Wei Lin Zhong
Type B Typography 2012
k • Wei
Lin Zhong
A type book about my relationship to typography. It contacted with typographic in style and it talking to who loves typography. And it also has educational information from books and online resources with examples. This type book done with grid layout, type setting and typography design elements to catch your eyes and feel about the movement!
About Wei
Lin Zhong
M
y name isWei Lin Zhong. I have been in contact with art and design since long time before, and I have found designing, drawing and photography particularly inspiring. Graphic design has opened up a whole new world for me and has made a huge impact on my life. I have studied one year art & design and three years graphic design in school with formal art education, designing skills and production quality experiences. I am familiar using Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and Dreamweaver. I mainly focus on branding, layout, typographic structure and website creating design which include logos, posters, menus, brochures, books and packaging. Before sending everything off to print, I like to ensure that everything works efficiently. Also, I’ve been able to work with honest and interesting people and I really enjoy listening to their advice and input.
My Favourite Thing
Imagine a bowl of gravy noodle soup. Circular shape is the greatest, noodle is staple food and it would have irregulars line sitting inside of the bowl. Gravy soup with yummy earth tones and a little geometric grease on the top and all other ingredients are just for embellishment. Oh, I will hold the bowl and sitting in front of a good movie!
What I Really Enjoy
I ennjoy having everything being done before the “deadline�, just like how I want to try everything in my life before I die. Also any colourful combinations of anything could really catch my eye, because the ideas are young, just like my mind.
3 To all who love typography.
Contents What is Excellent Typography?
2
Typography Seems a Maze for Me
3
3 Classic Fonts
4
The Anatomy of Type
6
Myaront 7 Expert Typography Tips
8
Fashion Miu (My Typeface) 9 Announcement Cards
10
The Typographic Grid
12
Bibliography 14
What is Excellent Typography
Typeface:
Weight:
20db
Regular
Size:
Leading:
13pt
45pt
?
Typography is a central component of design. It gives us an understanding of the heritage behind our craft. It’s one of the primary ways we, as a society, pass on information to others. Imagine a website, a magazine or even TV without text. Typography is a subject that raises passions and it can become a consuming obsession. From a descriptive and simplistic point-of-view, typography is the arrangement of type. But there is so much more to it than that. It can mean different things depending on whom you ask. For me, how typography is used in a design is deeply rooted in its overall theme, tone and message. It works with your layout, grid and color choice to create a well-rounded design. Your choice of typefaces and your technique of setting type give your composition its character, pace and style. Not only does it give the copy legibility, it also helps the reader gain a greater insight into the subject of the design. When you think what is excellent typography, we should consider the type settings first in the mind—which are few basic typography terms and concepts: •
Tracking:
•
0
•
•
Alignment:
Flush Right •
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Lines—a line of characters has at least five lines that it can be aligned to. These horizontal lines are guides for capital letters, ascenders, lowercase and descenders. Leading describes the amount of space between lines of text. You can measure leading by obtaining the distance between two baselines. Tracking (or letter-spacing) is the space between groups of characters. Tracking has similar guidelines as leading and all of these best practices are tied to readability. Kerning describes the amount of space between two characters. It is the art of adjusting the space between characters so eyes can flow easily across the copy without being distracted by discrepancies. How you align your text has a huge impact on how people will read and perceive it. The decision of alignment should be made with your design theme in mind and–provide readability and legibility.
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T
ypography is a maze for me. In first school-term that I studied with typography, I kept asking myself why do we need to learn it and why is so important? I had not realized the impact in just one line text or even a word without kerning. Because everybody has different measure in their eyes and we wouldn’t use a ruler in real life for any posters or magazines. I couldn’t feel the impact; I lost the passion in it. Everything changes and keeps going. Until now, I changed my mind and felt typography was very helpful in any graphic design cases; it could be a visual element after designing or exploring and the nice looking line text. The language of typography also speaks to me, the typography crossed and affected in shape design or just a message to highlight the boring text. When typography is transformed into a design, it is bold and extremely noticeable for me. A quote from C. Knight and J. Glaser who gave me the idea of how graphic design cannot leave typography says, “Clever graphic designers love to use typography to explore the interaction between the look of type and what type actually says. In communicating a message, a balance has to be achieved between the visual and the verbal aspects of a design.” When I’m lost on typographic problems, I do not give up and continue to find a way out.
