Discussion Point- Lucy Threlfo

John Baskerville designed the Baskerville typeface in 1757. He was an innovator at the time, improving upon the typefaces that had existed for years. This typeface was designed by Baskerville to improve legibility through the increased contrasts between thick and thin strokes, by making serifs sharper and more tapered and by shifting the axis of circular letters to a more vertical position. However, Baskerville also worked at improving print presses and inks to create a blacker result than others in the field could achieve. John Baskerville has been called "The greatest printer England ever produced" though his colleagues at the time disliked him greatly insisting that his typefaces "Hurt the Eye" and would be responsible for "Blinding the nation", and as a result at the time "Baskerville" was not popular. His popularity spiked in the early 20th century long after his death with the revival of the typeface by Bruce Rogers for the Harvard University Press as well as others around the world. Therefore, it is only now that John Baskerville is considered one of the most influential typographic designers to have lived.

Theo Aartsma is a contemporary graphic designer, illustrator and typographic designer who uses digital techniques in his process, blending illustrative styles with 3D design. I believe Aartsma is an innovative contemporary typographic designer because of his unique style which incorporates natural aesthetics to create pieces with a lot of depth and visual understanding. Aartsma's typographical creations are a lot less structured and far less traditional than Baskerville's, which was designed as a body text as well as heading text, while Aartsma's are more experimental creations designed for a specific campaign or general idea. Despite this, I still believe both designers can have an equal influence on the typographic designers of tomorrow, Baskerville for traditional texts and Aartsma for digital and web based texts.

Max Miedinger vs. David Carson

Max Miedinger-Pre-Digital 

Max Miedinger was a Swiss typeface designer, famous for creating Neue Haas Grotesk typeface in 1957, which was renamed Helvetica in 2960.

Helvetica has become one of the most widely used typefaces in the world. Several large corporations use the font as their corporate logos.

Toyota Motor Corporation used the Helvetica typeface exclusively while building a brand from the 1960s through the 1990s. Many governments also use the typeface for their street signs because of its ease of legibility.

His contribution to the typographic field by creating the typefaces Helvetica, Miedinger, Swiss 921, Monospace 821, and Swiss 721 adds his name to the short list of famous typographers over the last five hundred years.

Ever since the biggest typographic movement, Helvetica, typography had become something very rigid, and meeting the grids and structures all the time.

David Carson-Contemporary

David Carson is an  graphic designer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. Carson was perhaps the most influential graphic designer of the 1990s. He describes himself as a “hands-on” designer and has a unique, intuition-driven way of creating everything from magazines to TV commercials.

“He significantly influenced a generation to embrace typography as an expressive medium”

-            -  Steven Heller 2010

David Carson created striking designs, which gave individual letters characteristics, and motion. The letters were treated as part of design elements and blended in with images; in his work, typography was hardly secondary, but it was dominant because it was strong.

References: An Interview with David Carson retrieved 28th April:

 http://layersmagazine.com/an-interview-with-david-carson.html

David Carson retrieved 28th April: http://www.arsgrafik.com/david-carson/

Max Miedinger font designer of Helvetica retrieved 28th April: http://www.linotype.com/522/maxmiedinger.html

Max Miediner Swiss Designer retrieved 28th April: http://www.maxmiedinger.com

Week 9 Studio Research - Janice W

Herb Lubalin, a founder of ITC in New York, had been awarded the 62nd AIGA medal in 1981, he is known for his fonts ITC Avant Garde Gothic®. 

During the late 1970s, digital technology was limited, Lubalin used his own creativity and imagination, sight and insight to earse boundaries and push back frontiers and designed his own font.

He is known as  a man who profoundly influenced and changed our vision and perception of letter forms, words and language.

“If words are a way of making meaning, then the shapes of their letters give voice, color, character and individuality to that meaning.”

adidas logo in ITC Avant Garde Gothic

Verena Gerlach, a typeface designer from Berlin, who found her own design studio, Fraugerlach in 1998 for graphic design, type design and typography in Berlin.

