f ben Guzman An exploration of the history, usage, and terminology of type as used in the graphic arts.
Spring 2015
Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising
N
o other design discipline requires so much learning and training as fontography, and by no other aspect can amateurs be so easily distinguished from professionals. To be font literate, a designer has to study the history and the principles of font design.
~ Dmitry Kirsanov
Ben Guzman Graphic Design Winter 2015
Introduction I’m a 19 year old graphic design student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. Growing up, I always was intrigued by drawing, posters, and album artwork. Upon taking a computer graphics class my senior year of highschool, I was instantly in love. As for my future, I’m still discovering more and more about my craft and I feel I could go any which direction. Although right now, my main interest is publication design for magazines. Further on, this portfolio showcases my best work this quarter. I’ve utilized the elements of design and typography I learned, to illustrate my personality and style.
Table of Contents 6 10 16 18 20 22 28 30 Typographic Terms 36 Logo Design Letter Studies Poster Design Identity Ubiquitous Type Sketchbook Newsletter Pop Project
Logo Design
Letter S
StudIes
Character Studies | The Letter 1
No one knows why ‘A’ is the first letter of our alphabet. Some think it’s because this letter represents one of the most common vowel sounds in ancient languages of the western hemisphere. Other sources argue against this theory because there were no vowel sounds in the Phoenician language. (The Phoenician alphabet is generally thought to be the basis of the one we use today.) No one also knows why the ‘A’ looks the way it does, but we can construct a fairly logical chain of events. Some say the Phoenicians chose the head of an ox to represent the ‘A’ sound (for the Phoenicians, this was actually a glottal stop). The ox was a common, important animal to the Phoenicians. It was their main power source for heavy work. Oxen plowed the fields, harvested crops, and hauled food to market. Some sources also claim that the ox was often the main course at meals. A symbol for the ox would have been an important communication tool for the Phoenicians. It somewhat naturally follows that an ox symbol would be the first letter of the alphabet. The Phoenicians first drew the ox head ‘A’ as a ‘V’ with a crossbar to distinguish the horns from the face. They called this letter “alef,” the Phoenician word for ox. Through centuries of writing (most of it quickly, with little care for maintaining detail) the alef evolved into a form that looked very different from the original ox head symbol. The Romans received the Greek alphabet by way of the Etruscan traders of what is now northern Italy. While the Romans kept the design, they again changed the name of the first letter–this time to “ah.” The sound “ay,” our name for the ‘A,’ was not common to the Latin language. The Roman capital letters have endured as the standard of proportion and dignity for almost 2,000 years. They’re also the basis of many of the lowercase designs. ‘A’ is the first letter. There are 25 more stories.
About the Font ITC Bauhaus was designed by Ed Benguiat and Victor Caruso in 1975. Inheriting the simple geometric shapes and monotone stroke weights of Herbert Bayer’s universal, it includes separate upper and lower case characters. 5 weights of roman fonts were made for this family. Unlike the earlier ITC Ronda, it includes open end stroke at places where counters would be created. Bauhaus Heavy was originally intended to be a display-only design and was accompanied by Bauhaus Outline. With the advent of digital technology, the Outline version was dropped from the family, while the Bauhaus Heavy was made part of the now text/display offering.