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Fonts 3 Classic
J
ohn Baskerville was an accomplished writing master and printer from Birmingham, England. He was the designer of several types, punchcut by John Handy, which are the basis for the fonts that bear the name Baskerville today. The excellent quality of his printing influenced such famous printers as Didot in France and Bodoni in Italy. Though he was known internati-onally as an innovator of technique and style, his high standards for paper and ink quality made it difficult for him to compete with local commercial printers. However, his fellow Englishmen imitated his types, and in 1768, Isaac Moore punchcut a version of Baskerville’s letterforms for the Fry Foundry. And Baskerville produced a masterpiece folio Bible for Cambridge University, UK, and today, his types are considered to be fine representations of eighteenth century rationalism and neoclassicism. Legible and eminently dignified, Baskerville makes an excellent text typeface; and its sharp, high-contrast forms make it suitable for elegant advertising pieces as well.
G
iambattista Bodoni was called the King of Printers and the Bodoni font owes its creation in 1767 to his masterful cutting techniques. The elder generations in a similar style were the typefaces of Pierre Simon Fournier and the Didot family. The Bodoni font distinguishes itself through the strength of its characters and embodies the rational thinking of the Enlightenment. The new typefaces displaced the Old Face and Transitional styles and was the most popular typeface until the mid-19th century. Bodoni’s influence on typography
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was dominant until the end of the 19th century and, even today, inspires new creations. Working with this font requires care, as the strong emphasis of the vertical strokes and marked contrast between the fine and thick lines lessens Bodoni’s legibility, and the font is therefore better in larger print with generous spacing. The Bodoni of Morris F. Benton appeared in 1911 with American Type Founders.
M
ax Miedinger developed Helvetica in 1957 for Haas foundry of Switzerland. The design is based on the grotesques of the late nineteenth century, but new refinements put it in the sans serif sub-category of neo-grotesque. Shortly after its introduction, the Stempel foundry purchased the original Helvetica typeface and developed a full series of weights. In the 1960s Helvetica came to the United States of America, where alignment standards differed; Mergenthaler Linotype copied the Stempel series and then added different new versions of the design. Helvetica is an all-purpose type design that can deliver practically any message clearly and efficiently. The condensed and compressed Helvetica designs are excellent for display applications such as newspaper or newsletter headlines, billboards, and advertising. The basic design of Helvetica Rounded is the same as the design of the standard Helvetica typefaces. Designed in 1980, it differs only in stroke endings, which are rounded rather than squared off. The overall effect of this display type is more playful and friendly than its traditional relative.
“You can be sure that they will last your whole design career.”
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anatomy type F
amiliarity with the basic structure of type is essential to understanding how typefaces differ, what characteristics they share, and allows the designer to make decisions about selecting and
using the multitude of typefaces now available. The most basic element of typography is the letter, and each typeface has unique characteristics, while sharing a basic language that describes its parts.
Strokes
Counters
Strokes are the main lines of the letters that give the shape and relate most to handwriting, with the major strokes being stems and bars. • • • • • •
• •
• • •
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The Ascender is the part of the letter that ascends above the Cap-height The Axis is the mirror line for letters such as o which the bowl is arranged around The Bowl is the enclosing holding the counter such as the stroke of o and is mirrored on the axis The Cross stroke if the horizontal bar on the lower case t and f The Descender is the part of letter that descends below the baseline Rounded and pointed areas of the main stroke Overshoot the baseline or x-height so as to appear level optically such as in a or v The point at top of a character such as uppercase A where the left and right strokes meet is the apex Rounded and pointed areas of the main stroke overshoot the baseline or x-height so as to appear level optically such as in a or v The Shoulder is the connection between stems in letters such as m and n Stem is a vertical stroke; bar is a horizontal stroke The Stroke is the major angled line of letters such as y or A
Counters are the white space in the letters. • • •
Aperature is an open counter on enclosed bowl The Counter is the area missing inside of a letter such as the a and o with an e having and eye Inkwell is areas cut out of the letter to allow ink to flow in printing, particularly in tight spots such as the shoulder of the m or in the point of the y
Terminals
Terminals are the ends of strokes. In sans-serif fonts are normally blunt, but get interesting in serif fonts. • • • • • • • •
Beaks are a serif ending to a horizontal stroke Brackets are the curved inner part of the serif and appear on old style serifs, rather than slab-serifs Finial is a tapered terminal Serifs are the extra points or slabs at the ends of letters in serif faces Spurs are he pointy ends to letters such as s and c The tail is the end of a descender such as in y, g, Q The Terminal is the fat ending of the stroke such as at the end of a double-storey a The dot is a small distinguishing mark, such as an diacritic on a lowercase i or j
Wear Triangle Glasses Smoke and Drink Big Ear Hole Long Helix Round Earring Short Shoulder Tiny Thumb
Evil Drunk Designer
Myaront
Completely opposite character that represent me in differnt way out of the normal life if I can be a supper designer. I really think any good ideas come from the crazy mind.
