Typography // Task 1: Exercises

29/3/2022 - 25/04/2022 / Week 1 - Week 5

Trinity Wong Ka Yi / 0348778

Typography / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media / Taylor's University

Task 1 - Exercises

LECTURES

WEEK 1 - LECTURE 1 - DEVELOPMENT

The development of typography over 500 years.

Early letterform development: Phoenician to Roman

Writing started out as scratching into wet clay with a sharp stick or carving into stone with a chisel. The Greeks changed the direction of writing and reading, so it was written and read alternately from right to left and left to right. The orientation of the letterforms was also flipped based on the direction of writing and reading. Etruscan carvers, followed by then Roman carvers painted letterforms before carving marble to prevent mistakes.

Figure 1.2 Evolution of early letterform. Taken from Mr. Vinod's lecture slides.

Hand script from 3rd to 10th century C.E.

Square capitals were created around the 4th to 5th century which was written with a reed pen at an angle of approximately 60 degrees off the perpendicular. This allowed variety of stroke width which formed the serif.

Rustic capitals, the compressed cousin of square capitals, were the faster and more space-efficient alternative written at an angle of approximately 30 degrees off the perpendicular, though they were much harder to read.

Both square and rustic capitals were mainly used on more formal documents, whereas cursive handwriting was the norm for daily use as it was simplified for speed. This sparked the beginning of lowercase letterforms.

Eventually, over the centuries, many people started to develop their own style of letterforms, e.g.: John Baskerville

WEEK 2 - LECTURE 2 - LEXICON

This week we learnt the basic terminologies of typography to familiarize ourselves with.

Baseline - The imaginary line that is the visual base of the letterforms.
Median - The imaginary line defining the x-height of letterforms.
X-height - The height in any typeface of the lowercase ‘x’.
Stroke - Any line that defines the basic letterform

Apex/Vertex - The point created by joining two diagonal stems (apex above and vertex below)

Arm - Short strokes off the stem of the letterform, either horizontal (E, F, L) or inclined upward (K, Y).
Ascender - The portion of the stem of a lowercase letterform that projects above the median.
Barb - The half-serif finish on some curved stroke.
Beak - The half-serif finish on some horizontal arms.
Bowl - The rounded form that describes a counter. Can be either open or closed.
Bracket - The transition between the serif and the stem.
Cross Bar - The horizontal stroke in a letterform that joins two stems together.

Stress - The orientation of the letterform, indicated by the thin stroke in round forms.

Figure 1.3 Made by Martin Silvertant. Taken from Typography (TDS) Facebook group.

WEEK 3 - LECTURE 3 - TYPE (PART 1)

Kerning - automatic adjustment of space between letters

Letterspacing - add space between the letters

Formatting Text

If you see the type before you see the words, change the type.

Type size - Should be large enough to be read easily at arm's length.

Leading - Text that is set too tightly will cause vertical eye movement, but type that is set too loosely will result in striped patterns. Both should not be done as it will distract the reader from the material at hand.

Line Length - Shorter lines need less leading, but longer lines need more leading. Ideal line length is between 55-65 characters.

WEEK 4 - LECTURE 4 - TYPE (PART 2)

Pilcrow (¶) - holdover from medieval manuscripts seldom use today.

Line space (aka leading) - between the paragraphs. Hence if the line space is 12pt, then the paragraph space is 12pt. This ensures cross-alignment across columns of text.

Widow - short line of type alone at the end of a column of text.
Orphan - short line of type alone at the start of new column.

To get rid of widows, rebreak your line endings throughout your paragraph so that the last line of any paragraph is not noticeably short.

Ways to highlight text:

Bold
Use a different colour
Place a field of colour at the back of the text

Headlines within Text

This defines the hierarchy in the design.

A heads - a clear break between the topics within a section.

B heads - indicate a new supporting argument or example for the topic at hand. Hence, they should not interrupt the text as strongly as A heads.

C heads - shows specific facets of material within B head text. C heads in this configuration are followed by at least an empty space for visual separation.

WEEK 5 - LECTURE 5 - UNDERSTANDING LETTERFORMS

Although many typefaces appear to look similar, different typefaces have its own different quirks. For example, bowls, stems and x-height can differ from typeface to typeface.

Maintaining x-height is standard but a few letters that have curve strokes at the top such as 'r' and 's' need to exceed the median line. Meanwhile, letters that have curve strokes at the bottom like 'a' have to exceed the baseline.