Character Studies | The Letter G
Generally speaking, there are no launch dates for the letters of our alphabet. For the most part they’ve come down to us through an evolutionary process, with shapes that developed slowly over a long period of time. The G, however, is an exception. In fact, our letter G made its official debut in 312 B.C. Of course, the story begins a bit earlier than that. The Phoenicians, and the other Semitic peoples of Syria, used a simple graphic form that looked roughly like an upside-down V to represent the consonant ‘g’ sound (as in “go”). They named the form gimel, which was the Phoenician word for camel. Some contend this was because the upside-down V looked like the hump of a camel. The Greeks borrowed the basic Phoenician form and changed its name to gamma. They also made some dramatic changes to the letter’s appearance. At various times in ancient Greek history, the gamma looked like a one-sided arrow pointing up, an upside-down L, or a crescent moon. Throughout this time, however, the gamma always represented the same hard ‘g’ sound that it did for the Phoenicians. The Greek form was adopted by the Etruscans and then by the Romans, where for many years it represented both the hard ‘k’ and ‘g’ sounds. This brings us to 312 B.C., when our modern G was formally introduced into the reformed Latin alphabet. The G was created to eliminate the confusion caused by one letter representing two sounds. The basic shape, which now looked like our C, was used to represent the palatalized sounds ‘s’ and ‘c,’ and a little bar was added to create the letter G, which denoted the guttural stop ‘g.’ The G took its position as the seventh letter of our alphabet, replacing the letter Z, which was considered superfluous for the writing of Latin. The ousted Z took its place at the end of the line.
About the Font
The Bodoni™ font is a wellknown serif typeface series that has had a long history of interpretations by many design houses. The various font styles begin with Bodoni’s original Didone modern font in the late 1700s through to ATF’s American Revival in the early 1900s and into the digital age. The original design had a bold look with contrasting strokes and an upper case that was a bit more condensed then its stylish influence Baskerville®. The unbracketed serifs and even geometric styling has made this a popular font seen in almost every kind of typesetting situation, but particularly well suited for title fonts and logos.
Character Studies | The Letter M
H
istorians 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 great-grandparent of our M looked a bit like a handwritten ‘m’ balanced on the tip of one stroke. The Phoenicians called the letter mem. It’s easy to see that the Phoenician mem is based on the Egyptian hieratic symbol, and that it’s the forerunner of the thirteenth letter of our alphabet. The mem looked much like our two-bumped lowercase ‘m’ with an added tail at the end. The Greek mu evolved from the Phoenician mem. The Greeks further simplified the letter and, in the process, converted the soft, round shapes into angular strokes. The Etruscans and then the Romans adopted the Greek form, but neither made substantial changes to the shape or proportions of the character. Sometime in the third or fourth century A.D. the rounded lowercase ‘m’ began to appear, but it was almost lost in later centuries. In medieval writing, it became common practice to place a stroke over the preceding letter instead of writing the ‘m’ (probably because ‘m’ is one of the more time-consuming letters to write). The Romans also pressed the M and six other letters – I, X, V, L, C, and D – into double-duty as their numerals, and gave M the honor of standing in for the highest value, 1,000. —Allan Haley
About the Font
Steve Jackaman. Based on the design ‘Phosphor’ by J. Erbar, for Ludwig & Mayer, circa 1922-30. The newly redrawn Phosphate Pro contains all the high-end features expected in a quality OpenType Pro font.
Character Studies | The Letter Z
What letter is used most rarely in English? Poor lonely z finishes up the alphabet at number 26. The final letter, z’s history includes a time when it was so infrequently used that it was removed altogether. The Greek zeta is the origin of the humble z. The Phoenician glyph zayin, meaning “weapon,” had a long vertical line capped at both ends with shorter horizontal lines and looked very much like a modern capital I. By the time it evolved into the Greek zeta the top and bottom lines had become elongated and the vertical line slanted, connecting to the horizontal lines at the top right and the bottom left. Around 300 BC, the Roman Censor Appius Claudius Caecus removed z from the alphabet. His justification was that z had become archaic: the pronunciation of /z/ had become /r/ by a process called rhotacism, rendering the letter z useless. At the same time that z was removed, g was added, but that’s another story. Two hundred years later, z was reintroduced to the Latin alphabet but used only in words taken from Greek. Because of its absence and reintroduction, zeta is one of the only two letters to enter the Latin alphabet directly from Greek and not Etruscan. Z was not always the final letter of the modern English alphabet, although it has always been in the 26th position. For years the & symbol (now known as the ampersand) was the final, pronounced “and” but recited with the Latin “per se,” meaning “by itself.” The position and pronunciation eventually ran together, with “X,Y, Z, and per se and” becoming “X,Y, Z, ampersand.” Z is the most rarely used letter in the alphabet; however, American English uses it more often than British English. Early English did not have a z but used s for both voiced and unvoiced sibilants. Words in English that originated as loan words from French and Latin are more likely to be spelled with a z than an s. Also, American standardization modified /z/ suffixes to more accurately reflect their pronunciation, changing –ise and –isation to –ize and –ization.
