A Brief History of Type. Retrieved November 11, 2008, from internet search: http://www.redsun. com/type/abriefhistoryoftype/ Calligraphy, lettering and typeface design. Retrieved Novembre 19, 2008, from internet searchs: http://www.calligraphersguild.org/julian.html Anatomy of a character. Retrieved November 11, 2008, from internet search: http://www.fonts. com/AboutFonts/Articles/fyti/Anatomy.htm Anatomy of a character. Retrieved November 11,2008, from Google search: http://www.itcfonts. com/Ulc/2721/Anatomy.htm M & H Type. Retrieved November 20, 2008, from Google search: http://www.arionpress.com/ mandh/index.htm Stanley Morison. Retrieved November 26,2008, from Google search: http://www.identifont.com/ show?18B
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Introduction
1
History of typeface
2
Anatomy of character
4
Contemporary type foundry
6
Arts and crafts
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Stanley Morison
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My typeface design
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Index
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II
Introduction H
ere I give you a little of history, information and knowledge about the “math of the Designers�. Typography, a misund erstood are in design, almost as important to designers as math to the architects. With some information of the letters and history of type I hope to be able to become more familiar with type, and ease the rough path of understanding many things about it. After Doing some research and experiencing some scenarios that designers have to come across to design and come up with new typefaces, I save you a some of the trouble of research and learning process of typeface design. I hope that you enjoy this booklet, and have some fun with the little animation that I crated and placed on your right hand page.
Into
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Typographic evolution
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History of typeface Design
S
ince the beginning of times the letters the same thickness at any size, but the thinnest began to be developed, starting from strokes were not scaled up or down with the rest shapes that had different meaning, of the type, but made thicker at small sizes then to hieroglyphics coming all the way to and thinner at large sizes ones compromising turn into letters. between art and readability. After the evolution of the images to letters the human “Geometry can produce legible letters, but art has been developing the letters alone makes them beautiful. Art begins where to come up with different styles, faces, shapes and looks for the geometry ends, and imparts to letters a character letters created from different transcending mere measurement.” basic fonts. At the beginning of the 12th century there was Somewhere in the years 1950’s –1980’s the many lay copiers serving the university market. photocomposition devices were created, the The only form of copy for books was done by first one was created on the year 1944, when Scribes whom duplicated the books by hand. the typeface was on film and the characters All This was over after the creation of the were projected to a photosensitive paper using press, which was attributed to Gutenberg which less to adjust the size of the letter. Optical was made of steel with movable types which scaling was eliminated because in the rush to were mirrored that were attached to a matrix to convert fonts to the new format, usually only create body text. The first printers were owned one design was used, which was directly scaled by artisans and people whom found out it was an to the desired size. easy way to make money. Scribes opposed the The most recent evolution of typeface was most to the creation of the press since they felt at the mid 70’s with the creation of typefaces threatened their way of living and were going created digitally based on vectors, created end up without work. on different programs, taking a lot of time on In 1800’s major about the end of the industrial the development and input of the computers, revolution, innovations were added to the press, some created by professional designers or it was more effective and mechanic, which typographers—with better design, mathematical allowed a wider possibility to print more books input. And also done by non professionals, in the smaller range of time, taking over the having lack of good application. hand made printing But at the end, it doesn’t matter if type In 1885, Linn Boyd Benton created the is done with a machine, by hand or by computer, pantographic device which made automatic as Paul Standard said, “Geometry can produce painstaking process of creating punches. This legible letters, but art alone makes them machine scaled drawings to any required beautiful. Art begins where geometry ends, size and also compressed or expanded the and imparts to letters a character transcending characters, and varying the weight slightly to mere measurement.” compensate for the larger or smaller size In optical scaling, the thickest strokes retained History of Typeface Design
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3
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6 7
1
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4 2
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13 11 14
10 12 17
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18 16
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Anatomy of a Character
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T
here is many typefaces all around, but there, but there is some their anatomy of the letter so you can recognize them and tell them apart, the anatomy of a characters are like follow:
1
X-height – The height of lowercase letters, specifically the lowercase x.
