TYPOGRAPHY ✦ TASK 1: EXERCISES ✦

26.9.2023-20.10.2023 (Week1-Week5)

liuziyu/0367533/Bachelor of Design (Honors) in Creative Media

Typography

Task:Exercises

LECTURES

Week1/Introduction&Briefing

INSTRUCTIONS

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RkAnh0c81lqAmLPAD46ELaY2o0Qsh1gP/view?usp=share_link

LECTURES

Week1:

This week the teacher asked us to go back and watch the video to understand genre development from the perspective of the Western world.This video discusses the development of printing over 500 years,In the video, the teacher stressed the importance of considering Asian contributions to typography and encouraged students to protect their own cultural creations

 PROCESS WORK FOR TYPE EXPRESSION

1.LECTURES

   The development of early alphabet forms: 

From Phoenicia to Rome.In the beginning, writing was done by carving words on wet clay with a sharpened stick or on stone with a chisel. The uppercase form (the only form of the alphabet in the last 2,000 years) shows that it evolved from these tools and materials. The main combination of uppercase forms is made up of simple lines and circles, and this is the form of the early letter.

Layout: Development/schedule

Development and timing of early letter forms:

The Greeks changed the direction of writing. Phoenicians, like other Semites, wrote from left to right. The Greeks invented a form of writing called "ox plough", which meant that the text could be read alternately from right to left or from left to right. When they changed the direction of the reading, they also changed the direction of the font

The Greeks, like the Phoenicians, did not use Spaces or punctuation in their letters, and their writing method is shown below:

Etruscan (now called Roman) sculptors painted letters on stone before carving them on marble, and someof the characteristics of their strokes were that the weight of the strokes changed from vertical to horizontal and then the width of the strokes at the beginning and the end was finally preserved in the carved font.

2.Handwriting from the 3rd to 10th centuries AD：

Square capital letters are written forms found on Roman monuments, these fonts have serifs at the end of the main strokes, and the width of the strokes is shown by the reed pen to keep it in a vertical downward direction of about 60 degrees.

Square and plain capital letters are usually used for certain documents or materials with expected performance, but in daily transactions they are usually written in cursive to improve speed, resulting in a simplified cursive form. We can see the beginning of what we call lowercase letters in this picture.

3.Boldface is Gutenberg's typeface：

With the dissolution of Charlemagne's empire, Alcuin's script took on regional variations. In Northern Europe, a condensed vertical typeface called Blackletter or textura became popular. In the South, however, rounder and more open fonts were more popular and were called "rotunda" by the people of the time.

1450 black letters

The earliest type of printing, its form was based on the hand-copied style that was then used for books in Northern Europe.

1475 Oldstyle

Based on the lowercase letters used by Italian humanists when copying books and the uppercase letters found in Roman ruins, these forms evolved from calligraphic origins over a period of more than 200 years and subsequently migrated from Italy to England.

1500 in italics

Echoing the Italian handwriting of the time, the original italics were condensed and compact, allowing more words to fit on each page. Although initially considered a typeface of their own, italics were soon used to complement Roman typefaces. Since the 16th century, almost all typefaces have been designed in italics.

The 1550 script

A form of calligraphy that is originally oblique and attempts to reproduce engraving, this type of font is not entirely suitable for longer text Settings. However, in shorter applications, it is widely accepted.

1750 transition

This style is an improvement on the old style, partly due to advances in casting and printing technology. The relationship between thickness and thickness is exaggerated, the brackets are simplified.

1775 modern day

This style represents a further rationalization of the old typeface. Serifs have no brackets, and the contrast between thick and thin strokes is very strong. The English version (such as Bell) is also known as Scottish-Roman and is closer to the transitional form

1825 Square serif/Slab serif

These fonts were originally serif typefaces enclosed in bold brackets, with little variation between thick and thin strokes, in order to meet the newly developed demand for bold fonts for advertising in commercial printing. As they evolved, the brackets were removed.

1990 Serif font/Sans serif font

As a recent development, this style expands the concept of font families to include serif and sans serif letters (usually somewhere in between).

Type setting

• I learned typography from practice, observation, forebears, and reading. In my day, manual teaching was manual and computers had just been introduced, so were not yet part of the teaching AIDS.
• Printing has been developed for more than 500 years: Calligraphy > Lettering > Printing. Like any craft that develops over time, it adopts many terms, conventions, and unwritten rules, depending on your personality or influence on style.
• Paul Rand once wrote that typography is an art, and good typography is an art. That's the problem on both sides.
• Typography is the job of typesetters, typesetters, printers, graphic designers, art directors, comic artists, comic artists, graffiti artists, and now anyone who arranges words, letters, numbers, and symbols for publication, display, or distribution, from clerical staff and newsletter writers to anyone who self-publishes material. Before the digital age, typography was a professional profession. David Jury, head of graphic design at the Colchester institute, said digitisation had opened the door to typography for a new generation of designers and lay users.

