BEN STIVERS gRaPhic desigN
An exploration of the History, the usage, and the terminology of typography in the graphic arts.
di
s e gN
portføliø
twenty WINTER
seventeen
BEN STIVERS gRaPhic desigN
2
portfolio
Ben Stivers
Typography has taught me lots about about graphic design..
to trust the white space.. to be creative with type.. to create visual appeal in anything I make...
This portfolio displays the work from the Winter of 2017.
Table of
CONTENTS
4
portfolio
Ben Stivers
Logo and Intro
2
Fonts Used
6
Typographical Terms
8
Character STudies
12
Museum logos
24
ubiquitous type
26
Sketchbook
28
Poster Design
32
pop!
34
FONTS
USED
6
portfolio
Ben Stivers
Helvetica Baskerville Blackoak Aleo Didot Latin Modern 1938 Stempel Zeroes Electricity Some Weatz Swashes Darleston non Solus Hoefler Decorated Snell Old London Optima A Bite Nueu
Typographic terms
8
portfolio
Ben Stivers
Kernin g
The adjustment of space between characters.
Decor
typefaces are used exclusively for decorative purposes, and are not suitable for body text. They have the most distinctive designs of all fonts, and may even incorporate pictures of objects, animals, etc. into the character designs.
æ A ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined as a single glyph. An example is the character æ as used in English, in which the letters a and e are joined.
Geometric Geometric sans-serif typefaces are based on geometric shapes. Note the optically circular letter "O" and the simple, single-story construction of the lowercase letter "a".
B
Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century.[1] It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century.
Serif
Egyptian
Egyptian is a typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs.
Stress
Distressed font is a font that appears to have been physically damaged. A distressed font can give a grunge-like effect to a design.
Hairline
And a hair line rule is: “The thinnest rule that can be printed, generally considered to be less than one point or 1/72" wide.
Dingbat is a typographical device other than a letter or numeral.
A serif is a small line attached to the end of a stroke in a letter or symbol. A typeface with serifs is called a serif typeface.
Ben Stivers
portfolio
10
Illustrated
Calligraphy
Calligraphy typefaces mimic the art of decorative handwriting or lettering with a pen or brush.
D
GROTESQUE
Script typefaces are based upon the varied and often fluid stroke created by handwriting. They are organized into highly regular formal types.
Cursive
Didone is a typeface classification characterized by slab-like serifs without brackets; vertical orientation of weight axes, andstrong contrast between thick and thin lines.
Didone
Typographical Terms
S A swash is a typographical flourish, such as an exaggerated serif, terminal, tail, or entry stroke.
Slab Serif A slab serif typeface is characterized by thick, block-like serifs.
Oblique
Oblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used in the same manner as italic type. Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except distorted.
Display typography is a potent element in graphic design, where there is less concern for readability and more potential for using type in an artistic manner. A display typeface is designed for the use of type at large sizes, perhaps 30 points or large
Grotesque Is frequently used as a synonym with sans serif. At other times, it is used to describe a particular style or subset of sans-serif typefaces. The first sans-serif typeface called grotesque was also the first sans-serif typeface containing actual lowercase letters.
Character Studies
12
portfolio
Ben Stivers
Q Character Studies
Q
Quintessential Quibble
The Semitic sound value of Qôp was “q” (voiceless uvular stop), and the form of the letter could have been based on the eye of a needle, a knot, or even a monkey with its tail hanging down. “Q” is a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in many European languages. Some have even suggested that the form of the letter Q is even more ancient: it could have originated from Egyptian hieroglyphics.
In Greek, qoppa probably came to represent several labialized velar stops, among them the K. As a result of later sound shifts, these sounds in Greek changed to p and q respectively. Therefore, qoppa was transformed into two letters: qoppa, which stood for the number 90, and phi (Φ), which stood for the aspirated sound “q” that came to be pronounced in Modern Greek.The Etruscans used Q in conjunction with V to represent k, and this usage was copied by the Romans with the rest of their alphabet.
14
portfolio
Ben Stivers
Q
Qq LATIN MODERN The Latin Modern fonts are derived from the famous Computer Modern fonts designed by Donald E. Knuth and described in Volume E of his Computers & Typesetting series. An extended Type 1 (PostScript) form implementation of the Computer Modern fonts resulting from the work of numerous people was derived from high resolution METAFONT-generated bitmaps and published in 1997 for general use under the name of AMSFonts by a consortium of scientific publishers which included the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The AMS since then holds the copyrights for AMSFonts in order to assure their authenticity. More details can be found in the relevant section at the AMS web site. One of the main extensions characterizing the Latin Modern collection is the addition of an extensive set of diacritical characters, covering many scripts based on the Latin character set, mainly European, but not only, most notably Vietnamese. The project is authored by Bogusław “Jacko” Jackowski and Janusz M. Nowacki aka “Ulan”, supported in LaTeX matters by Marcin Woliński. The method and scope of the LM project, more fully described in the available publications and presentations, has become to be known as “LM-ization”. This method was also applied to the font families distributed with the Ghostscript program to produce the TeX Gyre fonts.
