Sunday, 6 February 2011

Typographic Blog's

 what i have learnt from the blogs and 
why you think they might be useful articles to look at. 




 One. Friends of type














looking at this article, i can see many endless possibilities in which different ways typography has been used and displayed aswell as the diffrent fonts and styles that make it diffrent between each image and will help to give inspiration for idea generation for my current typography project.






Two.


                            Reviving Caslon:Part 2: Readability, Affability, Authority


"I. READABILITY


What does it mean for a text to be “readable”? In English some have made a distinction between legibility and readability:
“Legibility” is based on the ease with which one letter can be told from the other. “Readability” is the ease with which the eye can absorb the message and move along the line.”


—Types of Typefaces (1967) p. 84-5.
The same distinction is discussed by Walter Tracy:
[Readability] describes the quality of visual comfort—an important requirement in the comprehension of long stretches of text, but, paradoxically, not so important in such things as telephone directories or air-line timetables, where the reader … is searching for a single item of information [and where legibility is most important].

—Letters of Credit (1986), p. 31."




"A. THEORY

We can see in the following graphic that legibility of individual letters is indeed different from the readability of whole words:"





"All of the letters in “legible letters,” above can make easily readable words when they are used to form words with their mates in the same style and weight. However, when letters with different weights and styles are mixed, the words can only be read slowly, with difficulty. What this shows is that the design of individual letters is not enough to make for readability. Some kind of harmony among the letters is needed for our brain to be able to capture and process either individual letter parts, or whole letters, or both, so that we can quickly identify words.
This illustration suggests that the brain is putting some kind of grid or matrix over the word, and that it identifies letters and words by how the black and white fall within that matrix. This idea also accounts for two of the qualities that are prized in text type: regular rhythm and even color."



"Here, readability noticeably deteriorates with irregular spacing. Readability also suffers when rhythm is disrupted by irregular widths of characters:"



I had found this part of an article quite useful on the i love typography blog about the theory between readability and legibility when talking about type aswell as rhythm and the factor of colour and weight can take affect over the readability and legibility.
This is a good article because i know the difference between readability and legibility and using type in my current project, i will know to consider the factors of readability and legibility aswell as good and bad rhythm in typography.













Reading this article on kerning has made me aware of optical kerning and metric kerning and what they are and the differences that are distinguished between them and how to identify them from the diagram used.
i think this can be useful because when working with type i will be able to differentiate between optical and metric kerning, so i will be able to more correctly along side type and set it more properly when working with it in computer aided design.










i found this article quite useful because it allowed to me clearly and quickly understand typography's anatomy, typography's theory of sitting on a line and what/why they are there for, learning some of its theory of which i had only knew very little of, but i understand having a better grips and if be needed i can go back and refresh my memory.

it will be useful terminology for when talking about typography i can clearly talk about its elements and get my point across more effectively and be understood better.
it will help me, if i needed to create my own typography as i can using reference to this to direct it against the guidelines.






Five. Daily drop cap








you can use drop caps as the first letter of a word in a paragraph, that is made larger in a separate text box and sometimes can be a diffrent font or have decoration to it unlike the rest of the text in a attempt to draw your eye to the beginning section of the text.
Before this i did not understand its function as a drop cap or that it was even called a drop cap unlike i do now, this helped me to realise.

i think its a useful article because it shows how modern drop caps can work affectively in diffrent styles, work both either black and white or brightly coloured and be used to dress up the look of text to really capture your attention as well as being curious as to what drops caps is used for it made me find out because of that.





Thursday, 3 February 2011

Typographic Design Companies

reviewing a project from each site:
Fontsmith and Daltonmag
by discussing the benfits of *bespoke typographic design.



Fontsmith
Fontsmith is a leading London based type design studio founded in 1999 by Jason Smith. The studio consists of a team dedicated to designing and developing high quality typefaces for both independent release as well as bespoke fonts for international clients.

We pride ourselves on our ability to produce distinctive and unique typefaces & logos for a broad range of clients.


Bespoke type project channel 4 by fontsmith





looking at the briefs this company has done, i can see that that bespoke typography really does have its own unique font quality, diffrent from other fonts used and designed to fit in with the client and makes the brand recognisable just because of it bespoke typography.

for its channel 4 bespoke typography this company really has made it unique, i have not seen a font alike this before and when i see it on the tv or advertised around, it always stands out, clearly as channels 4's branding. they really have done well putting this signature on it.

what makes it likes this being unique with its font face is how it mixes styles that contrast, like it mixes sans serif with elements of  serif on characters like for example the letters 
'i' and 'r'

Aswell as how usually with sans type, its characters have a straight body that ranges from thick to thin on its stroke and would both have a beak and arm that is hard edged unlike this type design that has a beak and tail serif on the characters that stand up and touch the descender.

This is something that stands out straight away as usually fonts stick to continually using serif or sans serif to itself but in this case it has set the type off.

Its font is similar to the style that was used on early computers and typwriters.

Its target audience for channel 4 is quite broad range from all ages-children to adults with something for everyone, so the type obvious has to be fitting to this, which is does as it does not, have a definate genre or age to it.





Daltonmag
Custom Font Design is where Dalton Maag began. They say they can create a truly unique typeface design for you, your clients, and your brand, meeting every design and technical challenge.