Font: A font refers to a single font or thickness within a font, such as Georgia Regular, Georgia Italic, and Georgia Bold.

Fonts: Fonts are all fonts/fonts with similar characteristics/styles, such as Georgia, Arial, Times New Roman, Didot, and Futura.

For this point the explanation depends on what I am interpreting it or what I am reading.

The above is my understanding of this lesson and typography.

Week2:

LECTURES:

Typesetting: Text and tracking: kerning and letter spacing

Kerning is the automatic adjustment of the spacing between letters. It is often incorrectly referred to as "letterspacing". The fact that letter spacing means adding space between letters, adding or removing Spaces in a word or sentence is called "tracking."

Typesetting: Text/tracking: kerning and letter spacing

Normal tracking, loose tracking and tight tracking.

Typesetting: Text/tracking: kerning and letter spacing：

1.Designers have always used uppercase letters, but the typeface community has long been strongly opposed to the use of lowercase letters in text.

2.Uppercase letters are drawn in order to be able to stand on their own, while lowercase letters are drawn in order to create counterpoints between letters to maintain the reading line.

Flush left: This format most closely reflects the asymmetrical experience of writing. Each line starts at the same point, but ends where the last word ends. The Spaces between words are consistent throughout the text, allowing the types to create uniform grayscale values.

Centered: This format gives the text symmetry, assigning the same value and thickness to both ends of any line. It converts text fields into shapes, thereby adding image quality to materials that are not images in nature. Because centered fonts create strong shapes on the page, it's important to modify line breaks so that the text doesn't look too jagged.

Right flush: This format emphasizes the end of the line rather than the beginning. It can be useful in situations where the relationship between text and images may not be clear and there is no strong direction to the right (such as the title).

Block letters: Like centered, this format gives a symmetrical shape to the text. It is done by enlarging or narrowing the Spaces between words, and sometimes between letters. The resulting opening of the lines sometimes creates a "river" of white space that runs vertically through the text. Whenever possible, careful attention needs to be paid to line breaks and hyphens.

Layout: Text/format text

Designers tend to set genres based on several factors such as personal preference, popular culture, and the need for expression. However, when setting up font fields, keep in mind the typographer's first task - to express the author's message clearly and appropriately.

Text that draws attention to itself before the reader has read the actual word is a distraction and should be avoided. It's simple, if you see the font first and then the word, change the font.

Typography: Text/typeface

The font sample book displays a variety of font samples in different sizes. Without a printed page showing samples of fonts of different sizes, one cannot rationally choose a font. The selection can only be determined on the screen when the final version is to be read on the screen.

A printed sample book (or printed e-book) is an accurate reference for fonts, font sizes, type spacing, type lines, etc.

Week3:

LECTURES:

Format: Text/indicative paragraphs

There are several options for indicating paragraphs. In the first example, we see 'pilcrow '(¶), preserved from medieval manuscripts and rarely used today.

The following example shows the "line spacing" between paragraphs. Therefore, if the line spacing is 12pt, the paragraph spacing is 12pt. This ensures cross-alignment between columns of text.

Line spacing vs line spacing.

The following method for expanding paragraphs creates unusually wide columns of text. Despite these issues, there may be strong compositional or functional reasons for choosing it.

Format: Text/Widows and Orphans

• In traditional typography, there are two unforgivable lapses - widows and orphans. Designers (especially those who deal with large amounts of text on websites or online magazines or in print magazines, newspapers or online journals) must be very careful to avoid the above situations.
• The widow word is a short line left alone at the end of a column of text.
• An orphan word is a short line of words left alone at the beginning of a new column.
• In normal text, widows and orphans are both considered serious gaffes. The text on the right is flat and the text on the left is rough and more forgiving for widows, but only a little. It's unforgivable to be an orphan.
• The only solution for the widow is to re-break the paragraph so that the last line of any paragraph is not too short.
• This may lead us to think that orphans need more care. Careful printers make sure that each column does not begin with the last line of the previous paragraph.

Layout: Text/highlighted text

Here are some simple examples of how to highlight text in a text column. Different kinds of emphasis require different kinds of contrast.

• In this example, the Univers are reduced by 0.5 to match the X-height of the serif font.
• I also reduced the amount of aligned graphics (numbers) or all capitalized acronyms embedded in the text by 0.5% to ensure visual cohesion of the text.

