Design Principles

Typography-

1. The art and technique of printing with movable   

    type.

2. The composition of printed material from movable

    type.

3. The arrangement and appearance of printed

   matter.

The Anatomy of Type - X height is a high as the x, it is not always half the cap height 

Point sizes- point sizes always go up in 12's. 

12 points= 1 pica 
24 points= 2 pica ect ect 

The difference between a Font and and a Typeface 

FONT

The physical means used to create a typeface, be it computer code, lithographic film, metal or woodcut

One weight, width, and style of a typeface. Before scalable type, there was little distinction between the terms font, face, and family. Font and face still tend to be used interchangeably, although the term face is usually more correct.

TYPEFACE

A collection of characters, letters, numbers, symbols, punctuation etc. which have the same distinct design

Typeface Family

The collection of faces that were designed together and intended to be used together. For example, the Garamond font family consists of roman and italic styles, as well as regular, semibold, and bold weights. Each of the style and weight combinations is called a face.

You produce a font, you design a typeface.

As a task in class we had to choose one of out nine fonts that we had collected from over the past two weeks and manipulate it how we wanted, I chose American Typewriter. I wanted to immediately take the serifs off because I think they look ugly, then I wanted to make the weight thicker on some of the lines to make it bolder.  

From this we then used a piece of tracing paper and found the cap, baseline and x height, this was a good exercise, I learnt that my moderations need to change on all upper and lower case letters for it to work. 

Type- Production & Distribution

Typography is language/ speech made visual. 

Typography had to of started from somewhere, no one can actually state when language began but it was around 3200 BC 

The first alphabets consisted of voules and contstants to represent certain sounds. The first alphabet was a greek alphabet that got developed it then turned into latin. 

Pictorgrams developed into symobs then an alphabet that we could all use to make it easier. 

If the first and last letters are right in a sentence we can understand it, we have a durable language. 

(1450) Gutenberg- made the first printing press. 

This was the origin and definition of typography and how we see it now, this is also how wood block developed. Some people like to call him the Grandfather of type, but people forget that 300 years before this was developed China was already using woodblock type. This was where many typefaces developed. 

'Language sounds different, so language looks different' 

William Foster 

• Biggest impact of type within Britain 
• Influenced the need for type
• Introduced the elementary education act 
• Up until William Foster introduced schools and education reading was a privilege and was only really taught to the wealthy

(1919) Walter Gropius

• Gropuis introduced type as a broader design process 
• He showed us the need for hand drawn type and making it more decorative 
• The typewriter was created for the masses and to make type quicker

(1919-1933) Bauhaus 

• Bauhaus introduced the modernist way of thinking
• Designing set design and furniture
• Mass production
• Birthpace of modern design and education 
• Merging of the arts and crafts movement

Max Miendinger 

• The creater of Helvetica 
• Helvetica was an expression of modernism 
• He designed it as a brand/ identity 
• Helvetica is still an ongoing font that can get updated, it got updated in 2003

1982- Arial

• In 1982 Arial came out, the rip of version of Helvetica 
• Exactly 25 years of Helvetica being out Arial was then realised 

1990- Tim Berners

• The creator of the Internet
• First idea of a browser 
• Gave it away for free

1995- Bill Gates 

• Invented internet explorer
• The way we communicate 
• This had a huge impact on the way we use language 

From this lecture I also learnt how much Microsoft have controlled type, I found this lecture interesting and I found out things that I didn't previously know. 

Brief 4: Message Delivery Research- Crit

Today I have had my crit on my research that I have been doing for the past week. I now need to focus my research on one specific area. The crit was useful for deciding that, people had a lot of opinions on Facebook in general. I focused my research a lot about how to stay safe online, but I found this quite boring. Some of the other ideas from the crit were:

• Look into someone who is Facebook famous, question them on why they enjoy Facebook so much and what attracts them to it
• Do people actually care? Half the things people see on Facebook on other people lives, do people actually care? 
• Access information through apps, people tend not to read the terms and conditions on the apps they download and link them to Facebook unaware how much information they can actually access about you
• Is Facebook good or bad thing? 
• The generation we live in, if Facebook didn't exist how this would impact their lives 
• Different ways of life, how different other countries are that don't live with modern technology, how this impacts them, are they happier? Which country uses Facebook more ect ect  
• How people become obsessed with Facebook 
• Does social networking make you less social? 

When I research further I need to have more of an opinion, and focus into one particular area. 