After the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989, she collected a lot of visual materials to lament the disappearance of shop signage and lettering. (her design inspiration for digital typefaces ‘FF Karbid’)

The places in the Old Eastern suburbs were under widely planned reconstruction after 1989, she reckons the only way not to lose all the cultural impressions and excitement of that time in Berlin (i.e. beautiful letterings, old signs as well as paintings on the facades) was to record them through digital preservation: photographs and show them on in other contexts.

She combined old techniques for printmaking and reproduction with contemporary innovations in the early twentieth century. The FF Karbid family has grown from 2 families to 4 families in numerous new typefaces, to be used in a new time and new media. In this way, the old lettering can live again.

“ The typeface has been trimmed down to the bare essentials of a text face, which makes it eminently readable, especially at small point sizes. FF Karbid Text is a font that captivates through its sheer liveliness. The sweeps that replace the serifs and link the characters create a flowing movement.”

“ The weights were not balanced and a Light was missing. You could say that the new FF Karbid Pro is like Berlin: it evolved during this time; it has grown up and has become serious despite all the party hype. Many different people have moved to Berlin and perhaps FF Karbid Pro is the gentrified version of the old FF Karbid.”

The first one is intended for body text in small fonts; the second one, serif is abandoned in selected letters like l and n; Third, in order to improve legibility, the strong serifs lend the footing of the typeface;

 Verena is an active user of instagram, she keeps updating her page with photos every day, hoping everyone could share the beautiful letterings they have come across in our everyday life.

Discussion Point - Candice Burg

Saul Bass was a designer of the 20th Century whose practices operated against cluttered imagery and towards geometric designs using angular shapes and primary colour schemes. He studied Graphic Art at Brooklyn College NY.

Bass was a change maker of his time. Being credited for artists' work at this time was not customary until Bass' poster designs. By signing his work he made it possible for designer to have rightful claims to their work. His poster work which featured in films created a cinematic experience to even the most boring parts of the film, offering a visual feast. As a typographic designer he was commissioned to create visual identity for films. An example of this practice is his design for 'The Man With The Golden Arm', "for which Bass created the famous jagged arm design, suggesting the jarring and disjointed existence of a drug addict. With this design, Bass exploited what he termed the significance of content in design." His contribution to typographic practice at the time used animation to create sequences that moved which then became classic. His legacy is evident in many contemporary works today.

Saul Bass 'The Man with the Golden Arm'

Steve Jobs who was captivated by the ancient art of arranging letter on a page used digital means to express his interest in a modern society. Contrastingly to Bass, Steve Jobs a contemporary post digital designer dropped out of university and because he didn't have to take normal classes decided to learn calligraphy. It was in this class that he learnt about "the serif and sans serif typefaces and about varying the letter spacing between different letter combinations." Steve Jobs' role as well as the director of the Apple computer was the typography of Apple. In contract to Bass who designed visual identity for the film and culture of the day, Jobs used digital sources to create a visual identity for one of the most popular electronic sources today. In the example clip below Jobs mixes various typefaces and expresses his message digitally as kinetic typography in contrast to Bass' still animation. "Prior to the Apple Mac, computer type was crude and utilitarian. But Jobs equipped the Mac with Postscript font technology and that, married with the personal laser printer, made high quality screen and print typography accessible to the masses."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu0sQvwDcZw

Click on the link above to watch video

Steve Jobs 'Kinetic Typography'

Sources

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu0sQvwDcZw

http://sebersole.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/steve-jobs-typography-and-the-mac/

http://ilovetypography.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs/

http://butcansheplay.com/?cat=231

Lecture - Typographic Context

SR3

Visual communication is an aspect within design that presents a specific responsibility towards the subject.  It is present due to the need to attract attention and viewers thus leading them to the product.  As technology has dramatically evolved over the years, the use of grids and visual hierarchy and the ability to customize them to properly display images and type has changed. 

An example of this can be seen through the publication, Reader’s Digest.  The Reader’s Digest, a family oriented magazine has evolved tremendously in terms of grids and aesthetic design.  The first issue of the magazine was published in February 1922, whereby traditional letterpress applications were utilized in production. 

