TYPO GRAPHIC INVEST IGATIONS
A Project Directed by Jason Dilworth Investigations and Writings by Richard McKaba
For the first investigation, I came across a book that utilized a multitude of typeface and to me felt like an old time playbill or event poster where there the type was done with whatever could be found, leading to a beautiful chaos that allowed a diverse field of letter forms to act as one cohensive being and highlight their own beauty and shape while also doing the same for the surrouding type, letter forms, and shapes that were put down to contain these “experimental� layouts.
Although a jump, it is something that we as a society unknowingly deal with on a day to day basis. I of course am refering to the way that HTML or computer programming looks if we were to see it. Its very tight lines of uniform yet aged letterforms, not intended to be an elegant or fanciful way to put down information, but it is instead the roots of all the technology that we hold so dear. It is the typesetting that allows the grander and more well known ideals to be carried out. Without this very cramped and lined type we would not have the elegance and beauty of typography we have today.
For week 3, I was lucky enough to find a book that utilized an all to familiar typeface, and a way of setting type that showed it grids so beautifully. The addition of image in the middle of the page to break the text up was also a beautiful find. The use of a modernist/modular grid allows for the text to connect to the topic (architecture) was a feature that I felt not only needed to be looked at but one that needed to be highlighted and recognized as the brilliant choice of a well trained typographer.
“You can say, “I love you,” in Helvetica. And you can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy. Or you can say it with the Extra Bold if it’s really intensive and passionate, you know, and it might work.” –Massimo Vignelli
Something that is often overlooked is the non-Latin typefaces and the elegance and complexity that one would entail.
For this week, I spent more time looking not at the typography, but examinining the covers of books. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon Man Ray’s book that I realized that even though many to most of the books we see today are perfect bound or saddle stitched, there is still always the opening to bind pages in anyway that one pleases. Yet this binding can-
not be done just to do it, I believe that for this to work and not just be a turn against what works, the artist must have an intention behind the usage of a more untraditional ninding technique. This is not to say that this book is a failure. It is actually the opposite, for Man Ray, an artist who worked with the very techincal camera and machinary so often it would only be expected that a boook about him should be just that, mechanical and untraditional.
What is worse than a poorly made book, one might ask? A book that has interesting information and is intissing, but cannot be read due to a tight margin and lack of space between lines of text. This is what I found among our colleges’s book section for student. Jose Saramagos Manual of Painting and Calligraphy
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In connection to my Graphic Design 3, Journey to Nowhere project, I collected a playbill from the Bills vs Giants game. Inside the grid was all too noticable to not highlight for the week’s library research. With not only a grid, but also the exact ideas that we were discussing in Typography of column grids, spanning. This weeks “book” was less about the content or the outcome of the event (Giants won 24 to 10), but was instead just a happy instance of something I was being taught appearing in my day to day life. As seen in the above picture, the present grid is modern/ modular giving each picture a spot and uniform size being
contained by a symmetrical bottom to allow space above and below to frame the players. While the bottom picture shows a column grid with the top left information spanning the 2 column grid. Again being contained with the sapce above and below to create a unity from page to page, grid to grid.
HANDWRIT
TTEN For one of my final weeks, I brought back a textbook that was required in freshman year. With the combination of both handwritten type, nicely set type and illustrations, the overall text is visually interesting and a page turner. The handwritten type gave the text a more human connection than usual texts that have no human feel or diversion to a humoid ideas/ tendencies.
For the final week, I turned to one of my favorite forms of typography and graphics. That being vintage hand-done type. Within the book, the reader is shown multiple typefaces and lettering styles that were used by sign writters and sign painters.