Brief 4: Chosen Newspaper Article- Facebook lifts its sharing restrictions

I have been through my two news papers that I brought on tuesday and I have found an article that I am interested in and I think will be and interesting subject to look into. I have found this article about privacy settings on social networks and who is actually looking at your information/ pictures ect. I think this is going to be something interesting to look into and relevant for my age range. I am thinking of starting a survey with my class and flat mates to find out what are the most popular social networks and whether they actually know what there privacy settings on Facebook are.

Here I have read through the story and picked out the bits that I find interesting and the way that it is written. I have noticed that it is very patronising story and it is written by and older man that talks like all teenagers are stupid and careless. There is also a lot of statistics in this article which I like as it seems to put things into perspective. It is a very opinionated article by analysts and higher education people. 

To kickstart my research I thought I would do abit of primary research first to find out if people really are as clueless about there privacy settings as they making out, also to find out how many people have Facebook's rivals. I went round the graphics class and asked 25 people what social networks they are on, the feedback was interesting as i found out that 5 people don't even have Facebook or any social media because they find it pointless, however others have all social networks and were listing off others that they have. 

 Here I created a pie chart of the primary research that I have gathered. This is a useful indication of which is most popular, I think Facebook should be worried as there are a lot of rivals that have a lot of teenagers on them also. Twitter is one of Facebook biggest rivals. However all of these social networks are used for different purposes. 

Here I put my other question in a pie chart, again I think this was useful, as it proves that more people do know there privacy settings on Facebook. 

I have began some secondary research looking into other social networks and how they differ from Facebook.

Instagram- Online photosharing, video sharing and social networking service that enables users to take pictures and videos applying digital filters to them and share them with more networking services

Twitter- An online social networking and microblogging service that enables users to send and read 'tweets' which are text messages limited to 140 characters, aslso you are able to follow a lot of celebrities on twitter. 

Snapchat- Photo messaging application developed by Stanford University Students. You can send photo's and video's to all friends and they can only be opened for a certain amount of time.

Whatsapp- Messenger across majority of smart photos. In addition to text messaging, users can send each other images, video and audio media messages. 

Also I have looked into how people can stay safe online buy just doing simple things. Passwords are an easy way to stay safe online, by simply having different passwords for different accounts you can stay safer. Simple things like don't give your bank details out to websites that don't have the secure sign at the top of the web browser. 

Brief 3: Alphabet soup- Typeface Crit

Today I had my crit on Studio Brief 3, creating a typeface on our partners. This was the most useful crit so far! We did the crit in a different format instead of us all gathered round a table and talking about our work we placed our work out on the desks and next to them we put an A2 sheet of paper and we all went round and wrote comments on peoples progress. This is such a better way as the people who don't normally say anything in a crit can write something about the work anominusly. 

This was so useful! It has given me some great feed back, what people thought was good and why ect. but I have also gained some great ideas of how to move forward with this brief, which I good as I was struggling for ideas. 
Some key points/ideas I have gained from todays crit:

• Because of Harry's favourite designer being Brockmann why not think about grids?
• Try merging some fonts together, maybe overlapping two or more fonts
• Develop the idea of the letters being laid back
• He is a big fan of clean sans serif type, you could develop it to look more swiss/clean
• His handwriting looks italic you could work with this idea 
• Taller font (architecute) and Italic for laid back personality/ handwriting, possibly combine?
• Architecture idea is strong, maybe look into 3D structure? City design? 
• Mix his handwriting with a font from his favourite designer 
• The change of the x-eight is effective but doesn't really represent architecture 
• Research into type associated with architecture? Most common typefaces used on buildings and/or Blueprints during the design stage
• Look into structure
• Refer to Harrys handwriting, why not add angles and diagonal lines and his handwriting is quite italic in different directions, quite unique
• Make the font chosen more symmetrical and balanced
• Architecture a strong idea... look into different buildings, shapes, heights and manipulate text

To move forward I am going to develop some of these ideas that I find interesting, I love the idea of the 3D lettering to represent Harry's love for architecture, I think this could be an interesting concept. I am also going to look further into Brockmann and maybe look into the grid concept. I think it would be good to look into Harry's handwriting further and look at the angles and the italics in it. 

Brief 3- Choosing a font for Harry

I've began to gradually research into harry further and the key components that will help me choose a font to develop. 

From the main questionnaire and other questions I asked I printed off some useful images that lets me gain an insight of what sort of person he is and also what sort of design he likes personally. I drew out a mind map that shows what I found interesting about Harry. I looked into Scandinavian design, his favourite band kraftwork which he loves the design of the artwork, the berlin skyline as he loves the architecture and its his favourite city. Also I got him to write his make out in upper and lower case to see what his handwriting is like, as maybe this could influence my chose in font. 

