together with the typography.

Visual Hierarchy We’ve all seen some badly designed items: books, web pages, unfortunate signage. But being in my first typography class has taught me why that is.

While I’ve had a sense of some design tenets, most feel new and have never been conscious in my design process. The images from the textbook below, blew my mind when it came to how to structure information in a legible way.

Font choice, size, spacing, color, and bolding are only a few ways to infinitely increase both legibility and interest in typography.

It seems obvious, but it’s one of those things young designers like me often can’t see until it’s right in front of them.

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A Real World Example My property manager has been needing a secretary for a while now, but in the meantime, she creates all her memos herself.

Her combination of all caps, bold, italics, and red type along with the lack of puncuation creates no visual hierarchy. Although she does change the font to black for “WILL NOT”, the rest of it is so emphasized that it doesn’t really help.

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The textbook shows increasing visual heirarchy by adding color, font variation, size, and bolding. Rob Carter et. al.

Process One of the things that’s been hardest so far about designing these book covers is figuring out how to establish a good visual hierarchy. Some of it comes naturally; the title should be biggest, where the author’s name and subtitle are less important.

But a lot of it feels much less obvious. I’m plan-

ning to put endorsements for my books above and below the blurb on the back— but what will I have to do to establish a visual hierarchy? What decisions do I make? Probably, I’ll end up revising the font and the fontsize, rather than the color, but it needs more testing before I try to print.

By now, I’ve changed the shape on the background to be more conducive to displaying typography. It also just looks less weird.

Final Product If I thought the last project was a challenge, this definitely was. Designing a set of products that have to be discrete yet harmonious was a lot of work! Here, the primary tie is the color palatte and art style, though I’m not sure how many more covers I could make using these colors.

I love how they look in the mockup. Still, I’m not totally satisfied.Many of the Victorian designs I drew inspiration from were very busy; they had intricate patterns in their backgrounds that filled the space.

Because this semester has been so hard on me,

I did not have the time to create the patterns I wanted in Illustrator and arrange them. While I like how clean the covers look, they aren’t qute what I envisioned and I don’t think they’re really done.

The thing that threw me off the most was the tilted title. Obviously, “Frankenstein” takes up considerably less room that “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,” so I had to tailor both the title text and the black title bar to each cover. Once I figured out they didn’t have to be totally uniform, things started flowing a lot better.

To the right are some test tubes I started right before the end of the project. I’d intended to shrink, duplicate, arrange and cut the opacity of these vials to go in the background of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Since I now have the Adobe Suite programs on my computer, I’ll likely update the covers on my own time.

Though I haven’t yet come up with a pattern for the background of Frankenstein, my primary considerations have been to use brains.

3.

Typographic Posters

As the digital pointsize is lowered, letter-

Digitized Type How does typography translate to the screen? Apparently, it’s not as simple as our word processors have made it seem. Chapter eight of Typographic Design: Form and Communication dives into all the nuances and challenges of arranging digital typography.

Unlike print, where the point size and spacing are all static, type online must remain dynamic to accommodate for different browsers, screen sizes, and resolutions. Nowadays, many people browse the web on their phones as well— requiring designers to think a lot harder about the ways their layouts can be manipulated to retain legibility.

Although it makes sense that web design would be different from print, I’d never considered the true depth of the adjustments that must be made in order to achieve the same result.

forms must sacrifice their complexity. Rob Carter et al.

These a’s, typed in pointsize 72 to 8, have been antialiased automatically by Microsoft Paint The program tries to retain their details by taking both the text color and the background color into consideration to soften the edges.

Process For our third project, we are each designing two typographic posters; one informational and one conceptual. Below, you can see the Google Document I made in testing out a few choice typefaces. Which did I want to experiment with?

I typed all the typeface names in the same point size to test for legibility. Impact was too, well, compact, and Garamond’s dazzle would make it difficult to read in small body type.

