TYPOGRAPHIC PORTFOLIO Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandise Spring 2015
Angela Tseng
inport art + commerce
Angela K. Tseng
Character Studies | The Letter G
Gg About The Font Bodoni Seventy-Two captures the engraved elegance of the 18th century master’s work without reducing the characters t o oversimplified geometric shapes. This typeface consists o f two weights p lus companion italics, including e legant swash capitals for both italics.
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 G reeks borrowed the basic Phoenician f orm and changed i ts name to gamma. They also made some dramatic changes to the letter’s appearance. At various t imes i n ancient G reek h istory, the gamma l ooked l ike a one-sided arrow pointing up, a n upside-down L, o r a crescent m oon. T hroughout t his 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 t ook i ts position as t he s eventh l etter of our a lphabet, replacing t he letter Z, which was considered superfluous for the writing of Latin. The ousted Z took its place at the end of the line.
character Studies | The Letter Z
About the Font HKI is the creative talent of Nathalie Melato and David Rondel Cambou. With a rich experience working for iconic brands like Diesel and Nokia, their unmistakable and beautifully unique style is hard not to admire.
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, con-
verted 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
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These pictures were taken throughout the week while following my daily routine
By Milton Glaser
The presence of typography both good and bad, can be seen everywhere.
A report on public typography
Ubiquitous Type:
T
road: to reach individu- ally chosen points of departure. By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately, and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist. 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.
“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence.”
ypography 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 something more than a short manual of typographic 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
FIDM MODE™ Magazine Just Design It Launch Party (Active Wear for Cotton) 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. 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Room 425
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! Career Center Find us in the Student Lounge on Tuesday, Jan.21, 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
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.
New Year, New You! Wellness Fair
Personal Counselors Workshop
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 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Student Lounge
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.
Zumba Join us for a high intensity, high energy, Latin inspired workout! Burn calories while having a blast! 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. 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Room A332
How to Save a Life Come hear personal stories from two current students about overcoming depression. Learn tips and tools on how to help yourself and others. 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Student Activities, Rm. 425
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. 11:15 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Room 425
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Avenir Baskerville Bebas Neue Bodoni Caviar Dreams Copperplate Gill Sans Helvetica Helvetica Neue HKI Rockwell Times