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Expert
Typography
Tips D
* Graph paper is a good way to start developing your new font.
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esigning a hot new typeface requires a lot of hard work and imagination, but what else? We investigate the skill and effort needed to achieve terrific type. From developing legible body fonts to creating custom lettering for logotypes, great type design requires a rather interesting—and somewhat conflicting—mix of qualities. It’s a craft that relies in equal parts on knowledge and instinct, on method and experimentation, and on creative flair and painstaking attention to detail. The Aktiv, Elevon and Grueber typefaces came from the font library at foundry Dalton Maag, which is based in London and Brazil “It’s quite instinctive, but ultimately comes with practice and research into what fonts do,” says Bruno Maag, creative and managing director at font foundry Dalton Maag. “Overlay lots of fonts and you’ll see they are very collaborative in terms of their proportions. That’s because it all comes out of roundhand calligraphy, which defines the rhythms and proportions of a typeface.” Habit plays a big part, he adds: “It’s about what we’re used to seeing.” While display fonts provide scope for artistic flair, legibility is paramount if you’re designing a body font—the last thing you want to do is distract the reader. If you’re designing a text face, you will need to pay careful attention to conventions and standards, from deciding between a one- or two-storey ‘g’ to optical considerations like increasing the size of round characters, which otherwise appear smaller, and making horizontal lines slightly thinner. To start the process of nailing down a typeface, you first need to define a few initial control characters—the choice of which varies between designers. Whatever your chosen control characters, it is important to take the right approach. It’s also important to treat a typeface as one design, rather than viewing it as collection of individual characters. To perfect your type system, you’ll need to hone your spacing. Get this right and you make designers’ lives much easier, while excessively tight spacing can render a body font almost totally unusable. You’ll also need to decide how many weights to produce. The available software means you can create a huge range of weights, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should do so.
Fashion Miu
T
his new typeface is called “Fashion Miu”, which literally means fashion wonderful in Chinese. It is developed from my personal attributes, which are fashion and music. Fashion related clothing, models, showcase, and the catwalk stage. All of them gave me a straight and the tall visual. However, music has more of an undulation, wave or round visual that reflected in music score and notes. The base typeface shape is from “Garamond” and the idea was inspired from a clean and straight typeface called “Bodoni”. It has a good contrast on the thin and thick strokes, so I took inspiration from those contrasting strokes into my own typeface. Then I combined the note parts that are big, bold and rounded into the typeface. However, the strokes had to be increased in size to compensate for the note style. The typeface has a specific structure that depends on the base letter’s exterior. Each letter has contact on stroke width and height. Because of the structure, some letters look similar in some parts. This new typeface is skinny and tall with bold and rounded parts. It is totally combined with the fashion and music style, and each letter is very distinguishable.