I ended up choosing Bodoni, because I thought it would be conducive to creating designs with the letterforms for my conceptual poster. Luckily, I had a chance to test it out.

The 2 hour poster (see next page) is an intermediate project we had as a way to prime us for our typographic posters. We were given blocks of information and asked to arrange them within a visual hierarchy using only our font, no decorative elements. It definitely gave me some practice with determining my poster layouts.

The Blackboard mobile site is set up exactly the same as the desktop site, resulting in considerable overlap of information.

The Mac Is Not a T

“Many of the concepts presented are subtle, yes—but they add up to a profe One space between sentences Use only one space after periods, colons, exclamation points, question marks, quotation marks—any punctuation that separates two sentences.

Leading, or linespace Typically, a standard unit of measure for the leading between the lines is 20 percent of the point size: for example, 10 point type will have 12 points of leading.

This has too much Spacing This has better Line Spacing

Paragraph spacing Adjust the space between paragraphs. Never hit two Returns between paragraphs. Paragraph indents are not five spaces, they are one em. Don’t indent the first paragraph.

Use extra paragraph space or an indent, but not both.

Widows and orphans Never leave widows and orphans bereft on the page. When a paragraph ends and leaves fewer than seven characters (not words, characters) on the last line, the last line is called a widow.

When the last line of a paragraph, be it ever so long, won’t fit at the bottom of a column and must end itself at the top of the next column, that is an orphan.

Avoid both of these situations.

Em dash –

Keyboard Shift Option

The em dash is twice a it’s about the size of a c whatever size and type moment. This dash is o colon or parentheses, abrupt change in thoug where a period is too s too weak.

Kerning

Adjust the space betwe your sensitive visual pe the process of removin between letters to crea letter spacing.

WASHINGTON unke

WASHINGTON kerne

In two hours, I decided the best way to give hierarchy to my information was to use the negative space for emphasis.

Typewriter

by Robin Williams

essional look.”

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En dash – Keyboard Option Hyphen An en dash is called an en dash because it’s approximately the width of a capital letter N in that particular font and size. It is used between words that indicate a duration, such as time or months or years.

Apostrophes Use real apostrophes, not prime marks or dumb quotes: ’ not `or ‘.

Dashes

Quotation and prime marks

Never use two hyphens instead of a dash.

Use hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes appropriately.

Use real quotation marks—never those grotesque generic marks that actually symbolize ditto marks: use “ and ” — not “ and “ when quoting text. Use prime marks to state measurements such as “Bridge Clearance: 16’ 7’’.”

Hyphen A hyphen is strictly for hyphenating words or line breaks. We all know where to find it—on the upper right of the keyboard, next to the equal sign.

Hanging the punctuation Hang punctuation off the aligned edge to eliminate any visual interruption of the text.

“When I get a little money, I buy books.

If there is any leftover, I buy food and clothes.”

Active Type Briefly, in high school, I considered going into illustration or animation. I’d just found a sort of art style, and I was ready to go—or so I thought. I gave up pretty quickly, after figuring out how much work I’d have to do to draw anybody from any angle.

But now, I’m realizing that illustration doesn’t necessarily mean animating people; I could be animating text. Chapter nine of Typographic Design: Form and Communication made me realize I could learn how to introduce text onto a page or screen with movement.

Wouldn’t it be cool to make typography gifs where the type does move, instead of just implying that movement?

So far, I’ve been focusing on static design, which has been more than enough, but it’s definitely something to think about. How might my design process change if my designs were intended to shift over time?

This motion sequence emphasizes the names of the artists involved by “flying” them closer to the viewer. Rob Carter et al.

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As a reminder, I am designing two posters advertising a typeface: one conceptual, the other informational. Here are four drafts of my conceptual poster on Bodoni.

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I ended up settling on the bottom left draft to finish, after determining that the one on the bottom right was too busy. However, now I’m glad I kept it. It’s so interesting to think about how static typography can become animated with just a little extra thought.