The image above is of that first issue.  It presents a very simplistic design structured around the repetitive use of a single typeface and black and white illustration.  The entire publication is printed in the centered format on simple white copy paper.  As seen, there is no immediate appeal to the cover thus implying a non-aesthetic design for the audience.  Although presented as a simple structure, the minimal use of colour doesn’t do any justice.  The obvious reason to this, is the technological age of that era.  Letterpress during these earlier years presented singular typefaces, controlled type sizes, and a limited grid structure. 

In our day and age, according to visual hierarchy, it is obvious to say that the technology has advanced immensely, in particular, the ability to utilize different typefaces, the ability to easily customize position and structure of images and type, the utilization of colour is no issue, and additionally, the internet has played an important factor through online subscriptions of magazines etc.  Below is an image of the January 2008 issue of the Reader’s Digest, and it is impeccably easy to distinguish the differences from earlier publication designs and designs in our time. 

The typefaces in terms of customization from type size, leading etc. has advanced due to programs and applications allowing these edits to be so hands on and simple.   The grid structure has advanced and in terms of audience attraction, it appeals.  The text is justified along the outsides of the page, caving in to the images, that possibly represents the highlights depicted within the issue.  Colour is utilized properly and simply, by creating certain highlights with words due to the use of red as a stand out colour tone. 

Letterpress presented numerous limitations within visual hierarchy, and thus due to the emergence of digital technology, visual communication of magazines, websites etc. have become easy to customize and alter and therefore allowing these products to become aesthetically designed products that attract either specific or all types of audiences.  

Dropbox- Lucy Threlfo email

Here's my email so we can all get linked up for dropbox

lucindathrelfo@hotmail.com

Week 8 already! but things are going well :)

I'm quite impressed with the work being carried out by the group online and Lauren is equally enthused by the outcomes of what is happening in the Studio each week. The level of discussion here is exactly what we want to see - if you didn't already realise it you are now publishing your own content - an entirely appropriate precursor to the major project we are engaged in - to design an online magazine.

Last week I hope you had the chance to look at the video about Wim Crouwell (if you didn't get the chance - do it now). It was a neat introduction to just such a practice. Crouwell's innovative consideration and deployment of grid systems (read this lecture in conjunction with last week's file on Visual Hierarchy) was profoundly transformative. In this lecture you find brief overviews of the innovations of a number of other designers who've changed the way we think about and use type.

As usual there's a few other links out to relevant material. Firstly this week check out a slideshow from UK designer Mark Boulton. Boulton is a master of the grid and this presentation is a nice way to remind you of why you are engaged so closely in thinking about grids and the hierarchies that enable us to mobilise.

Designing Grid Systems @media2010

View more presentations from markboultondesign

My understanding is that you'll soon be able to collaborate digitally using one of the numerous online co-working platforms that are rapidly emerging across many (if not most) creative industry contexts. This brings me to a slightly early release of of next week's lecture (read this lecture next week before next week's studio if you get time - I'll refer to it again in next week's post) which itself discusses contextual issues related to typographic practice - at least in terms of examining some key practitioners who have influenced the evolution of typographic practice as we know it today.

The second resource is a trip back in time to the 90's and an insight into how the rapid uptake of digital type was perceived at EYE magazine (by Robin Kinross) at the time.

http://blog.eyemagazine.com/

"Digital processes were introduced into typesetting in the 1970s, but – as always in the development of human inventions – it has taken some time to realise their full implications. ‘Digital typesetting’ means that characters, and indeed any other graphic elements, exist only where they can be generated by the rectilinear sweep of a beam, either on or off. As against the apparently infinitely subtle possibilities of a hand-guided engraver cutting punches for metal type, or a pen or brush putting ink down on paper for photographic reproduction, there is an obvious bargain to be made with the technology. You have to settle for the squares the grid can allot you.

Don't forget to check the end of the lecture to get the information about this week's self-directed tasks. Enjoy your week!