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Announcement Cards
Fronts
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Backs
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Early printing and standardisation The first symmetrical page The need for asymmetry The Arts & Crafts Movement The early twentieth century The Bauhaus Jan Tschichold Swiss typography Type Book 12
e T
he grid design and development started in the early time. These developments occurred in the last decades of the nineteenth century against a background of generally poor design. This situation produced a reaction among thinkers and designers, leading to various movements that sought better standards in Britain, the US, Germany, Austria and elsewhere in Northern Europe. The most notable of these in Britain was the Arts and Crafts Movement, with William Morris as the prime activist. Those involved believed that there was an indivisible ink between usefulness and beauty. Morris’ followers placed a great deal of emphasis on making by hand. However, the idea that form could relate to function without being visually unattractive also impacted on the quality of printed design produced in quantity through new technologies. Although it still centred, there was a move towards simpler and less cluttered layouts. There was also an increased awareness of proportion and space, with greater consideration of the relative sizes of margins, text areas and overall format. The golden section, for example was much favoured as a basis for achieving good margins, It came to be felt that the design of a book should be transparent, and not intrude between author and reader, while still giving aesthetic pleasure in its own right. All these efforts ran in parallel with the rise of modern movement, which, despite with different aims, was also interested in notions of simplicity, clarity and usefulness. By the early 1940s, the revolution in visual art had changed the direction of typography. Classicism was still alive in much book design. However, the display typography in advertising and publicity and
t
ypographic
had been liberated by use of contrast, dynamic movement, the balance achieved through asymmetric placing of elements in space, unification of the message and its typographic expression, and the acceptance and the powerful use of photography for illustration. In addition, new and more direct ways of delivering statistical and technical information were being explored, often with a strong abstract bias. During the Second World War, Switzerland was neutral and therefore continued to have contacts with the protagonists from both sides. The country became a haven for intellectual refuges, many of whom had suffered oppression under Fascism. The major strength of Swiss graphic design was the blending of influences from the German, French and Italian members of the population. While most European countries were either at war or were occupied, Switzerland was able to continue most peacetime activities, design for promotional materials, cultural events and packaging. In many ways, the refined modernism of Tschichold was very suited to ordered lifestyle of Switzerland, where a relatively large population lived in a small land area, much of which is mountainous. Swiss industries were already highly developed and technically advanced. In the years 1939 – 1946, the Swiss design schools and lots of practitioners continued to promote modern typography, building on work of Tschichold and other refugees. Many Swiss designers, including Max Bill, Han Erni and Celestino Piatti who also had reputations as fine artists. This combination often resulted in an experimental approach to typographic layout.
grid T
o
he grid system in graphic design is a way of organizing content on a page by using any combinations of margins, guides, rows and columns. It is commonly seen in today’s newspaper and magazine layout with columns of text and images. Grids offer an effective design approach for layouts and assist in communicating main messages clearly to the people. They created ordered hierarchies, proportional relationships, and clear visual paths for the eye to travel. A well-used grid can help the design to feel more orderly and reduce visual chaos. One grid is made up of vertical and horizontal lines and is the foundation of nearly every type of visual media. The structure is there to shape the content into proportions that are pleasing to the eye. Use of the grid is nothing new. Artists have used the grid structure for centuries. Grid systems bring visual structure and balance to graphic design. As a tool grids are useful for organizie and present information.
Used properly, they can enhance the user experience by creating predictable patterns to follow. The most important element in graphic design is the grid. It is just very helpful to start with the grid making any layouts and put the text and images in. It could make job easier and clear to see how the layout going to be. The other thing is if start without any grids then put in the elements, there will be non-sense, no rules and mess designs. In this type book design, the elements by positioning on the page become the primary method of guiding the reader which from using a strong vertical movement on the text columns to provide a contact with the big horizontal headers. The influence of grid style on this book is Swiss Typography, which the ideas by using the grid to contain and unite all elements of an exciting design. The simple grid structure with the sans-serif really attractive and catches eyes rationale when open this book. Type Book 13
bibliography Books
Article from Website
David Dabner, Sheena Calvert & Anoki Casey. The New Graphic Design School: A Foundation Course in Principles and Practice, 4th Edition, 2009. P. 6
Anne Van Wagener. Contemporary use of the grid today, 2003. P. 13 Poynter: poynter.org
Lupton Ellen. Thinking with type: a critical guide for designers, writers, editors, & students 2nd rev. and expanded Ed, 2010. P. 6
Julia Thrift & Lucienne Roberts. The designer and the grid: explores the design grid and how it is driving force behind almost all graphic design, 2005. P. 12
Inspiration from Website
Type is Art: An Interactive Exploration of the Typographic Form. Parts of a Character are a Typographic Exploration Tool. It uses the Adobe Flash Player. We were not able to identify a recent version of this player on your system. P. 7 Type is art: typeisart.com
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Christian Bailey. The Basics of Typography, 2011. P. 2 Design Instruct: designinstruct.com
Layman’s layout. Type Glossary, 2011. P. 6 Layman’s layout: laymanslayout.wordpress.com Bodoni Font Family; Helvetica ® World Font Family; Baskerville Font Family. P. 4 – 5 Linotype: linotype.com
Article from a Magazine (online)
Computer Arts Magazine. Expert Typography Tips, 2012. P. 8 Computer Arts magazine: computerarts.co.uk
Typography
Addiction