                                           




The client had asked to draw a link with old cinema and theatre signs in a custom font suite to be part of the Central School of Speech & Drama's new identity.  (this is a theatrical,drama and acting university) 


the design would be to fit students,teachers and potential students aswell as fitting in with the subject of study the university focuses on. 


a design studio called studio 8 has already developed the concept of bold grotesque characters with an inline to simulate neon lit signs, so their basic requirement for the font family was a solid bold, bold with inline, and a stand-alone light font that visually resembled the inline and they just had to refine the design to its full potential.


The type from looking at it, is quite successful as it combines all its elements required like the target audience and what its being designed for, combining all this together captures this because of being a bespoke type, unlike if a pre-existing font was used its might fit with its target audience etc but it would not work relatively better as a design that is being used to create the brand of the university as it would not be the same font being used in the world for the brand, unlike using bespoke typography, it is solely for that brand and makes it unquie being the only brand in the world to use it and therefore people will automatically know it as this brand and it can be used on many aspects of branding that will get it known and promoted, just even being used on its own will have this affect because of it solely by being a bespoken type means its unique.


The design uses similarities to the font used on the title of the 'burlesque' as it uses bold sans serif characters and instead of having a fine stroke on the inside of the letter it has dots, which makes it relatively similar, and both being theatrical  the subject matter is the same but both recognisable as two separate fonts that will not be mistaken.


"BURLESQUE"-font similarity used to the bespoken
typographic design for  central school.


This concurs that the font designed for the brand is quite successful and that using a bespoken font can really promote a brand and work in its favour more affectively than a already existing type put to use.








guide to anatomy of letter forms for reference to my review.




(*term bespoke =an item custom-made to the buyer's specification, in this case typography custom made to the client.)

Wednesday, 2 February 2011

100 years of Helvetica





Reviewing the last 50 years 
of Helvetica
[&&.] 5 pieces from it.




50 years of Helvetica is a exhibition where 
designers from around the world had come 
together to work with Candy and Blanka. 
The concept is to make a callaboration of 50 pieces with Helvetica itself being the perspective, imagined in a world where it highlights things it has seen, such as events and inspirational things its seen and has been influenced by during its lifetime, which is from the lunar moon landing to the first British nudist camp.












One. Vince frost:a popular face. 1958




This uses Helvetica to mark the birth of michael jackson and his future as to be "king of pop" similar to how Helvetica will see itself being used in the future with the type has been displayed on overhead of entrance to a show/cinema like display that was used to display its showings in that period of time.
I think the artist has captured the event well, its almost fools you in to thinking this is a photograph taken at this time because of the time and Helvetica is used in a way that would mark it in a way that would be used then in relation to Michael Jackson's birth.








Two. Bleed: Xerox 914. 1959






This uses Helvetica in a poster/old advert like appearance to show that to be able to copy something was something people didnt take notice and did not realised they needed untill they got the xerox 914 which revolutionised the document copying industry being fast and economical. they found and never turned back on this need.


The link between  Helvetica and this event is not clear about the relation but i think its where Helvetica shas seen this event happen and it could allow someone to quickly copy the font in the xerox








Three. Ros Shiers: Butterfield 8. 1960




Ros shiers uses Helvetica to mark the film Butterfield that was released and made it big, being quite a famous film in the year of 1960, by using Helvetica as the 60 to mark the year of that event.
Butterfield is linked in to the illustration by using the actors who starred in it such as liz taylor, with their face of diffrent scenes drawn in together in to a montage type style.


I quite like this image because of the way shiers uses handles Helvetica in this way to portray this event. It follows the feel of the year with the way the actresses are drawn with that hairstyle that fit that period but it is quite modern looking in terms of the illustration being drawn in that style.






Four. Antoine+Manuel: I have a dream 1963




for this event is marking the day of martin luther king, that give the speech of 'i have a dream' and being that Helvetica being alive then and using Helvetica in this imagery to portray this event by having Helvetica in the centre in this quotation with the paths leading off this in to scenes of the dream and political and current events that where happening from it, as the dream being for racial equality and to end discrimination.


I think its good how it uses the quoatation with Helvetica in the middle and tells the story of it of the diffrent things happening because of the racial equality and with the paths leading off from it to show this.








Five. Ian wright:Sam cooke (1931-1964) 1964


Sam Cooke a 1960's pop,soul,gospel,r'n'b singer and song writer, considered one of the founders and pioneers of soul music as well as being commonly know as the king of soul for his unmatched vocal abilities and influence on modern music.


To portray this event of Cooke, Ian wright uses Helvetica in a repetitive way of overlapping the text to create dark tones and light tones with less over lapping and a lighter colour tone to create the features and detail to the face of Cooke, so that typography is being used as a illustration.
The words used in the type is from a song he sang last ever sang before his death.
I think its a nicely well thought out concept having all the elements in this link well in with the event and the way Helvetica has been used in with it.

Tuesday, 1 February 2011

unique concept opening of the front website page

http://mnatwork.com/#/?state=0

I Came across this site a digital design company and what caught my attention was how the opening of the site is where you draw on it to reveal the site
interesting and nice concept

heres a image of me having a go at it.
its quite fun 
:)


10 Typographic Designers

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.