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. 

STUDIO BRIEF 3 - ALPHABET SOUP - ILLUSTRATOR

Final Envelope design

Produce an alphabet based on one of the letterforms you created from the Alphabet soup, visual thinking brief. Once again you are restricted to using one colour and it is to be produced in CMYK ( cyan, magenta, yellow, key). Although you are restricted to one colour you experiment with opacity and half tones. 


Background/Considerations


Think visually. Consider what the visual essence of you subject matter is and hwo best to communicate it. How can these letterfroms that you create be developed further now that you are working digitally? The following terms may prove useful: Trace, edit, layer, combine, silhouette, positive /negative, contrast. 

For this workshop the emphasis is on investigation and experimentation. You will develop a quantity of material that will allow you to maximise your understanding of the applications potential within the time available.

Make mistakes in order to learn from them.

I firstly started off choosing a letter to recreate, i selected this letterform because from my cirt it was choose as the best one by my peers. I also feel it is the strongest, because it represents the word 'layers' the best. 

Staring to create the letterform

To start i drew this small rectangle and copied it several times, placing them in the shape of the letterform. Next using the blend tool that i described about on a earlier post (here). Then like joining the dots i created the shape. 

This was the resulting shape shown on the right after duplicating the rectangle. Then after using the blend tool the H was created.

This was the resulting outcome after using the same technique above of all the alphabet. I feel it has produced a strong alphabet, with interesting shades within the letter creating a 3D look. Some letters also look as if they have been twisted because of how the rectangle has blended i.e. the E, G and O. 

EXPERIMENTATION 



I wanted to see what i could do with my alphabet so i started looking at different effects that could be done illustrator and basically having a play. I firstly changed it to look more 3D, i feel this has become too bubbly and has lost a lot of detail. 

 I really this experimentation, the effect it has done is make it look pixelated, each letter has formed its own mosaic with different shapes and shadows within it. 

Next i created a glow and changed the colour of the typeface, like the 3D experiment this has lost all its detail and isn't very effective, it also doesn't represent layers anymore.  

This one is similar, but there is a blend form one colour to another which i think is effective, it also unlike the one above has maintained its detail. Although this doesn't fit with the deliverables on the brief because it contains more than one colour. 
  

As you can see below i then highlighted the alphabet and selected feather. 

 This then created the alphabet shown below, i really like how delicate it has made the typeface, not as hard edged as it started off as, it also gives it a slight glow, but maintains the contrast between different strokes of the letter. 

Next i wanted to see what it would look like if it was created by circles and not rectangles, so i again selected stylize and rounded corners. 

This was the result of creating rounded edges, the shape turned into a oval, i think this is very effective and is just as strong as the original. Not only is the small shape that forms the letter rounded but it also transforms the overall shape of the letter, making it look softer and maybe in some sense smoother. 

Next i again started to experiment with different effect techniques. So i selected the roughen to see what effect this gave thinking it would slightly alter the line of the small shapes. 

This is the effect that it gave, creating shapes that look like they have been formed by bunches of screwed up paper. It has created a strong visual alphabet that again has strong contrast within the letters. Also the contrast between the curved letters and the crazy lines that form them. 

The final experiment i did was to do the scribble, which can be seen below. I feel this isn't as controlled as the roughen effect because letters are starting to overlap each other and some letters also become illegible. 

FINAL DESIGN 

Writing with my typeface

Picture of my final design 

Print Workshop

We were given a induction into a a few different printing methods, monoprint, lino print and letterpress. 
This process was monoprint, it was done by using a stencil which i repeated by moving the stencil and then going back over with the roller. 

 The image above shows the stages of how i went through creating the layers letter.


Below are the tools i used to create the letterform on the lino mat. 

This is the printing press i used to create the print, as seen below. The print that is produced is very clean and crisp with a lot of contrast between the white and black. 

 I then created the same letter but using the lino pad. I feel this has produced a better outcome because it is more clean and crisp. There is alos more definition on individual lines.  

 These are the three prints i took form the lino board the middle one which i did first i then changed by adding more little sharp lines, then printed the letterform below. The final print is the top image where the ink faded because i had already printed it twice. 

This was a letterpress i created to try and resemble one of my letters. It is a capital g and uppercase G overlapped. I really like the big R and the smaller capital R where i have used 2 different typefaces.   

I then experimented with the letterpress because i felt it provided a interesting texture especially on the gloss paper.