Typesetting: Text/title in text

• There are many subdivisions in the text of the chapter. In the picture below, we label them (A, B, and C) according to their importance.
• The printer's task is to ensure that these headings clearly indicate to the reader the relative importance in the text and how they relate to each other.
• Headings represent a clear separation between topics within a section. In the example below, the head of the "A" is set larger than the text, with small capital letters and bold font. The fourth example shows an "extension" to the A header to the left of the text.

Putting a series of subheadings together = hierarchy.

Obviously, there is no single way to express the hierarchy in a text; In fact, the possibilities are almost endless.

Layout: Text/cross alignment

Headings and headings that are cross-aligned with text types reinforce the sense of structure of the page while clearly expressing complementary vertical rhythms. In this example, the four-line header type (9 points ahead) is cross-aligned with the three-line text type (13.5 points ahead).

Week4:

LECTURES:

Typography: Basic/descriptive：

1. Typefaces have been developed for over 500 years as a craft that can transform various forms, typography uses many technical terms that mainly describe specific parts of letter forms, it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the vocabulary, knowing the components of a letter can make it easier to identify a particular typeface.
2. An imaginary line that is the visual basis of a font. Center line A dashed line that defines the x height of the font. x The height of the lowercase letter "x" in any font.

Stroke defines any line of the base font

A point formed by the connection of two diagonal stems (vertex on top, vertex on bottom).

Arm A short stroke away from the main body of the glyph, either horizontally (E, F, L) or slanted upward (K, Y).

Ascender The part of the stem of a lowercase letter that projects above the midline.

Em/en originally referred to the width of a capital M, and now em is a distance equal to the font size (e.g. em at 48 points). en is half the size of em. Most commonly used to describe em/en spaces and em/en dashes.

Accent as the direction of a letter form, indicated by thin, circular strokes.

Swash The flourish that extends the stroke of the letterform.

A terminal is an independent ending of a non-serif stroke. It is a catch-all term. A terminal can be flat (such as the "T" below), or flared or sharp-angled (such as the "t" below). , and also bumpy, concave, convex, or round, such as ball or teardrop shape.

Typography: Basic / The font：

• The complete font in the font contains over 26 letters, numbers and some punctuation marks.
• In order to use fonts successfully, we should make sure that we are using a complete font and that we know how to use it.

Upper case letters, including certain stressed vowels, c diacritics and n tildes, and a/e and o/e ligatures.

Lowercase Lowercase letters include the same characters as uppercase.

• Uppercase and lowercase letter forms are drawn to the x-height of the font. Small caps appear primarily in serif fonts, as part of the so-called expert set,
• Most typing software includes a style command that generates small caps based on capitalization, not to confuse true small caps with artificially generated small caps.

• Uppercase numbers are also known as serif numbers. These numbers are the same height as the uppercase letters and are both set to the same kerning width. They are most successfully used for tabular material or any situation where uppercase letters are required.
• Lowercase Numerals Also known as old style figures or text figures, these numerals are set to x-height with ascenders and descenders. They are best used when ever you would use upper and lowercase letterformsLowercase numerals are far less common in sans serif type-faces than in serif.

Punctuation, Miscellaneous Characters Although all fonts contain standard punctuation, miscellaneous characters may vary from font to font. Before choosing the right font for a specific job, it's important to familiarize yourself with all the characters available in the font.

Decorations Use as decorations in invitations or certificates. They are usually available as fonts within a larger font family. Only a few traditional or classic fonts include decorative fonts as part of an entire font family known as: Adobe Caslon Pro

Typography: Basic / Describing typefaces：

• Once you can recognize the parts of a letterform, you can apply what you know to identify different type-faces. Keep in mind that some, all, or combinations of these styles may be found within one type family.
• It was named the Roman alphabet because the capital form was derived from the inscriptions on Roman monuments. The slightly lighter strokes in Roman writing are called "Book".

Bold is characterized by thicker strokes than Roman fonts. Depending on the relative stroke widths within the font, it may also be called "semi-bold", "medium-bold", "black", "extra-bold" or "super" Bold". In some typefaces (notably Bodoni), the boldest expression of the typeface is known as "poster".

• The 10 typefaces mentioned in the image below represent 500 years of type design, and they all attempt to achieve two goals: ease of reading and appropriate expression of contemporary aesthetics.
• These fonts (and others) already exceed the latter goal. Since they were first designed, they have been used for decades and in some cases even centuries and are still considered successful expressions of how we think, how we read and write, and how we print.
• As a novice typographer, we should take a closer look at these ten faces. For almost any early project in the design program we will need these to develop our skills. We should understand how to use these fonts correctly and effectively so that we can understand and appreciate other fonts when we encounter them.