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After reading chapter nine, I realized how easy it would be to animate this poster: starting from black, fade the background letters out, slide in “BODONI” from the left.

Giphy.com is my go-to for gif making, when I have the option. I’d need to go back and take more in-between shots of my poster, though.

Making my moodboard confirmed that I made the right choice in font.

Bodoni creates a lot of lovely shapes when the letters have been abstracted, as I found when searching for other typography posters.

However, crafting

Bodoni Bodoni ABCDEFGHIJKLMN OPQRST UVWKYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 12345678910!@#$%^&* ()_+=-\|[ ]} {‘”;:/?.>,< ABCDEFGHIJKLMN OPQRST UVWKYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 12345678910!@#$%^&* ()_+=-\|[ ]} {‘”;:/?.>,< Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, also known as Alice in Wonderland for short, is a fictional story published in 1865 by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The book presents the adventures of a little girl who has fallen down a rabbit hole to a fantasy world.

the conceptual poster has been much easier than the informational one. Despite the two hour poster, arranging a lot of information still isn’t intuitive. I’ve been using my first poster to help with the second.

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I was especially inspired by the poster in the lower righthand corner of my moodboard.

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What I like about it is how it uses the shapes of Bodoni On the right is a draft I started, trying to see if this direction was a viable one to follow.

While I liked where it was going, my critique group and I agreed that it did not match my informational poster as well as my abstract drafts.

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to build an image.

Graphic Identity Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s one thing to design one poster or magazine spread, but creating a whole collection of work is way more complicated.

Successful design projects are held together by a strong sense of graphic identity, according to chapter 10 of Typographic Design: Form and Communication. This chapterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s case studies explore how the best designs balance consistent typefaces, visual hierarchy, and color palettes with enough variance to retain interest.

While good designs should not be boring, repeatability is the name of the game; if it cannot be easily modified and still maintain a set identity, it probably needs some more work. Utilizing a set grid structure is key, too. Without it, placing elements becomes a game of guesswork.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had a little practice with this already: Our book covers had to match as part of a series, and the same is true for our posters. But seeing real, successful examples of set graphic identity really made the idea click. I understand better now how to do it, not just that I have to.

All US National Parks Service pamphlets follow the same Unigrid structure, resulting in excellent graphic identity. Rob Carter et al.

Process Below is the first draft of my informational poster.

I wasn’t happy with how it came out, and a lot of the reason is because it lacks graphic identity.

Take the way the text interacts with the 5, for example. While the list of fonts in the Bodoni family hugs the side of it at a tilt, the body type is stamped right on top.

Meanwhile, the title overlaps and the character examples miss it completely.

While I thought I was primarily struggling with breaking up space, I was also having a really hard time figuring out how to make my poster consistent. But this is still useful! Once I develop its identity, it’ll flow.

In 1798,

The Bodoni typeface

is known for its high contrast between thick and thin stroke widths. Critics have sometimes attacked this contrast for the dazzling effect it can cause readers to see, especially when used in small point sizes (Carter et al., 304). However, more often the dazzle adds to the classic feel of the typeface that designers know and love.

Bodoni’s font family

is large, and its iterations and spinoffs are nearly countless. The most famous is likely Bauer Bodoni, created by Heinrich Jost in 1926. However, the original revitalization of Bodoni came in 1909, when Morris Fuller with the American Type Founders released a new variant of the typeface. Over the next seventeen years, the company designed italic, bold, shaded and combinations of different versions to add to the Bodoni family (“Bodoni”). Other variants, such as Bodoni Poster regular, italic, and compressed, were created for specific purposes. In 1999, for example, all promotions for Mamma Mia! used Bodoni’s poster font (“Posters”). The variance of the typeface and creativity of new designers has allowed it to adapt to new eras, while holding onto its original Modern charm.