I found it interesting of what other peoples handwriting looks like and how they are all very different and individual, so I then got Harry to write out the whole alphabet in upper and lowercase to see what his full range is like. Again I then looked at some more images that I think would influence my chose, then from all the research that i gathered my initial thought was to go for Helvetica but i didn't want to go for something so boring, so I looked into the adobe font folio. 

I went through the full adobe font folio and chose out ones that would be suitable, I found a really good one that I loved called 'Prestige Elite' unfortunately it was a serif but Harry said that he prefered a san-serif font, so after further looking in the book I came across a font called 'Letter Gothic Std Medium' this is a very light and simple font which I found perfect for Harry's style.  

This font is perfect for Harry as it simple yet effective, much like alot of the design that he's into, although i much prefer the font in uppercase. 

Here are some very quick manipulations I have made to the font, I have tried to make the top one more laid back as he is a very laid back individual and the second one I have tried to make the stems of the letters longer as he enjoys looking at architecture, and the tallness of the letters at different heights could represent the buildings.   

Visual Literacy- Session 1

With Fred we learnt about Visual Literacy within Graphic Design. Here are the key elements of visual language within Graphic Design. 

• Type

• Legibility

• Readability

• Type and image

• Colour

• Layout

• Type and Grid

• Frame

• Format

• Figure and Form

• Composition

• Visual Dynamics 

Typography developed throughout different material, and this is where we get our different typefaces from without realising. 

Stone- the majority of typefaces with serifs have been developed in stone because every time they tried to  calve into stone it split, so they added it to be part of the typeface. 

Sable- script writing using different nibs

Bone- generally have more of a natural feel

Wood- wood type was created this had many advantages, it was moveable, available for repetition produced on a mass scale and upper and lower cases we're developed.  

Lead- lead type is more controllable, available in different scales, moulding and cast was made to produce on a mass scale. 

Silicone- typefaces that have to be created on the computer, as they have no other origin. 

Here we tried to organise them into categories ourselves, as a group we thought we found it relatively easy, but when Fred came to have a look we had got a few wrong, it's a lot more complicated then I initially thought. 

Some Characteristics of type

• Line weight 
• Quality of line
• Serif/Sans serif
• Geometry
• Chronology
• Name/Identity  

We then organised the letters into our own groups that we found relevant  the groups being: hand rendered, script, sans serif, width and serif. 

Brief 2: Alphabet Soup- Illustrator

I need to develop my 10 initial ideas from the previous brief into one full alphabet by choosing to develop one of my designs and illustrating it.  From the crit I found a lot of people liked the leaf idea, how humans would not exist without the aid of plants, also I personally like the ghost idea as i think i will find it easiest to design into a full alphabet. 

Here I have developed the Helvetic alphabet abit more as I found that I wouldnt be able to do alot with the normal one as a full alphabet. I delevloped it to make it fatter, and to keep to the space theme. 

Then taking the leaf idea I then experimented with leaves with leaf rubbings and scanning them in and experimenting in photoshop to look at the veins in a leaf in more detail. I then drew out the whole alphabet and experimented with my three favourite ideas, I quickly found this alot harder than i orginally thought. I found the alien one doesnt work well as a full typeface as the eyes dont fit well in the letter 'i' and 'j'. 

 I enjoyed experimenting with leaves and seeing the different patterns they produce when you manipulate them differently, I think this was a useful exercise. 

Here i wanted to see the ghost type as a full alphabet, so i redrew the original out and added the ghost features, I think this has worked well. I like the cartoon theme to it, it feels quite illustrative and child like. 

I also wanted to see the leaf rubbing thing in a full alphabet so I drew out the full alphabet again and rubbed over it with wax crayon and leaves and cut the letters out and scanned them in. I love this as a design, to develop it on illustrator I think I might draw the letters out and add the leaf rubbings in, however I'm not very advanced in illustrator so I think I might find it tricky. 

Brief 4: Message Delivery- Newspapers

Yesterday, we got briefed on studio brief 4 all about message delivery. We need to create a body of research in response to a story that we need to find in tomorrows news paper. 

Yesterday we looked into types of newspaper and how they differ.