About the Font
is an ultra bold slab typeface with nods to wood type styles like Clarendon and Egyptian. Strong and dramatic letterforms for titling, a serious, yet friendly, and easily legible typestyle. Perfect for power headlines and titling for impact.
History of the Slab Serif The impact of technology on printing, paper manufacturing, and mechanical typesetting created a demand for a new style in type design that was compatible with mass-production. The advent of print journalism and advertising demanded types that were not only readable, but bold and distinctive enough to catch the reader’s attention. This was the era of Slab Serif, or Egyptian typefaces.
Poster Design
Explorations of Typography with
Max Miedinger Max Miedinger was born in Z端rich in 1910, and became the in-house designer at the Haas Foundry in Switzerland. He was commissioned to produce a more modern version of the typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk, a typeface that the Swiss typographers favoured. As a result in 1956 Miedinger designed Helvetica, which has become the most widely used sans serif typeface of the 20th century.
June 20, 2015 8pm 5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Identity
Ubiquitous Type
A Report on Public Typography By Milton Glaser
T
ypography makes at least two kinds of sense, if it exist for these commandments, suggestions, and instrucmakes any sense at all. It makes visual sense and tions? Surely typographers, like others, ought to be at liberty historical sense. The visual side of typography is always to follow or to blaze the trails they choose. on display, and materials for the study of its visual form Typography thrives as a shared concern - and there are are many and widespread. The history of letter- forms and no paths at all where there are no shared desires and directheir usage is visible too, to those with access to manutions. A typographer determined to forge new routes must scripts, inscriptions andold books, but from others it is move, like other solitary travellers, through uninhabited largely hidden. country and against the grain This book has therefore The presence of typography both good of the land, crossing common grown into some-thing thoroughfares in the silence and bad, can be seen everywhere. more than a short manual before dawn. The subject of of typo-graphic etiquette. this book is not typographIt is the fruit of a lot of long walks in the wilderness of ic solitude, but the old, well- travelled roads at the core of letters: in part a pocket field guide to the living wonders the tradition: paths that each of us is free to follow or not, that are found there, and in part a meditation on the ecoand to enter and leave when we choose if only we know logical principles, survival techniques, and ethics that ap- the paths are there and have a sense of where they lead. ply. The principles of typography as I understand them are That freedom is denied us if the tradition is concealed or not a set of dead conventions but the tribal customs of the left for dead. Originality is everywhere, but much originalmagic forest, where ancient voices speak from all direcity is blocked if the way back to earlier discoveries is cut tions and new ones move to unremembered forms. or overgrown. If you use this book as a guide, by all means One question, nevertheless, has been often in my mind. leave the road when you wish. That is pre- cisely the use of When all right-thinking human beings are struggling to a road: to reach individu- ally chosen points of departure. remember that other men and women are free to be difBy all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, ferent,and free to become more different still, how can deliberately, and well. That is one of the ends for which one honestly write a rulebook? What reason and authority they exist.
All pictures taken in Southern California by renowned photographer, Ben Guzman.
“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence.” 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 type. 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.
