Visual Literacy

Today we had our first visual literacy session. This session was based on ‘What Is Typography?’

We were asked to bring in 5 fonts, both lower and upper case.

My selection of letters was;

·      Futura

·      Cambria

·      Popular std

·      American Typewriter

·      Matura MT Script Capitals

We were then put into groups and separated all our fonts over the table. Next we put them into 5 different groups that we thought described the typefaces. Our groups 5 categories were:

1.     Italic

2.     Serif

3.     Sans Serif

4.     Weight of line, different thicknesses

5.     Bold

As a whole class we then made a bigger list of ways to categorise typefaces, so we could see what other groups had said, this list was:

1.    Serif

2.    Sans Serif

3.    Blackletter

4.    Script

5.    Italic

6.    Multiple Weights

7.    Calligraphy

8.    Handwritten

9.    Bold

10. Thin

11. Thick

12. Decorative

These are all ways of describing a typeface,  like the quality of line,  characteristic of line, how much it stands out ect.

Over the years typefaces have changed a lot, due to the methods of production when creating them, in the classic pre industrial age to start with they used stone and chisel to carve out the letters into a rock,  because of the flat edge of the chisel the ends of letters had to have a sharp edge, or point coming off it (the beginning of serif fonts).  Next in Asia, (most commonly the oriental scenes) they started to use sable, basically painting and ink, these created a very hand drawn type. Then there was bone, this process created elegant, feminem typefaces. Moving into the modern post industrial age there was wood, this process created simple, formal and modern typefaces. Then came lead, the typefaces created using this were very fragile and minimal. Then lastly it was silicon based typefaces that had been created on the computer, they are very geometric, dense and simple. 

Column1	Method of Production	Character of Letterform
	Stone	Established, sophisticated, tradiitonal, commercial
Classic Pre Industrial	Sable	Rough, fast, fluid, gothic
	Bone	Elegant, femin, posh
	Wood	Simple, formal, carved, modern
Modern Post Industrial	Lead	Fragile, rounded, bold, minimal
	Silicon	Geometric, dense, textured, simple

After looking at these methods of production we grouped our typefaces into them. 

Stone

Sable

Bone 

Wood

Lead

Silicon

Anatomy of a Typeface

Bowl

A curved stroke that encloses a letters counter

Counter

Fully or partially enclosed space within a letter 

Stem

Primary vertical stroke 

Serif

"feet" or non structural details at the ends of some strokes. 

Sans serif

'Without serif' 

Stroke

    . Ascender An upward vertical stroke found on lowercase letters that extend above typefaces x height. 

    . Arm A horizontal stroke not connected on one of both ends 

    . Crossbar A horizontal stroke 

    . Descender A downward vertical stroke found on lowercase letters that extends below the baseline

    . Diagonal stroke An angled stroke

    . Ear A small stroke projecting from form the upper right bowl of some lowercase g's

    . Hairline The thin strokes of a serif typeface

    . Shoulder A curved stroke originating from a stem 

    . Spine The main curved stroke for a capital and lowercase s

    . Tail A descending stroke often decorative 

    . Terminal The end of a stroke that lacks a serif 

                                                                                                        

      

Baseline

The invisible line where letters sit 

X Height

The height of the main body of a lowercase letter 

------------------------ ^

------------------------  Point 

------------------------  Size 

------------------------ v

Point Size 

The size form the top of the ascender to the bottom of the descender

1 point = 1/72 inches = 25.4/72 mm = 0.3527 

12 points = 1 pica 

Information collected here: Anatomy of a typeface 

After this we were given a set of fonts that another person in our class had collected, we had to use the website identifont, so we could look closer at the font to find out what it was called. 

The 5 fonts that i found were: 

COURIER 

BELL

BRUSH SCRIPT STD

BAUHAUS 93

MONOTYPE BROADWAY 

After doing this i looked in more detail at one of the fonts. The font i have chosen to look into more detail at is: MONOTYPE BROADWAY  

Designer: Morris Fuller Benton (Sol Hess added a lowercase in 1929) 

Year: 1928 

Copyright: Monotype Classic Fonts 

Publisher:  Monotype 

Weight: 400

Glyphs: 252

Category: Sans Serif  

Similar fonts

ITC Manhattan 

Dremie 

Broadway 

Marquis 

Glitzy 

P22 Art Deco Display 

Digital versions are now made by Linotype, Elsner + flake, Monotype, Bitstream and URW++

Costs

Myfonts.com: $29 

Linotype.com: £29.75

ascenderfonts.com: $35.00

Fontshop.com: $35.00

Fonts.com: $29.00

The font is supposed to evoke the feeling of the twenties and thirties. It is a classic icon as a 'Art deco' font.