Week:5

LECTURES:

Typography: Letters / Understanding letterforms

The capital letter forms below indicate symmetry, but are not actually symmetrical. It's easy to see the two different stroke weights of the Baskerville stroke form (below); note that each bracket connecting the serif to the stem has a unique arc.

The uppercase letters may appear symmetrical in form, but a closer look reveals that the width of the bevel on the left is thinner than the width of the stroke on the right. Both Baskerville and Univers demonstrate the meticulous attention that type designers pay to creating typefaces with individual expressiveness.

The complexity of each typeface is clearly demonstrated by looking at the lowercase “a” of two similar-looking sans serif fonts: Helvetica and Univers. Comparing how the stem of the letter shape is completed and how the bowl meets the stem, it's immediately apparent the clear character difference between the two.

Typography: Letters / Maintaining x-height

The x-height usually describes the size of lowercase letters. We should remember that curved strokes (such as "s") must be above the midline (or sink below the baseline) in order to appear to be the same size as their adjacent vertical and horizontal strokes.

Typography: Letters / Form / Counterform

• Just as important as recognizing specific letter forms is developing a sensitivity to counterforms, the spaces that describe and are often contained within the strokes of a form. When letters are joined to form a word, the inverse form includes the space between them.
• The latter is an especially important concept when using letter forms like lowercase "r" that don't have counters themselves. The degree to which the counter is processed when setting the type determines the degree to which words are combined.

                            

• One of the most valuable ways to learn about letter forms and counters is to examine them carefully. These exams also provide how to achieve a balance between form and counter, as well as a distinct feel for the unique characteristics of letter forms.
• It is worth noting here that the meaning of "S" remains the same at every stage of amplification, whereas "g" tends to lose its identity as individual elements are examined without the context of the entire letter form.

Research：

Week3:

My inspiration for the design of these words comes from the word designs I found on the Internet

1. The letter L in the word CLOCK is used as the hour and minute hands in the clock dial, and the letter O simply becomes the circular shape of the entire clock. The whole LOGO gives people the overall picture is both harmonious and full of unique personality.
2. Therefore, this clock provides me with a great design idea. Reasonable use of the appearance of letters and some thoughts to refine will show a special design.

The same is true of the word mother, when you see this designed by others, you will think of mother.The word "Mother", the initial letter M is cleverly designed to be a high and low two human traits, is not it? Mother is that moment standing by your side, always take care of you care about you!

Home work

Week1:

My design concept: I think wind is irregular, so I chose a curved font from the ten fonts given by the teacher. The irregular arrangement of the letters expresses the fluidity of the wind.

My design idea: The wind in the second group shows a bit of naughtiness. The wind blew from bottom to top, causing the originally neatly arranged letters to change, and their positions moved with the wind.

My design concept: My idea is very simple. The wind does not just blow in one direction. The path it blows does not have to be curved or wavy, it can also be circular. This idea came from what I saw on the roadside yesterday. The wind blew the leaves into a circle, so I imagined the letters as leaves and let them blow into a circle.

My design ideas: First of all, when I see the word "diving", I will not hesitate to associate it with a pool, so I designed D as a huge pool, and the remaining I, v, e like people we're going to dive into this giant pool and they're ready to dive in and explore.

My design idea: I imagined the letter "i" as a diving board, and the other three letters stepped on the diving board and dived into the water one after another. This idea came from a cartoon I watched in which people jumped from a diving board into the water.

My design ideas: For the third design of diving, I started from the body movements of people diving. Human diving is done head first, then feet, so I imagined the initial D to be equivalent to diving head first, followed by the two letters I and v for body parts. Finally, e is the same as a human foot and is the last one to dive into the water, so the whole letter looks like a human diving into the water.

My design concept: I put together the three designs I made about HUGE, because the meaning of the word is very obvious and intuitive, so the three designs I designed also reflect the huge meaning very intuitively. One of the letters is very large, while the other letters are very small, creating a sharp contrast that highlights the meaning of hugeness.

My design idea is: the tattoo is cut, which reminds me of the letter t in the word, which looks like a knife, so I drew a picture of t horizontally and stabbed A and b with the knife t.

Home work

Week2:

My design idea: This windy is made by me through last week's sketch. I made three sketches and selected the one that most represents the wind element. In the first step, I first typed the word with the font I chose; in the second step, I also started to move the letter d upward; in the third step, I put d in the highest position in the final product, and other letters were arranged in turn. It's like the wind blowing the letter d because windy is one and all the other letters are blowing with it.        