Sketchbook
FIDM Newsletter
June 1-5 Zumba Join us for a high intensity, high energy, Latin inspired workout! Burn calories while having a blast! Thursday, Jan. 23 6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. in the Student Lounge Student Council Hosts
Pilates Class Join Student Council for a fun introductory pilates class. Open to all current students. Thursday, Jan. 23 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Room A332
Meditation Wrap up Student Activities’ Wellness Week with an afternoon meditation session. Lead by Meditation sepcialist, Sonya Joseph. Leave feeling refreshed & clam for your weekend. Friday, Jan. 24 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Room 425 CCSA Hosts:
Yoga Workshop Join our CCSA Club for a FREE Yoga class. Learn how yoga can help your physical & mental state. Open to all current students. Tuesday, January 21 11:15 a.m. - 12;00 p.m. Room 425 Personal Counselors Workshop
weekly What’s going on around campus
New Year, New You! Wellness Fair
Start the New Year by being healthy. Join us for our annual health fair!
Get services and info from: •Vertigo Salon •Evoke Yoga •Los Angeles Athletic Club •Ralphs •Target Pharmacy Wednesday, Jan. 22 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Student Lounge
FIDM MODE™ Magazine Launch Party The FIDM MODE™ Magazine presents the release of Fall/Winter 2014 issue. Join us as we celebrate the launch with an exclusive party! Tickets will be sold starting Wednesday, Jan. 22, in Student Activities, Rm. 425, for $10.00 or $15.00 at the door. Thursday, Feb. 6 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. Vertigo Salon (penthouse of the Annex)
Celebrate Paris with us! Find us in the Student Lounge on Tuesday, Jan.28, to learn about our 2014 Paris Summer Institute. A trip you don’t want to miss! To sign up, go to https://myfidm.fidm.edu. Click the “MY FIDM” link at the top of the page & select “ABOUT STUDY TOURS” in the navigation bar on the left. For questions, contact Sevana Dimijian at sdimijian@fidm.edu. Also, find us on FACEBOOK @facebook.com/fidmstudy.tours
Career Center TJ MAXX will be on campus Wednesday, Jan. 22, recruiting for Assistant Managers in the Los Angeles area. Please sign up in the Career Center. SUNGLASS HUT will be on campus Thursday, Jan. 23, recruiting for their new store at 7th & Figueroa. Please sign up in the Career Center. NEW STUDENTS Please make an appointment on Career Network to meet with your Career Advisor for assistance with your job search.
How to Save a Life Just Design It (Active Wear for Cotton)
Come hear personal stories from two current students about overcoming depression. Learn tips and tools on how to help yourself and others. Thursday, Jan. 23 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Student Activities, Rm. 425
This unique competition allows participants to become actively acquainted with the benefits of cotton in active wear design. In teams of three, participants are challenged to research a sport or fitness activity, develop a consumer profile, and design a cotton rich garment that is functional and fashionable. $19,000 in scholarships will be awarded. Application deadline: January 23 to Suite 201E. For more information contact tedwards@ fidm.edu or visit the Portal.
The Pop Project
alex truchut
andy warhol
chip kidd pop! the visual project zine volume eight issue one in this issue: herb lubalin
david carson
paula scher
alex truchut
andy warhol
chip kidd pop! the visual project zine volume eight issue one in this issue: herb lubalin
david carson
paula scher
pop! the visual project zine issue one volume eight in this issue: alex truchut
andy warhol
chip kidd
herb lubalin
david carson
paula scher
volume eight
issue one
pop!
the visual project zine in this issue:
pop!
herb lubalin andy warhol david carson alex truchut paula scher chip kidd
the visual project zine volume eight issue one in this issue:
alex truchut andy warhol chip kidd herb lubalin david carson paula scher
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volume eight
issue one
in this issue:
alex truchut
andy warhol
chip kidd
herb lubalin
david carson
paula scher
pop! pop! pop! pop! pop!
the visual project zine
Typographical Terms
Typographical Terms Illustrated Ben Guzman
A sans serif style with moderate stroke contrast and modern proportions particular to the U.K. Usually features a two-story lowercase g, closed strokes (usually curving in slightly) on C and S, and a sloped, non-cursive italic.