2 Descender – The part of a character
that descends below the baseline. 3 Ascender – The part of a lowercase character that extends above the x-height. 4 Bar – The horizontal stroke in characters such as A, H, R, e, or f. 5 Counter – The partially or fully enclosed space within a character. 6 Arm/leg – An upper or lower stroke that is attached on one end and free on the other. 7 Ear – The small stroke that projects from the top of the lowercase g. 8 Link – The stroke that connects the top and bottom part (bowl and loop) of a of a two–story lowercase g. 9 Loop – The lower portion of the lowercase g. 10 Swash – A fancy flourish replacing a terminal or serif. 11 Stroke – A straight or curved line. 12 Tail – The descender of a Q or short diagonal stroke of an R. 13 Shoulder – The curved stroke of the h, m, n. 14 Spine – The main curved stroke of the S. 15 Cap Height – The height of capital letters from the baseline to the top of caps, most accurately measured on a character with a flat bottom.
16 Serif – The projections extending off
the main strokes of the characters of serif typefaces. 17 Bowl – A curved stroke which creates an enclosed space within a character. 18 Stem – A straight vertical stroke (or the main straight diagonal stroke in a letter which has no verticals). 19 Stress – The direction of thickening in a curved stroke. 20 Terminal – The end of a stroke not terminated with a serif.
Anatomy of a character
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Lewis Mitchell at a Thompson Caster in M&H The Contemporary Type Foundry
M
& H was founded by George W. Mackenzie in San Francisco in 1915. A printer and Monotype operator by trade, Mackenzie moved to San Francisco from Massachusetts to demonstrate Monotype equipment at the Panama Pacific International Exposition. After his presentation he received the machines, so he decided to create the Monotype Composition Company, which was the first to use monotype in St. Francisco; then in 1924 Mackenzie created a partnership with Carroll Harris, where the business eventually became known as Mackenzie & Harris. Harris knew that the Monotype system could do many better things than the ones that it was being used for. Eventually he started fulfilling the need of fine printing and taking over on the he west coast where already existed. After a while M&H’s fame spread all over taking advantage of the quality of workmanship offering a big inventory of typefaces. With time Harris gathered with designers, typographers, printers and book-binders from all over America an Europe. Soon he was started providing many types to St. Francisco printers of the day. Foreseeing the needs of their customers, Harris collected a wide range of faces —with accented matrices in Romance and Germanic languages. Harris became great partners with Frederic Goudy , America’s most famous Type designer. He established a close relationship with Frederic Goudy. Throughout his stewardship of the foundry, Harris increased the size of
his collection of typefaces. As late as 1963 he obtained a full range of matrices for Adrian Frutiger’s Univers sans serif type. Harris was summoned to active duty in the United States Army , where he served mostly in St. Francisco and was ascended to the rank of colonel. Mackenzie passed away in 1944; at this point Harrys bought his shares of the company but due to sickness he was forced to retire no to soon before he died. Othmar Peters bought Mackenzie & Harris in 1975 where it became known as MackenzieHarris Corporation. Peters added computer typesetting to the services offered by the company. After almost 10 years of the company working to its most. In 1988 Othmar Peters decided to sell Mackenzie-Harris to Chang Park, a Midwestern businessman who was not interested in the hot-metal division. For a while it seemed that the foundry wouldn’t survive the technology of the time In March 1989 the director of the Arion Press, Andrew Hoyem, bought the foundry, assuring the experienced services to the public The experienced staff of craftsmen was retained and the operation given the name of M&H Type keeping the foundry working until today. Now M&H has a variety of fonts from monotype casters to digital, from sizes of 12 points, using metal harder than monotype casters, but not harder than a Thompson caster. Where a set of fonts contains two different packages, capital letters and lower cased. Some fonts are offered only in capital letters. With a possibility of order by a catalogue. The Contemporary Type Foundry
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Arts and Crafts History
Arts and Crafts poster
A
rts and crafts was an aesthetic movement that happened in middle of the 19th–20th century which represented the beginning of a new appreciation of the decorative arts throughout Europe; in 1860 many people became profoundly disturbed by the level to which style, craftsmanship, and public taste disappeared at the start of the Industrial Revolution and its mass–produced and simple decorative arts. The English reformer, poet, and designer William Morris, in 1861, founded a firm of interior decorators and manufacturers—Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company (after 1875, Mor ris and Company) —dedicated to recapturing the spirit and quality of medieval craftsmanship. Morris and his associates produced handcrafts such as metalwork, jewelry, wallpaper, textiles, furniture and books. This “firm” was run as an artists’ collaborative, with the painters providing the designs for skilled craftsmen to produce. The main controversy raised by the movement was its practicality in the modern world. The progressives claimed that the
controlled by the salesmen and the advertiser, and at the mercy of every passing fashion.” The first American Arts and Crafts Exhibition opened on April 5, 1897, at Copley Hall featuring over 1000 objects made by 160 craftsmen, half of whom were women. Some of the supporters for the exhibit were Langford Warren, founder of Harvard’s School of Architecture; v. Richard Morris Hunt; Arthur Astor Carey and Edwin Mead, social reformers; and Will Bradley, graphic designer. In the 1890s the Arts and Crafts Movement the movement became diffused and less specifically identified with a small group of people. Its ideas spread to other countries and became identified with the growing international interest in design, specifically with Art Nouveau.
