Week 1:
The lecturer gave a briefing into Typography and making an E-portfolio in Blog.
Week 2:
Development/Timeline
Phoenician to Roman
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| "Phoenicians votive stele Carthage & Evolution from Phoenician letter" |
- Writing meant scratching into wet clay with a sharp stick or carving into stone with chisels.
- The Greeks changed the direction of writing, it was written from right to left by Phoenicians.
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| "Greeks writing style, Boustrophedon" |
- Boustrophedon is when the texts are read from right to left and left to right, it also changes the direction of the orientation of the letterforms.
- They did not use latter space or punctuation.
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| "Augustan inscription in the Roman Forum, Rome" |
- Etruscan and the Roman drew out the letters on the stones before carving into it.
- Depending on the brush they used the strokes differs thus giving use the different letterforms we know today.
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| "Early letterform development from Phoenician to Roman" |
- This was a example of how the letter "A" had been developed over time.
Hand Scripts
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| "4th or 5th century: Square Capitals" |
- They were achieved by holding a reed pen at a 60-degrees angle of the perpendicular.
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| "Late 3rd - mid 4th century: Rustic Capital" |
- Rustic Capitals (compressed version of square capital) allowed twice as many words on a sheet and took less time to write, but it was harder to read due to them being compressed.
- The pen brushes were held at a 30-degree angle.
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| "4th century: Roman Cursive" |
- Square capital and Rustic capital were used for documents of some intended performance. Cursive hand were used for everyday transactions which were simplified for speed.
- It was due to writing uppercase letterform fast that form the lowercase letterform.
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| "4th - 5th century: Uncials" |
- Uncial incorporated some aspects of Roman cursive hand, mainly A, D, E, H, M, U and Q.
- Some scholars think that uncials refer to letters that are one inch high due to “Uncia” means twelfth in Latin.
- Uncial does not have a lowercase nor uppercase letterforms. The board form of uncials are more readable in small than rustic capitals.
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| "C. 500: Half-uncials" |
- Half-uncials mark the formal beginning of lowercase letterforms.
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| "C. 925: Caloline Miniscule" |
- Charlemagne issued an edict in 789 CE to standardize all ecclesial text.
- The monks rewrote the text using Majuscules, Minuscules, Capitalization, and Punctuation which set the standard for calligraphy for a century.
Blackletter to Gutenberg’s type
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| "c. 1300" Blackletter (Textura)" |
- In northern Europe, a strongly condensed vertical letterform known as Blackletter gained popularity. While in the south, Rotunda, a rounder more open hand gained popularity.
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| "c. 1455: 42 Line Bible, Johann Gutenberg, Mainz" |
- Gutenberg in the person that invented printing press. He is skilled in engineering, metalsmithing, and chemistry.
- He had accurately mimicked the work of the scribe’s hand by marshaling them all. His type mold required a different brass matrix for each letterform.
Text type classification
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| "Text type classification" |
1450 Blackletter
- It was the earliest print type, its form were based upon the hand-copying styles that were then used for books in northern Europe.
1475 Oldstyle
- Based upon the lowercase form used by Italian humanist scholars for book copying and the uppercase letterforms found inscribed on Roman ruins.
1500 Italic
- The first italics were condensed and close-set, allowing more words per page. It was originally considered their own class of type but were soon cast to complement roman forms.
1550 Script
- It had attempted to replicate engraved calligraphic forms, it is not entirely appropriate in lengthy text setting. Forms now range from the formula and traditional to the casual and contemporary.
1750 Transitional
- A refinement of oldstyle form, it was achieved in part because of advances in casting and printing.
1775 Modern
- This style represents a further rationalization of oldstyle letterform. Serifs were unbracketed, and the contrast between thick and thin strokes extreme.
1825 Square Serif/ Slab Serif
- Originally heavily bracketed serif, with little variation between thick and thin stokes, these faces responded to the newly developed needs of advertising for heavy type in printing.
1900 Sans Serif
- These typefaces eliminated serifs altogether. It was first introduced by William Caslon IV in 1816, its use did not become wide-spread until the beginning of the twentieth century. Sans serif is also referred to as grotesque and gothic.
1990 Serif / Sans Serif
- This style enlarges the notion of a family of typefaces to include both serif and sans serif alphabets.
Week 3:
Text / Tracking: Kerning and Letterspacing
- Kerning is the automatic adjustment of space between letters.
- Letterspacing is to add space between the letters.
- Tracking is the addition and removal of space in a word/ sentence.
Normal Tracking- Loose tracking & Thigh tracking
- Add letterspace to a body of word would reduce the readability of the text. When increasing and decreasing the letterspacing between words make the words less recognisable to us.
