Typography: Final Project: Expression, Hierarchy, and Composition
14/06/19-28/06/19 (Week 11-Week 13)
Angelina Lee An Qi (0334272)
Typography
Final Project: Expression, Hierarchy, and Composition
Lecture Notes
Lecture 10:
Raya break.
Lecture 11:
Each device comes with its own pre-installed font selection which is based largely on its operating system. The problem is that each differs a little bit.
Windows-based devices might have one group while MacOS ones pull from another. Then Google's own Android system uses their own as well.
'Web safe' ones, however, appear across all operating systems.
Best fonts for web:
- Open Sans
- Lato
- Arial
- Helvetica
- Times New Roman
- Times
- Courier New
- Courier
-Verdana
- Georgia
- Palatino
- Garamond
Lecture 12:
There was no lecture this week.
Lecture 13:
Submission week.
Instructions
Exercises
Week 11:
First I sketched out drafts and headlines.
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| Fig. 1.1 |
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| Fig. 1.2 |
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| Fig. 1.3 |
Week 12:
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| Fig. 2.1 At first I tried to go with something like this. |
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| Fig. 2.2 I tried to create movement with the word "GO". |
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| Fig. 2.3 Then I decided to narrow down my topic and talk about littering. I created a mask and put a picture of rubbish. |
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| Fig. 2.4 Then I removed the white areas between the word "LITTER" because Mr Vinod told me it was hard to read. |
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| Fig. 2.5 I tried enlarging the "THE" because Mr Vinod suggested it to me. |
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| Fig. 2.6 I changed it back because I thought it didn't really fit. |
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| Fig. 2.7 I then decreased the size of the subheading and made the mask slightly darker. |
Week 13:
This is the final outcome (PDF):
This is the final outcome (JPEG):
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| Fig. 3.1 |
This is the first animation of it:
I was not satisfied with it so I made another animation:
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| Fig. 3.2 |
When I saw how this animation turned out, I went back to Photoshop to slow it down.
This is the final animation:
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| Fig. 3.3 |
Feedback
Week 11: Mr Vinod said that I shouldn't think too much about the visual the words in the headline give itself but the meaning behind it.Week 12: Via Facebook, Mr Vinod said that I should keep note of the general concerns of the student body in Taylor's. He suggested that it was a little un-experimental.
In class, he said that my draft seems quite messy, and that it would be better to rethink it. After I did another piece he said that I should not leave empty spaces under the word 'litter' as it is not readable. He also told me to reduce the size of the sub-heading and try adding some scattered letters to show the word 'litter'. He then mentioned that I should use the font Univers, because I was using a different font earlier.
Week 13:
Mr Vinod's message in Facebook: "You will pass. But if you want to do better than that please remember what I tried to tell you... let the rubbish be made up of letters. Right now you have placed letters randomly. What I suggested was : where there are light areas put light coloured letters, where there are dark areas put dark coloured letters. This will help make it typographical. There is a quick way to do it. You could type out a whole bunch of text and use the many settings under the transparency window (I.e, multiply, overburn etc.)"
On the day of submission, Mr Shamsul and Mr Vinod said that my first animation was too subtle, and that it does not really communicate the message I want to send out. So, I made another animation.
Reflections
Experience:
Week 11: I was not really sure what message I wanted to convey when there are quite a number of concerns in the student body in Taylor's, so I asked my friends if they had any worries. Then, I remembered several recycling bins I pass by every time on the way to class, and noticed that there were still random trash strewn along the side of the roads to Taylor's, so I decided that my main topic would be to recycle or not litter.Week 12: From Mr Vinod's feedback, I had to choose between recycle or not litter because both of them are separate topics. I see the littering has been more prevalent, so I decided to go with that.
Observations:
Week 11: I had some ideas which spoke of the concern for road rage. I sketched some drafts of mainly traffic lights and how we should not drive unless it turns green.Week 12: I tried to create movement with the word "GO". I also had white empty space around a later draft of the word "LITTER".
Week 13: My first animation was too subtle and did not convey the message. My second animation went by too fast.
Findings:
Week 11: It was not really a concern for the Taylor's student body particularly, as not everyone drives. So I just decided to stick with my original idea, which is to promote saving the environment.Week 12: The movement with the word "GO" did not work out really well so I removed it. Then on a later draft the white space in between "LITTER" was removed because it was hard to read.
Week 13: I decided to make another animation after the first. On the second one, I went back to Photoshop to fix it.
Further Reading
Week 11:
Experimental typography. Whatever that means. by Peter Bilak
"An epistemology of the word 'experimental' as it applies to design and type, contrasted with its scientific connotations. Examples of past and current design, type and reading/language, as well as scientific experiment, are taken into account."
David Carson, an American designer, defined experimentation as "...something that hasn't been seen or heard." He and several other designers suggest that the nature of experiment lies in the formal novelty of the result.
Another dominant notion of experiment was formulated by Michael Worthington, a British designer based in the USA, saying that "true experimentation means to take risks." If taken literally, a question that pops up is what would be at stake and what the typographers are actually risking.
However, do type design and typography as a whole allow any space for experimentation at all? The alphabet is naturally dependent on a set of rules that makes it recognizable as letters.
Week 12:
Calcula by Shiva Nallaperumal
Calcula, an experimental typeface, was Nallaperumal's final assignment in her graduate typeface design class. She explained the process of how she designed it, as well as the challenges she faced while doing it.
I personally found it helpful as it gave me some sort of insight of how I need my thought process to be. Although it would have helped me in project 2 as well, I think this article was also helpful for this final project because of how experimental it is.
Week 13:
Designing Type Systems by Peter Bilak
Univers is a typeface that goes beyong designing individual letters--it designs space and creates a system of relationships between different sets of shapes which share distinctive parameters. Before Univers, type designers involved themselves with the correlations of letters in the same set. However, Univers created a situation where there are a's of many different shapes and each has to be positioned on the axes of weight and width, distributed sufficiently far away from the next, but no further, in order to create a usable system.
The nature of systems is to dictate a certain direction; the role of designers is to recognize when the original idea ceases to work within the system, and then to create exceptions to the system rather than letting the system have a negative impact on the design. Some fonts, as time goes on, the design becomes blander and less interesting as it is stretched across its variations.
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