Character Studies
J
THE
HISTORY OF THE LETTER The letters I and J follow each other in the alphabet and look a lot alike. So it comes as no surprise to discover that our ninth and tenth letters started out as the same character. Eventually, somebody must have grown tired of using one letter to represent two sounds, and so an attempt was made to differentiate them by lengthening the I slightly to represent the semivowel. In the 16th century, a lettering artist decided that merely lengthening the letter was too subtle a change, and added a hook to the bottom of the J. Both the lowercase I and J have a dot, but there are two competing theories as to which got its dot first. One theory maintains that the J was first, with the dot added during the 13th century in an attempt to further distinguish J from I. The other theory posits that the I was dotted first (also during the 13th century), and that the dot’s purpose was to help distinguish the I from straight-sided characters like the M, N and U when it appeared near these letters in blocks of text copy.
16
portfolio
Ben Stivers
P
J
Phoenician
Greek
Didot is a group of
typefaces named after the famous French printing and type producing Didot family. The classification is known as modern, or Didone. Didot’s type in the Code civil des Français, printed by the company of Firmin Didot in 1804. The most famous Didot typefaces were developed in the period 1784–1811. Firmin Didot (1764–1836) cut the letters, and cast them as type in Paris. His brother, Pierre Didot (1760–1853) used the types in printing. His edition of La Henriade by Voltaire in 1818 is considered his masterwork.
Sumerian
& Character Studies
&
And per se and
Traditionally, when reciting the alphabet in Englishspeaking schools, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself –A, I, and, at one point, O was repeated with the Latin expression per se. This habit was useful in spelling where a word or syllable was repeated after spelling. It was also common practice to add the “&” sign at the end of the alphabet as if it were the 27th letter, pronounced as the Latin et or later in English as and. As a result, the recitation of the alphabet would end in X, Y, Z, and per se and. This last phrase was routinely slurred to ampersand and the term had entered common English usage by 1837.
ALEO
&
This is where we...
ampersand
[ ] Limited Space. &
In a Logo.
Character Studies
BLACKOAK Blackoak is an Adobe Originals typeface designed as a big, heavy Egyptienne-sytle slab-serif titling face by Joy Redick in 1990 for the Adobe Wood Type series. Blackoak is based on Antique Extended first shown as wood type by Edwin Allen in George Nesbitt’s 1838 First Premium Wood Types Cut by Machinery. While most wood type designs originated as foundry type, Nicolette Gray, in Nineteenth Century Ornamented Typefaces, stated her belief that this design originated as American wood type. One envisions this type used for the large, decorative posters that once filled the “Wild West” of America. Types from the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection and the wood type collection of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC acted as primary sources of inspiration for this design.
O
True to its roots, Blackoak is meant for use exclusively in headlines at very large point sizes.
20
portfolio
o
Ben Stivers
A
a A
k K
SLAB SERIF
In typography, a slab serif (also called mechanistic, square serif, antique or Egyptian) typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular (Rockwell), or rounded (Courier). Slab serifs were invented in and most popular during the nineteenth century.
Report The letter O Created by Ben Stivers
Character Studies
M
M
Ailerons Ailerons was inspired by aircraft models from the 40s. The typeface was designed for an experimental project of airmodels and now is available for personal use. It’s a shame that the biography and history can not be found for such a fantastic typeface. I’ll analyze the typeface, myself, and give you what I think is unique about this particular font. In the 1940s,The War drove technology, and industry was booming. No one in the 1940s may have been able to predict that in the span of ten years man would fly to the moon, but with this font, you can see a generation that was excited for innovation, and something unique. To me, the font
22
displays characteristics of what we earthlings think aliens might be like. The font gives off a strong sense that something other than humans may have influenced its creation. I set the type against a space-like “atmosphere” in hopes of illustrating my vision with you, the viewer. I think if we were to write a letter to alines we would definitely use Ailerons. Use of such a font could quite possibly give us an edge when dealing with alien life form. If we are to protect earth from the spilllage of radioactive contamination than we must befriend the alien collonies from far away. There is indefinitely no other choice to be made in a situation like the one
portfolio
Ben Stivers
M
HISTORY OF
THE LETTER Historians tell us that our current M started out as the Egyptian hieroglyph for “owl.” Over thousands of years, this simple line drawing was further distilled into the hieratic symbol for the ‘em’ sound. Eventually, the greatgrandparent of our M looked a bit like a handwritten ‘m’ balanced on the tip of one stroke.
Top Phoenician Middle Early Greek Bottom Roman
Museum
Logo
24
portfolio
Ben Stivers
MUSEUM OF MODERN TYPOGRAPHY
The presence of typography both good and bad, can be seen everywhere.