Types of newpaper

• Broadsheet 
• Tabloid 
• Regional 
• Local
• Specific papers
• Free sheets

Boardsheets 

• Washington Post 
• New York Times
• Times
• Telegraph 
• Financial Times
• Gaudian 

Tabloid

• Indipentant 
• Metro 
• The People
• Mirror 
• Daily Mail 
• Yorkshire Post 
• Daily Express 

Reginal Post 

• Yorkshire post
• Lancashire telegraph
• Express and Star
• Express and Echo
• Evening mail
• Telford Jornal 
• Echo 

News Sites

• This Morning
• Bing
• ITV Online
• Google News
• BBC News
• Sky News 
• Yahoo! 
• Red It 
• Gaudian 
• Observer
• Indipendent 
• CNN
• Fox

Programs 

• 6 and 10 o'clock news
• Daybreak
• This Morning 
• 8 to 10 cats 
• Moc of the Week
• Have I got News for You
• Question Time
• One Show

There are many different ways in the media of how to portray different news stories. Also social networking is now a massive part of news stories now, especially with twitter with the introduction of the hashtag and trending topics. Radio also has a lot of news on it, which is portrayed in a formal way. 

Today I brought two papers, The Sun which is a tabloid and a Guardian which is a broadsheet. Immediately you can notice some main differences, one being the size, board sheets are usually twice the size as a tabloid, which makes them really awkward to read. Also the amount of body text on the broadsheets is a lot more, they go into a lot more detail with longer articles. I have also noticed that the language in a broadsheet is a lot more formal, the broadsheet is usually read by the more educated and by people in authority. Tabloids also cover a lot more of the gossip stories and contain a lot more gossip stories.  

Above I took this image to prove how different the two different newspapers are as you can see the one above (tabloid) has a lot more adverts and celeb stories, whereas the broadsheet goes into a lot more finical and education issues. Now I need to read the newspapers and choose stories that I'm interested in to research further into the topic. 

Studio Brief 3: Development of Ideas- Scandinavian design

Now I am getting quite a good idea of what font to choose for Harry. I found it interesting of how he is influenced with scandinavian design, to research further and understand this countries design I looked in the library for a book. 

 

 

This book was very useful as i realised how simple Scandinavian design is and how structed it is, there is alot of use of black combined with a bold colour, I found this a lot more useful than looking online for designs as i found the internet very limiting. This has made me realise that I want something structured and simple for Harry's font as i think this would reflect him well, also i want it to be sans- serif. 

Faces Anatomy of Autonomy Exhibition

Today I visited Leeds Gallery for the Faces Anatomy of Autonomy exhibition. I really enjoyed the exhibition and loved how simple everything was. Lee Goater originally created eight different characters to represent different genders, ages and cultures. Surprised by how the different characters were interpreted led Lee to further question the idea of self. My favourite piece was the faces typeface of all the different accessories, it kind of reminded me of Mr. Potato head. The gallery had a very positive happy vibe, I left and downloaded the app to create my own faces. 

Brief 2: First Illustrator Tutorial

Today I had my first illustrator workshop, I found this extremely helpful! As at sixth form I didn't get taught any software, and I have taught myself photoshop through YouTube. We did a few exercises using the pen tool, this was interesting to see how much you can do with one tool, apparently it is one of the main tools. I am going to try and download illustrator for my own mac, as I feel it will be extremely useful and I want to practice on it. I feel that this will be a skill that I will slowly pick up gradually I just need to keep at it. 
I also learnt some tips including:
Cmd+O= to veiw the document full sized
Alt on pen tool to change line for curves 
Shift key= pen tool 45 angle
Shift+ Alt= perfect shapes 

Above is a useful image of some keyboard shortcuts on illustrator, I think i may find this useful in the future. 

Visual Literacy- The Language of Design

Visual literacy is the process of sending and receiving messages using type and images, producing images that effectively communicate a mesage to an audience. It is the ability to 

• interpret
• negotiate
• making meaning 

Of the images, it is based on the idea that pictures can be read for example the image on the right is an universal image that can be recognised all around the world, the classic sign for the toilet. In both signs everyone could clearly recognise the fact that it was a toilet sign.  

On the forign one it is easier to reconise which is male and female as it uses colour this makes it more multilingual. Colour is another major factor of visual literacy. 

Some signs and symbols can mean different things in different situations for example the cross it can be manipulated in different ways, it can mean many things:

• Christianity
• St Gorges flag 
• First aid
• Maths
• And
• Swedish Flag 

Visual Synax and Visual Semantics

Syntax is the pictorial structure and visual organisation, it represents the basic building blocks of an image.

Elements of images: framing, format, scale, colour, font, stroke, weight, shape, composition, layout, motion, light, rhythm, space, depth, texture, text, words, tone, shade, line, mark, direction, editing, manipulation, simplification, emphasis layering, hierarchy

Semantics refers to the way an image fits into a cultural process. It includes the relationship between form and meaning elements include:

• cultural reference
• social idea
• religion

Semiontics vistual elements: 

• Symbol
• Sign
• Signifier
• Metaphor
• Metonym
• Synecdoche

Everything stands for something else.