Bureau Grot
Cursive, also known as longhand, script, joinedup writing, joint writing, running writing, or handwriting is any style of penmanship in which the symbols of the language are written in a conjoined and/or flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster.
Oblique type (or slanted, sloped) 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.
Helvetica
Kerning (less commonly mortising) is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result.
Brush Script
A Slab Serif is a type of serif font that evolved from the Modern style. The serifs are square and larger, bolder than serifs of previous typestyles.
American Typewriter
A hairline is the thinnest stroke found in a specific typeface that consists of strokes of varying widths. Hairline is often used to refer to a hairline rule, the thinnest graphic rule (line) printable on a specific output device. Hair or hairline is also a type of serif, the minimum thickness for a serif.
A lighter typeface on a darker background, such as white text on a black background, is reversed type.
Distressed typefaces cover a lot of ground. Some replicate the irregular contours of brush strokes and other writing implements. Others capture the organic texture of parchment and stone, or approximate the low-tech look of woodcuts, stencils and rubber stamps.
Cracked
The Blackletter typeface (also sometimes referred to as Gothic, Fraktur or Old English) was used in the Guthenburg Bible, one of the first books printed in Europe. This style of typeface is recognizable by its dramatic thin and thick strokes, and in some fonts, the elaborate swirls on the serifs.
A ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined as a single glyph.
Rosewood Std
Zapf Dingbats
In typography, letter-spacing, usually called tracking by typographers, refers to a consistent degree of increase (or sometimes decrease) of space between letters to affect density in a line or block of text. Letter-spacing should not be confused with kerning.
Adobe Garamond
In typography, a serif is the little extra stroke found at the end of main vertical and horizontal strokes of some letterforms. A swash is a typographical flourish, such as an exaggerated serif, terminal, tail, entry stroke, etc. on a glyph. The use of swash characters dates back to at least the 16th century, as they can be seen in Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi La Operina, which is dated 1522. As with italic type in general, they were inspired by the conventions of period handwriting. Arrighini's designs influenced designers in Italy and particularly in France.
Zapfino
A script, usually cursive, although sometimes angular, produced chiefly by brush, especially Chinese, Japanese, or Arabic writing of high aesthetic value.
Zapfino
Any of a number of items printed in a list, each after a centred dot, usually the most important points in a longer piece of text.
Times New Roman
Lettering can be simply defined as “the art of drawing letters”Calligraphy is based on penmanship; it’s essentially “writing letters.” Lettering, on the other hand, is based on draftsmanship, i.e. “drawing letters.
Type fonts such as Avant Garde, Caesar, Garmond, that are usually larger than text fonts and give distinctive personality to a printed or displayed (on the computer monitor) publication.
Bebas Neu
D
rop Cap
Decorative initial caps (capital letters) at the start of a paragraph that drop into a space created within the first few lines of the text are dropped caps, also written as drop caps.
Textura
In America, with the expansion of the commercial printing industry in the first years of the 19th century, it was inevitable that someone would perfect a process for cheaply producing the large letters so in demand for broadsides. Wood was the logical material because of its lightness, availability, and known printing qualities.
A dingbat is an ornament, character, or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character often employed for the creation of box frames. The term continues to be used in the computer industry to describe fonts that have symbols and shapes in the positions designated for alphabetical or numeric characters.
12 Point Rule The shape given in a particular typeface to a specific grapheme or symbol. Most commonly glyphs are letters and numerals, but punctuation marks and symbols and shapes (e.g. ITC Zapf Dingbats) are also glyphs.
While courts often require text to be set at 12 point — and sometimes larger — it’s not the most comfortable size for reading. If you compare a court filing with the average book, newspaper, or magazine, you’ll notice that the text in the filing is larger
Fonts Used: American Typewriter Avenir Next Baskerville Bauhaus Bebas Neu Bossa Nova MVB Courier New Couture Debonair Inline Didot Gil Sans Helvetica Helvetica Neu Hotel Oriental Optima Times New Roman