Typography - Task 1: Exercises
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23/9/2024 - 3/11/2024 / Week 1 - Week 5
Chuah Shu En / 0368157
Typography
/ Bachelor of Design in Creative Media / Taylors University
Task 1: Exercise 1 & 2
Table of Contents
Lectures
Week 1: Typo_0_Introduction
Typography is described as "the style and appearance of printed matter" as well as "the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed".
Basically, presenting textual information in various styles, arrangements and appearances.
Typo_1_Development
In this lecture, we learned about the development/timeline of typography. Initially, writing was scratching into wet clay with sticks or carving into stone with a chisel.
Phoenicians, like other Semitic peoples wrote from right to left. However, the Greeks developed a style of writing called 'boustrophedon' (how the ox ploughs), which meant that lines of text would be read alternately from right to left and left to right. As the direction changes, the orientation of the letterforms changed as well.
Etruscan (and then Roman) carvers would paint letterforms before inscribing them as marble and stone was expensive and thus certain qualities of their strokes would transfer over. Thus, another reason why we have the letterforms we see today.
Square capitals were the written version that can be found in Roman monuments.
Hand script: Compressed version of square capitals
Uncials: Small letters
Half uncials: Marked the beginning of lowercase letterforms
Week 2: Typo_3_Text_P1
Kerning: The automatic adjustment of space between letters
Letterspacing: Adding space between the letters
Tracking: Addition and removal of space in a word or sentence
Type Size: Text type should be large enough to be read easily at arms length
Leading: A text that is set too loosely or too tightly can easily lead the reader astray
Line Length: Shorter lines require less reading; longer lines require more. A good rule of thumb is to keep line length between 55-65 characters.
Compositional Requirement: Text should create a field that can occupy a page or a screen. Think of your ideal text as having a middle gray value not a series of stripes.
Week 3: Typo_3_Text_P2
Widow: A short line of type left alone at the end of a column of text
Orphan: A short line of type left alone at the start of a new column
'A' Head: Indicates a clear break between the topics within a section
'B' Head: Indicate a new supporting argument or example for the topic at hand
'C' head: Highlights a specific facets of material within B head text
Hierarchy: Putting together a sequence of subheads
Week 4: Typo_2_Basic
Baseline: The imaginary line 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
Arm: Short strokes off the stem of the letterform, either horizontal or inclined upward
Ascender: The portion of the stem of a lowercase letterform that projects above the median
Barb: The half-serif finish on some curved stroke
Bowl: The rounded form that describes a counter. The bowl may be either open or closed
Cross Bar: The horizontal stroke in a letterform that joins two stems together
Cross Stroke: The horizontal stroke in a letterform that joins two stems together
Descender: The portion of the stem of a lowercase letterform that projects below the baseline
Instructions
Tasks
Exercise 1 - Type Expression
The first task was to create type expressions using four words from a selection of words suggested by Mr. Vinod as well as the students. The four words I chose were 'Chop', 'Tangle', 'Pull' and 'Wind'.
1. Sketch
Fig 2.1, Sketch ideas of Type Expression for "chop",
I tried to picture how I wanted the words would move and drew sketches using Procreate on my tablet.
Chop
- In first two ideas for chop I decided to use the 'P' as sort of a knife/axe to chop the rest of the words. However in the third one I opted for something different which was having the word be sliced through the middle.
- I wanted the word 'Tangle' to actually look like it got knotted up with itself.
- For 'Pull', I tried stretching it out to make it look like it's been pulled like rubber. The third idea had the letters holding on to each other as if someone was trying to pull them apart.
- Wind was pretty simple and straightforward. I just made it so that it looked like the letters were flying away due to strong wind.
2. Digitisation
After getting my sketches done, I started on the digitisation process. I decided to go with my original sketches except for 'Pull', making the 'U' have the stretch effect instead of the whole word.
3. Final Type Expressions
After some feedback from Mr. Vinod, I moved the word 'Pull' up to make it look like it's being pulled from the ceiling.
4. Type Expression Animation
5. Final Type Expression Animation
After having done all the individual frames, I put it together in Adobe Photoshop following the tutorial provided to create an animated type expression.
Exercise 2: Text Formatting
Lecture 1:4
Lecture 2:4
Lecture 3:4
For this particular lecture, Mr. Vinod demonstrated how to insert pictures into the document. He also talked about ragging, not exceeding three as well as how some clients prefer to have hyphenate turned off.
Text Formatting
This was my first attempt at text formatting after watching all the lecture videos from Mr. Vinod. Something I felt I lacked was pictures and the size of the headline and byline felt off.
During class, Mr. Vinod gave us feedback and some more tips and reminders on how to improve our layouts such as being aware of cross-alignment, rivers, and orphans. He also shared a bit on gestalt theory and not choosing images with a lot of text as they could clash with the text that's supposed to be read. After receiving feedback, I worked on improving my layout.
Final Text Formatting Layout
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Feedback
Week 1:
General Feedback - Was tasked to set up e-portfolio website and come up with ideas for the first assignment.
Week 3:
Week 5:
General Feedback- Mr. Vinod checked all our work and gave tips and reminded us on certain things
Personal Feedback- Initially in my text formatting layout, my text wasn't cross-aligned and the font size for my byline was too big.
Reflections
Observations:
Findings:
Further Reading
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