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engraver and publisher Giambattista Bodoni released his namesake typeface. Preceded by typefaces like Caslon and heavily inspired

by Baskerville, Bodoni is considered a Modern font, although it contains elements of Old Style letters as well (“Bodoni”). Especially in its initial years, Bodoni was associated with class and elegance, in large part due to high quality materials and craftsmanship required for printing. Alexander Lawson notes in Anatomy of a Typeface that “it took upward of four hours to engrave a steel punch” for Bodoni, and each character had to be carved by hand. This initially monumental task grew exponentially during Mr. Bodoni’s lifetime, since he was known for his tendency to revise his fonts over and over, sometimes tailoring them to a specific project or title page. One inventory count listed over 25,000 individual punches from Mr. Bodoni’s original collection (Lawson, 202).

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ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO PQRSTUVWXYZ ab cdefghijklmnopqrst uvwxyz1234567 8910!@#$% ^&*()-_+= \|[ ]}{‘” ;:/?.> ,<

Bodoni Regular Bodoni Italic Bodoni Bold Bodoni Bold Italic Bodoni Condensed Bodoni Condensed Italic Bodoni Condensed Bold Bodoni Condensed Bold Italic Bodoni Black Bodoni Black Italic Bodoni Poster Compressed

In 1798,

engraver and publisher Giambattista Bodoni released his namesake typeface. Preceded by typefaces like Caslon and heavily inspired by Baskerville, Bodoni is considered a Modern font, although it contains elements of Old Style letters as well (“Bodoni”).

Especially in its initial years, Bodoni was associated with class and elegance, in part due to high quality materials and craftsmanship required for printing. Alexander Lawson notes in Anatomy of a Typeface that “it took upward of four hours to engrave a steel punch” for Bodoni, and each character had to be carved by hand.

This initially monumental task grew exponentially during Mr. Bodoni’s lifetime, since he was known for his tendency to revise his fonts over and over, sometimes tailoring them to a specific project or title page. One inventory count listed over 25,000 individual punches from Mr. Bodoni’s own collection (Lawson, 202). aaa as aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaa

The Bodoni typeface

is known for its high contrast between thick and thin stroke widths. Critics have sometimes attacked this contrast for the dazzling effect it can cause readers to see, especially when used in small point sizes (Carter et al., 304). However, more often the dazzle adds to the classic feel of the typeface that designers know and love.

Bodoni’s font family

is large, and its iterations and spinoffs are nearly countless. The most well-known is likely Bauer Bodoni, created by Heinrich Jost in 1926.

However, the original revitalization of Bodoni came in 1909, when a Morris Fuller with the American Type Founders released a new variant of the typeface. Over the next seventeen years, the company designed italic, bold, shaded and combinations of theseversions to add to the font family (“Bodoni”).

Other variants, such as Bodoni Poster regular, italic, and compressed, were created for on commission. In 1999, for example, all the promotions for Mamma Mia! used the Bodoni poster font (“Posters”). The variance of the typeface and new creativity of designers makes it to adapt Bodoni to new eras, without giving up its old Modern charm.

Works Cited

“Bodoni: Typeface Story.” Fonts.com, https://www.fonts. com/font/linotype/bodoni/story. Accessed 5 Mar. 2020.

Carter, Rob, et al. Typographic Design: Form and Comm nication. 6th ed., Wiley, 2015.

Lawson, Alexander. Anatomy of a Typeface. David R. G dine, Publisher, 1990.

“Posters, Signposting & Calendars.” Linotype.com, https:/ www.linotype.com/1508/posters-signposting-calendars html. Accessed 5 Mar. 2020.

Informational poster: breaking up the page with 2’s allowed for interest and visual hierarchy better than my first draft, which used only one orange 5.

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Experimental poster: many of the designs I sought out for inspiration played on the similarities and differences of certain letterforms.

Bodoni is a great font for that because of its think and thick strokes.

Header: Gill Sans MT Bold 60pt Subheader: Gill Sans MT Italic 24pt Body: Roboto Medium 12pt Caption: Roboto Medium 9pt