“The “firm” was run as an artists’ collaborative, with the painters providing the designs for skilled craftsmen to produce. “ movement was trying to turn back the clock and that it could not be done, that the Arts and Crafts Movement could not be taken as practical in mass urban and industrialized society. On the other hand, a reviewer who criticized an 1893 exhibition as “the work of a few for the few” also realized that it represented a graphic protest against design as “a marketable affair, Arts and Crafts History
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Stanley Moris (6 May 1889– 11 October 1967)
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Stanley Morison
M
orison was born in 6 May 1889 – 11 October 1967) Wanstead, Essex in , he left school at the age of 14 after his father abandoned his family. Morison became an editorial assistant on Imprint magazine in 1913. Five years later on 1918 he was imprisoned during the First World War as a conscientious Objector, but became design supervisor at the Pelican Press. In 1922 Morison founded the Fleuron Society dedicated to typographical matters. He edited the society’s journal The Fleuron from 1925 to 1930 . The quality of the publication’s artwork and printing was considered exceptional. Starting in 1923–1925 he was a staff editor/ writer for the Penrose Annual, a graphics arts journal. From 1923 to 1967 Morison was a typographic consultant for the a company called Monotype Corporation. In the 1920s–1930s, his work at Monotype involved research and re-adaptation of historic typefaces, where he recreated fonts as Baskerville and Bembo. Morison also worked as a typographical consultant for The Times newspaper in 1929. In 1931after he criticized on public the paper
for the poor quality of its printing, he was commissioned by the newspaper to produce a new easy-to-read typeface for the publication. This is when he created the font called “Times New Roman”, on which many other fonts have been based, fonts such as “Twisted Knight” a typeface he developed with graphic artist Victor Lardent. Times was first used by the newspaper in 1932 and was published by Monotype in 1933. He was a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1961 until his death in 11 of October 1967 in London, England.
Stanley Morison
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Twisted Knight Designed by Diego Tengono My Typeface Design
Twisted Knight
T
he new type that I’ve designed was based on the font called “Times News Roman” designed by Stanley Morison. Taking the style of the arts and crafts typographic era. The process done was taking a the font, and making it all unicased, then altering the characteristics of each letter and making them have different weights of strokes giving each of them a look as if it was done with a paintbrush. Since the era was all about bringing the craftsmanship involved in the creation of the letter as well as the Gothic where the Scribes whom duplicated the books al by hand.
The Process
Why Twisted Knight? decided to call it “Twisted Knight ” since the letters have an epic/ Gothic look, commonly used in the XVII century, and gave it the name of “twisted” since it has the characteristic of the curved lower ends which was to keep consistency to certain characters that had an end which could be dropped down below the baseline, the same as keeping the same thick and thin stroked used as if written by one single pencil in all the strokes. Since the characteristics of the era were organic shapes and non factory produced products, my font has been designed with a curved end where the letter drops and a had produced font to keep the characteristics of arts and crafts.
I
T
he process of developing the font starts with a basic font, then by hand the characteristics of the look of the font start being developed, adding curves and paintbrush-like strokes. After different tries and consultations, once the letter has been fully hand rendered and developed to the point of functionality. Once the point of functionality is reached, the hand rendered letter was scaled and then rendered digitally over and over until reaching the point that the letter looks uniform with all the same particular characteristics giving a particular look My Typeface Design
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Index
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Index
A
J
S
Arts and crafts 12
Journal 14
Scribes 6
B
K
T
Boyd Benton 6
Knight, Twisted 16
Typeface 6
C
L
U
Craftsmanship 12
Linn Boyd Benton 6
Unicased 16
D
M
V
Descender 8
Morison 14
Vectors 6
E
N
W
Europe 12
Nouveau, art 12
William Morris 12
F
O
X
Faulkner 12
Organic 16
X-height 8
G
P
Gutenberg 6
Paul Standard 6
H
Q
Harvard 12
Quality 12
I
R
Industrial Revolution 12
Richard Morris 12
I
n this animation I wanted to show you how the a of my font “Twisted Knight� was developed to its final stage.
Index
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