WEEK 6 - LECTURE 6 - SCREEN & PRINT

Typefaces work differently on different mediums. Serif typefaces tend to be better on print. whereas sans serif typefaces suit screen better. The standard font size for books is usually 12pt as it is readable at arm's length, which is equivalent to 16ptx on screens.

INSTRUCTIONS

Figure 2.1 Module Information Booklet for Typography. (5/4/2022)

EXERCISE 1 - TYPE EXPRESSION

PROGRESS AND IDEA EXPLORATION

Week 2

Figure 3.1 My Week 2 progress of Text Expression exercise. (5/4/2022)

Figure 3.2 Extra exploration for Text Expression exercise. (5/4/2022)

Week 3

Figure 3.3 My Week 3 Progress for Type Expression. (12/4/2022)

Figure 3.4 My Week 3 Progress for Type Expression Animation. (12/4/2022)

Figure 3.5 My Week 3 Progress for Type Expression Animation. (12/4/2022)

Week 4

Figure 3.6 My Week 4 Progress for Type Expression Animation. (19/4/2022)

Fixed the size of the C but messed up the frame rate so he's speed coughing like there's no tomorrow.

FINAL WORK

Figure 3.7 My Final Type Expression in .jpg (20/4/2022)

Figure 3.8 My Final Type Expression in .pdf (20/4/2022)

Figure 3.9 My Final Type Expression Animation. (19/4/2022)

EXERCISE 2 - TYPE FORMATTING

PROGRESS AND IDEA EXPLORATION

Week 4

Figure 3.10 Kerning exercise. (24/4/2022)

Week 5

Figure 3.11 First draft layout for text formatting. (25/4/2022)

Figure 3.12 Second draft layout for text formatting. (25/4/2022)

Figure 3.13 Third draft layout for text formatting. (26/4/2022)

Figure 3.14 Fourth layout for text formatting. (26/4/2022)

Figure 3.15 Revised fourth layout for text formatting. (26/4/2022)

Improved ragging and decreased leading and font size from 10pt to 9pt.

Figure 3.16 Second time revised fourth layout for text formatting. (27/4/2022)

FINAL WORK

Figure 3.17 Final Type Formatting Exercise - Kerning in .jpg (27/4/2022)

Figure 3.18 Final Type Formatting Exercise - Layout in .jpg (27/4/2022)

Figure 3.19 Final Type Formatting Exercise in .pdf (27/4/2022)

Typeface : Univers LT Std

Font : Univers LT Std 55 Roman, 45 Light Oblique, 59 Ultra Condensed

Font size : 80pt, 16pt, 9pt

Leading: 12pt

Paragraph Spacing: 12pt

Average characters per line : 50-60 characters

Alignment: Left Align

Margins : 36px (top, left, right, bottom)

Columns : 4

Gutter (for columns) : 12px

FEEDBACK

Week 2

General feedback: Made at least 2 sketches for each word and tried to keep it

simple and straightforward. Specific feedback: Cough (Face) - Use the actual C and don't distort it but add on the face features. "ough" maintain the same as the sketch. Explode, Squeeze and Wink are good to go. Use the first explode and squeeze, but the second wink.

Week 3

General feedback: Most are too distorted. Cough and Wink are fine.

Specific feedback: Wink - create the smile using a cut out from a circle. Cough - the angle is not necessary but it's good. Explode and Squeeze are way too distorted. Animation - The C is too heavy so it makes it not balanced.

Week 4

General feedback: N/A

Specific feedback: N/A

Week 5

General feedback: Text Formatting - Bad.

Specific feedback: Text Formatting - Ragging is bad. Increase the leading. Reduce the font size because it has to be either in between 50-60 characters or 55-65 characters.

REFLECTION

Experience

Doing this assignment was quite fun because we got to explore our own ideas and interpretation of words as well as layouts. However, there were a lot of hiccups along the way because many things did not turn out the were I imagined them to be. Having to adapt and get roasted every class was not the most fun but I learnt a lot from it. One of the things being: never watch a lecture at 1am. My brain half absorbed most of the things which led to me making a lot of mistakes. 1/10 Would not do it again.

Observations

I realized that typography does not seem as easy as I thought as there is a lot of thought that goes behind it. Each alphabet, each line, each paragraph has to be carefully crafted as details are important in typography. It is quite time-consuming but once I got the hang of it, it was worth the work.

Findings

I found that typography is more complex than I thought. Typography is not just text, it consists of composition, hierarchy, and much more things. And I also found out that I am pretty bad at typography and I need to improve more.

Trinity Wong Ka Yi 0348778

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