My design idea: From the three sketches i designed last week, I chose one that I thought was more interesting, that is, I used the other three letters as a springboard to jump down one by one, and then dive into the water. The above picture is my design process

My design idea: I made three huge designs with the same style last week, but I prefer the picture above. I think the huge E and the three letters h, u and g can better reflect the meaning of "huge". The picture above is my design process.

My design idea: For the word stab, I use a very intuitive design to show the meaning of the word, that is, imagine S as a person and t as a knife, and then S takes t and cuts it at A and b. The picture above is my design process.

Home work:

Week3:

Regarding windy’s animation design ideas: First of all, from the meaning of the word, I understand that it is wind. I sorted the positions of each letter from high to low. When the letters move, it is like the wind is blowing below. The letters are blown up one by one. After blowing, slipped away.

Home work:

Week4:

Our assignment this week is to design layout. The picture below is the layout I designed, but I lost the original picture, so I submitted the final screenshot of the layout design.

This week, in addition to typography design, the teacher also requested ten font designs. The picture below is my design.

 

Home work:

Week5: 

This week’s assignment is somewhat similar to last week’s assignment, both of which involve layout design. However, this week’s layout title requires us to design it ourselves. Most of my design ideas are based on the designs of other students, and then I combine my own ideas to create them. , the picture below is my layout design

FEEDBACK

Week1:The design sketch should be taken with the universal scanner to take clear pictures, which should be put into the box prepared by the teacher and uploaded to Facebook.When drawing a sketch, a frame should be drawn inside the frame, and ten fonts should be used to complete it, and some innovations and modifications can be made in the words.The blog as a whole is too cluttered and does not have clear points of content. It needs to be more clear and clean.

Week2：The teacher checked my blog this week and found that my link was wrong, so I didn't check it. I made changes immediately after class.

Week3：This week the teacher checked my blog and there were some problems. Question 1: My teacher doesn’t understand the design idea for the assignment and needs to rewrite it. Question 2: Don’t directly apply the ideas given by the teacher. Use your own ideas to write.

Week4：This week, the teacher saw the typesetting assignment I designed. The text was okay, but the font and format of the title were wrong. I made changes to these issues afterwards.

   

Week5: This week I showed the teacher my previously improved typesetting homework. The teacher said that this time it was very good and improved compared to last time.

REFLECTION

Experience：   The first week Through this week's video teaching, I learned a lot about the history and origin of typesetting, and also learned a lot about the role and practicality of typesetting, and the convenience that typesetting brings to us designers. It also mentioned some things about fonts. design, and then from the assignments assigned by the teacher, I also gained the diversity of fonts and unlimited creativity. The font is not a single one, but there are many types.

In the second week, I learned about the diversity of fonts, the design and history of fonts, and the origin of fonts through the teacher’s video teaching. It also talked about a lot of what fonts should be used to distinguish them at what time or period, and also introduced Evolution and size of fonts.

In the third week, I learned about the difference between fonts in titles and text through video teaching, and there are also text and indicator paragraphs that describe various options for directive paragraphs.

Observation

Findings

FURTHER READING

Week1:

Like all processes that have evolved, printing has been using terminology for over 500 years. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the vocabulary and understand the components of a letter "part" to make it easier to identify a specific font. (In the following entries, boldface text indicates that the term described is elsewhere in the list)

The confusion of styles within fami-lies of typefaces may seem daunting to the novice; it certainly remains a small nuisance even to the experi-enced designer, The only way to deal with the profusion of names—like learning irregular verbs in French—is memorization. See page 44 for

Adrian Frutiger's attempt to resolve the naming problem.

Reinforcing meaning

• It's possible to find typographicequivalents for words, Simplechoices in typeface, size, weight, andpositionon the page can strengthen representation of the conceptsobjects, and actions that words describe, Here, we've stuck to one weight of one typeface, Akiden Grotesk Medium, but played with size and placement
• The examples above express some quality of the adjectives on display.Quiet is small and lowercase, "loud"large and uppercase, The second in 'missing' is, in fact, missing, and the second 'dl in 'added' is in the jprocess of being added.

• The examples above all cary some quality of the nouns expressed.In train, for example, a Fibonacci sequence of type sizes (see page 109), aligned at the cap height creates the illusion of perspective一we caneasily imagine a long train receding into the distance-or, for that matter, pulling into a statlon.
• The dot on the Y in "bird' flies abovethe rest of the letters; the  in'nonconfomist does notconfomwith the other letters; 'shadow casts a shadow. The examples of contrast in type on pages 62-63 offer anumber of possibilities for building on these simple changes.