- Uppercase letterforms are able to stand on their own unlike lowercase letterforms that require the counter form created between letters to maintain the line of reading.
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| Example Comparison |
Type Size: Text type should be large enough to be read easily at arms length.
Leading: Text that is set too tightly encourage vertical eye movement, a reader can easily loose their place. Type that are too loosely creates striped pattern that distract the reader.
Line Length: Appropriate leading for text is a function of the line length. Shorter lines require less leading while longer lines more.
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| no Leading & too much Leading |
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| Type Specimen Sheet sample |
Week 4:
Text / Indicating Paragraphs
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| Line Space vs Leading |
Widows & Orphans
Widow- A short line of type left alone at the end of a column of text
Orphan- A short line of type left alone at the start of a new column
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| Example of Widow & Orphan |
- The only solution to widows is to rebreak the line ending through out the paragraph so the last line of the paragraph is not noticeably short'
- For orphans the writer have to make sure that no column of text starts with the last line of the preceding paragraph.
Headline within Text
A head- They indicates a clear breaking between the topics within a section. They are set larger than the text, in small caps and bold.
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A head samples |
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| B head samples |
C head- They not materially interrupt the flow of reading. They are shown in small caps, italics, serif bold and san serif bold.
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| C head samples |
Week 5:
Basic /The Font
Uppercase- Capital letters, including certain accented vowels, the c cedilla and the n tilde, and the a/e and o/e ligatures.
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| Sample 1 |
Lowercase- Lowercase letters include the same characters as uppercase.
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| Sample 2 |
Small Capitals- Uppercase letterform draw to the x-height of the typeface.
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| Sample 3 |
Uppercase Numerals- They are the same height as uppercase letters and are all set to the same kerning width.
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| Sample 4 |
Lowercase Numerals- Known as old style figures. They are set to x-height with ascenders and descenders.
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| Sample 5 |
INSTRUCTIONS
<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZLVEoSgXZ7_WWMa_4pcNBRilTKmWAl7x/preview" width="640" height="480" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
Task 1: Exercise 1 - Type Expression
We were technically given 8 words to choose from, we just need 4 words. We had to use the 10 font given to express each words.
Sketches
The words I choose was Huge, Wind, Shock, Stab.
Sketches were done on my tablet. I mainly sketch out how I want the world to be arranged.
I first choose Stab, Wind, Illusion, Shock, Chop-chop, after sketching I would choose which design I prefer and move it to my final .
The sketches were all over the places since that is how I usually work.
At this point i decide to ditch Illusion and Chop-chop. Thus I choose Huge. The ones with a star mark are the ones I will be using for my final/digitalise.
Here I work on Stab more, eventually settle with the one with a star.
Huge was the easiest to express out of all these.
After choosing the ones I like, the next thing was to find a suitable font and start digitalise them.
Digitalising
When starting of I had some trouble while using Adobe Illustrator since it was mt first time.
I had forgotten the names of the fonts I downloaded thus I had to have the file side to side. Eventually I got a hang of it.
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Trying out one font with Bold and Italic to express that it flying further away from us.
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While trying to make the "T" stabbing through "SAB" I asked the lecturer some some help and was able to do it. I tried out multiple sample and choose the one to finalise.
Final Type Expression
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| Final |
I choose to animate Shock.
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First I use Adobe Illustrator to lay out the frames for the animation. I like to keep it simple.
Task 1: Exercise 2 - Text Formatting
Kerning and Tracking
Practicing kerning and tracking with my name in the typeface that was given.
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| [Before Kerning] |
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| [After Kerning] |
Layout
I didn't took the first few steps of my layout progress because I forgot..png)
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After having more understanding on how it works i start to position how I want the layout to be.
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| Test 1: Messed up the whole layout |
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| Test 2: Didn't like the font used |
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| Test 3: Trying another font |
Final Layout
Font/s: Bodoni MT (Black & Condensed Bold Italic)
Type Size/s: 21pt & 12pt
Leading: 11pt
Paragraph spacing: 20pt
Font/s: Adobe Arabic (Bold)
Type Size/s: 16pt
Leading: 11pt
Paragraph spacing: 20pt
Characters per-line: 55
Alignment: Justify with last line aligned left
Columns: 2
Gutter: 5 mm
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| Layout Final |
FEEDBACK
Week 1: No feedback given
Week 2: "Try not to visualize them as an illustration" Something like that. The design for Stab still need some working. "Maybe try using the letter 'T'."
Week 3: I can't distort too much with the letters. I can exaggerate the text.
Week 4: I should start working on the E-portfolio for the Lectures.
Week 5: No feedback given
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| "A Type Primer_2nd Ed_John Kane" |
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