26
Ubiquitous Type
portfolio 33
Ben Stivers
“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence.” Typography makes at least two kinds of sense, if it makes any sense at all. It makes visual sense and historical sense. The visual side of typography is always on display, and materials for the study of its visual form are many and widespread. The history of letter-forms and their usage is visible too, to those with access to manuscripts, inscriptions and old books, but from others it is largely hidden. This book has therefore grown into some-thing more than a short manual of typo-graphic etiquette. It is the fruit of a lot of long walks in the wilderness of letters: in part a pocket field guide to the living wonders that are found there, and in part a meditation on the ecological principles, survival techniques, and ethics that apply. The principles of typography as I understand them are not a set of dead conventions but the tribal customs of the magic forest, where ancient voices speak from all directions and new ones move to unremembered forms. One question, nevertheless, has been often in my mind. When all right-thinking human beings are struggling to remember that other men and women are free to be different, and free to become more different still, how can one honestly write a rulebook? What reason and authority exist for these commandments, suggestions, and instructions? Surely typographers, like others, ought to be at liberty to follow or to blaze the trails they choose. Typography thrives as a shared concern - and there are no paths at all where there are no shared desires and directions. A typographer determined to forge new routes must move, like other solitary travellers, through uninhabited country and against the grain of the land, crossing common thoroughfares in the silence before dawn. The subject of this book is not typographic solitude, but the old, well- travelled roads at the core of the tradition: paths that each of us is free to follow or not, and to enter and leave when we choose - if only we know the paths are there and have a sense of where they lead.That freedom is denied us if the tradition is concealed or left for dead. Originality is everywhere, but much originality is blocked if the way back to earlier discoveries is cut or overgrown. If you use this book as a guide, by all means leave the road when you wish. That is pre- cisely the use of a road: to reach individu- ally chosen points of departure. By all means
break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately, and well. Letterforms change constantly, yet differ very little, because they are alive. The principles of typographic clarity have also scarcely altered since the second half of the fifteenth century, when the first books were printed in roman type. Indeed, most of the principles of legibility and design explored in this book were known and used by Egyptian scribes writing hieratic script with reed pens on papyrus in 1000 B.C. Samples of their work sit now in museums in Cairo, London and New York, still lively, subtle, and perfectly legible thirty centuries after they were made. Writing systems vary, but a good page is not hard to learn to recognize, whether it comes from Tang Dynasty China, The Egyptian New Kingdom typographers set for themselves than with the mutable or Renaissance Italy. The principles that unite these distant schools of design are based on the structure and scale of the human body - the eye, the hand, and the forearm in particular - and on the invisible but no less real, no less demanding, no less sensuous anatomy of the human mind. I don’t like to call these principles universals, because they are largely unique to our species. Dogs and ants, for example, read and write by more chemical means. But the underlying principles of typography are, at any rate, stable enough to weather any number of human fashions and fads. Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its heartwood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage of dancers. It is true that typographer’s tools are presently changing with considerable force and speed, but this is not a manual in the use of any particular typesetting system or medium. I suppose that most readers of this book will set most of their type in digital form, using computers, but I have no preconceptions about which brands of computers, or which versions of which proprietary software, they may use. The essential elements of style have more to do with the goals the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source of true delight, true knowledge, true surprise.
photos Ben Stivers
34
Ubiquitous Type
SKETCHES
28
portfolio
Ben Stivers
30
portfolio
Ben Stivers
Poster
Design
32
portfolio
Ben Stivers
MUSEUM OF MODERN TYPOGRAPHY
present the work of
MMiedinger AX THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY JUNE 21 – SEPTEMBER 18, 2017
MUSEUM OF MODERN TYPOGRAPHY The Museum Of Modern Typography 221 South Grande Avenue Los Angeles 90022 museumofmoderntypography.com
pop!
34
portfolio
Ben Stivers
h
n s
o
e : o
e
u
j
c
t i s s u e
l a r
r y
s
s r
j
r
r i v
o l
h e
e
p a
e v o l u
a r h
n
i s e
w
p r o
p
a l
a s
u
y
s
s
j
s
d
a n
r
i y
i v
d
p
e n e v
h
f
e
i
a
o
s
t s k n
n
i b a y
r e
! p
pop! v i s u a l
p r o j e c t
i s s u e
v o l u m e
o n e
s e v e n
in this issue: a n d y j
a
s
p
e
r b
s
h
e l
36
w a r h o l j
o
h
n
s
a
n
k
s
y
p
a
r
d
f
a
i
r
e
y
a
r
r
y
r
i
v
e
r
s
portfolio
Ben Stivers
v o l u m es e
shepard fair ey rhol wa ba dy nk an roject al p isu
v
sy n ve
pop! p p
issu e:
in this
larry rive rs johns per jas
e one issu
t v i s u a l u ep r oo nj ee c i s s v o l u m e s e v e n
in this issue: andy warhol shepard fairey banksy jasper johns larry rivers
38
portfolio
Ben Stivers
visual project issue one volume seven
in this issue: andy warhol shepard fairey banksy jasper johns larry rivers
THE
END!
40
portfolio
Ben Stivers