OUGD404 - The Language of Graphic Design

These are my notes from todays design principles session.

Line length and distance affects readability as the more lines text uses, it makes you pause after each one, therefore if a sentence is just on one line it is easier to digest.

Script fonts are display fonts, and the amount of words affect readability as they are chaotic and take time to digest. When it is bodycopy it is illegible, but when there are too many words enlarged it is too chaotic.

Look and Listen are the two things that we need to be capable of as designers.

The solution to a problem of communication through design.

Semiotics
Sign
Symbol
Signifier

Apple -
Sign for Apple Mac
Symbolies an apple, not an actual apple
Signifies creativity, independence, quality and lifestyle

We will work with type, type and image, and type as image.

Visual literacy is multicultural and a global language.

Pictograms are found at airports because it is an international language.

For this weeks task we had to stick up the five fonts we collected in the most readable point size, and discuss them.

We then had to trace the letterforms that we bought in, and make them into thinner and bolder fonts.

OUGD404 - Design Principles: Type and Character

These are my notes from this weeks design principles session.

'Type is speech made visible'

People learning to read made type have a purpose. Previously, we had word of mouth, poets, plays, storytellers, and town priors who once a week would go around the town telling people the weekly news. 
People speak with accents, different tones, emotions etc, which is what type is and why there are different types.

Vocabularly 
Tracking, kerning, weight, stroke, font family, font, typeface, lowercase/uppercase, serif, sans serif, script, blackletter, display, monotype, symbol.

Typeface
A collectioon of characters, letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation etc which have the same distinct design.
Font
The physical means used to describe a typeface, be it computer code, woodblock, lithographic film etc.

Typeface is the whole font family, but the font is the specific weight. 

For the group exercise we had to categorise the fonts we had all bought in, into different categories:
Bold/Italic
Bold/Condensed
Light/Italic
Regular 

We then had to categorise them into these categories, which made it a lot easier.

There are four ways in which we categorise fonts:
Roman
Gothic
Block
Script

Legibility/Readability
The counter is the biggest thing what helps us distinguish shapes because of the negative space. It helps us to recognise letterforms. 

Legibility is the degree to which glyphs (individual characters) in text are understandable or recognisable based on appearance.

Readability is the ease in which text can be read and understood. It is influenced by line length, primary and secondary leading, justification, typestyle, kerning, tracking, point size etc.

Leading is space between each glyph.
Tracking is about increasing leading so there is a greater space between each letter.
Kerning is about decreasing the leading. When writing bodycopy, you should never using kerning as it decreases readability.
Rule - no more than 3 typefaces should be used at once.

OUGD404 - Type Anatomy

 These are some notes from Freds Design Principle session last week.

Visual Communication is a process of sending and recieving and is based on a shared understanding of signs, symbols, gestures and objects. It is affected by audience, context, media and method of distrubution.

Visual Literacy
The ability to construct meaning from visual images and type.
Interpreting images of the present, past and a range of cultures.
Producing images that effectively communicate a message to an audience.

Rules are there to be learnt, but can later be broken.
Principles are things to be explored, and can be applied to our own understanding, and are there to be questioned.

Core statement - all that is nessacery for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another. Eg, this 'T' is a T. When put next to a 'H' we understand/pronounce it as 'Th' - we have to accept that; it is a rule.

Type is basis of my practise
Develop an understanding of it by using it
We don't have an option of choosing it as type is basis of everything in Graphic Design
How we work with it is our choice, but we first have to understand the rules and principles.

What is Typography?
Through the centuries different materials have been used to create type, depending on what has been available.
Stone - when type was chiselled with stone there had to be serifs so that when carving, the lines would meet an end
Sable - brushes, sticks in stone, from oriental culture
Bone - driven through the middle east, created a fluid type with a nib
Wood - more forward, could carve it still, but it kept it shape so more type could be produced - woodblock type
Lead/Metal - gave more options with fineness of the line
Silicone - digital age, based on mathematical on screen. Mimics brush, quill etc

Origins are grounded in print - digital has only been around for 20 years, type has been around for over 2000.
Bauhaus was first time that arts and crafts were merged with industrialisation
Form had to follow function in type in Bauhaus
Graphic Design was born out of Bauhaus

Typography Timeline
1450. Johann Guthen created moveable type. By 1455 he made 42 line bible
1716 - 28 William Caslon created old style typeface which are the model for several typefaces in use today
1750 - John Baskerville created transitional typefaces
17th/18th century saw industrialisation allowing for mass production

Enlightenment period - people were creating notebooks, experiments etc, and there was a need to let it be known on a mass scale - birth of publication.
People began to learn to read - only in 1920 did the education act come into practise so everyone from the age of 5 had to read.

Bauhaus came as a response to this.

As a group task we had to seperate the five typefaces we all bought in each into different categories.
Our categories were:

Sans serif
Serif regular
Serif bold
Handrendered
Calligraphic

Here are photos of the types in their categories:

We then had to sort out the same typefaces into the categories that type originated from: stone, sable, wood, metal, bone and silicone.
As a whole class, we then had to desribe the top font using one word and write it on a table along with everyone elses.

This table is a replica of the one in class where everybodies descriptions of a font were put up for each category. The words that are underlined are the ones that my group came up with.


Point is the size of a letter:

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

12 points = 1 pica


Origins in print - lowercase and uppercase
In the print foundry letters would be organised into cases - and the capital letters would be in the case above the lowercase letters, and that's where the names uppercase and lowercase originated from.

Type Anatomy
Stem - significant vertical stroke
Sans serif - without serifs
Bowl - rounded form that describes counter
Terminal - point at which the serif/stem ends