Buddy Holly: The Apartment Tapes

I have completed my final project for VISC 204. This project consisted of the complete design for a record, including the cover, inside, record label, as well as two inserts. It can be viewed here:

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Buddy-Holly-The-Apartment-Tapes/2642269 

I have really enjoyed all of the projects I have had the opportunity to work on during this semester. The completion of this final project is exciting because I realize how much I have learned since the beginning of this year.

Feature Article Reading Questions

1) What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. 

A new paragraph can be indicated in various ways. Traditionally, a new paragraph begins after an indentation, or tab. A new paragraph can also be shown by leaving a blank line between the two paragraphs. Symbols can be used in denote new paragraphs, as well as text size for either the first word or first sentence of a new paragraph. 

2) What are some things to look out for when hyphenating text.

The most important rule when hyphenating text is legibility. You must take into account how the text is read, you should avoid widows, avoid orphans, and do not hyphenate names or proper nouns. Also, you should have at least two characters on the line, and three on the following line. You should avoid beginning consecutive lines with the same word and avoid ending consecutive lines with the same word. Finally, avoid ending lines with words like the, of, at, a, or by. 

3) Define font hinting. Why is necessary?

Font hinting is the use of mathematical instructions to adjust the display of an outline font so that it lines up with a rasterized grid. At low screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing a clear, legible text.

4) What is letterspacing/tracking? How do you track in Illustrator or InDesign

Letterspacing is the space between letters and can be called functional white. The white is essential to font legibility and the desired visual impression of the text. The picture illustrates how to track in InDesign or Illustrator. 

Top symbol represents kerning, and the bottom tracking in InDesign.

5) Define Kerning? Name 8 kerning pairs. How do you kern in InDesign or Illustrator?

In the metal era letters in combination like We, LT, and Ty could be moved closer together only by physically shaving or cutting away parts of the metal shank of the piece of type. This is what kerning does, but the computer makes it much easier. The specific spacing of these values can be adjusted in InDesign or Illustrator. Some kerning pairs are Av, Aw, Ta, We, AT, PA, TA, YO and so on. My score on the kerning game link was 91/100. 

6) What is wordspacing?

For most typefaces the word space is slightly smaller than the bounding box of an 'i' or a fourth of the font size. 

7) Explain DIN.

Because of a throughout standardisation, normalized DIN A sizes are usually the starting point for paper sizes for printed mater. The sizes of the sheets of paper that are supplied by paper manufacturers are based on these DIN A sizes, with a bit added for trimming, the gripper margin of the printing press and the finish. DIN sizes use a 1: Square Root of 2 ratio. Besides the well-known A sizes, B and C sizes are also used. The B sizes are so-called uncut sizes so the page can be printed with bleed after which the sheet can be cut to a size A. The C sizes are mainly used for envelopes, which can then hold an A size. The American version of the A4 size is 8.5 x 11 inches and is therefore considerable shorter than an A4. 

8) What is a baseline grid?

A baseline grid is an imaginary grid upon which type sits. The baseline of a piece of type can be forced to 'snap' to this grid to maintain continuity across the pages of a design. 

9) How many characters per line is optimal? Is there a range?
The optimal line length for your body text is usually considered to be within the 50-60 characters per line. At most up to 75 characters is acceptable. 

10) Define aesthetic text alignment (optically hanging punctuation).

Certain letterforms such as the circular characters "o," "e,"  and "c" extend over the baseline otherwise they would look optically smaller than their upright relatives. 

11) What is a typographic river?

A typographic river occurs in justified text blocks when the separation of the words leaves gaps of white space in several lines. A river effect is created where white space gaps align through the text.  

12) What is a widow?

A widow is a lone word at the end of a paragraph. 

13) What is an orphan?

An orphan is the final one or two lines of a paragraph separated from the main paragraph to from a new column, and should be avoided at all costs. 

Project 4 Research: Photographers

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz was born on October 2, 1949 in Westbury, Connecticut. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute. Originally, she thought she wanted to study painting, but switched to photography. In 1970 she took a job at Rolling Stone magazine. She began working for Vanity Fair in 1983. The late 1980's brought her many high profile advertising campaigns. From the 1990's to the present she has continued exhibiting and publishing her work. 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/annie-leibovitz/life-through-a-lens/16/ 
http://www.biography.com/people/annie-leibovitz-9542372

Horst P. Horst

Horst P. Horst was born as Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann in 1906. He was born in Weissenfels, Germany. He met photographer George Hoynigen-Huene and after this his photography career began. By 1931 he was working for French Vogue. He is best known for his photographs of women and fashion while working for Vogue. His work was displayed in museums in New York, Cologne, Germany, and London. 

http://www.jacksonfineart.com/HorstP-Horst-368.html

http://www.contessagallery.com/html/ArtistBio.asp?artnum=217

Irving Penn

Irving Penn was born on June 16, 1917. He initially wanted to become a painter. Yet, in the 1940's he got a job with Vogue magazine, and this turned his focus to photography. He is well known for his portraits of models and celebrities. When taking pictures of celebrities he had his subject sit for hours until his or her personality was revealed for the camera. He posed his subjects against a bare backdrop and utilized natural northern light. His images have a simplicity that is combined with directness resulting in formal sophistication. 

http://www.biography.com/people/irving-penn-40637 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/arts/design/08penn.html?pagewanted=all

Mario Testino

Mario Testino was born in Lima, Peru. He studied in Peru and completed his studies in 1976. He then went to London to pursue a career in photography. He has become a celebrated fashion photographer. He has had work featured in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and he has contributed to the imagery of fashion houses such as Burberry, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Versace, among others. He has published nine books of his won work, and has had many successful exhibitions in galleries and museums around the world. 

http://www.mariotestino.com/page/361

http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/biographies/mario-testino-biography 

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon was born in New York on May 15, 1923. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. He attended Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, but never completed an academic education. In 1940 he was 17 and dropped out of high school and joined the Merchant Marine's Photograph section. He took personal identification photos. Later, he was sent to photograph several shipwrecks. In 1944 he found a job as a photographer in a department store. He first made his living as a staff photographer for Harper's Bazarr, and later Vogue. He is known for his stylistically innovative fashion work often set in surprising locations. 

http://www.designboom.com/history/avedon.html

http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/biographies/richard-avedon-biography 

Tim Walker

Tim walker was born in England in 1970. His fascination with photograph began in Conde Nast's library in London where he worked on the Cecil Beaton archive as part of a year's work before going to university. He came in third in The Independent newspaper photography awards which led him to a three year photography BA degree at Exeter College of Art. He graduated in 1994 and then worked as a freelance photography assistant in London before he moved to New York. There he was a full-time assistant to Richard Avedon. He later returned to England and initially focused on portrait and documentary work for UK newspapers. His first fashion story was for Vogue at the age of 25. His work has a a magical and eccentric charm to it which are best portrayed by his extravagant settings and theatrical characters. 

http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/biographies/tim-walker-biography

http://www.timwalkerphotography.com/

http://www.thephotographylink.com/archives/1019

Letter Fountain Reading

Small capitals are smaller versions of capital letters. THey are not reduced capitals, but especially designed small capitals which can often be ordered with a certain type family as a so-called Expert of SC font. In height small capitals are slightly bigger than the x-height of lowercase letters and they have a matching weight. They provide a better balanced appearance in cases where capitals would make the look of a bock of text too busy. My font, Didot, does have small capitals. 

Ligatures are combinations of characters that were designed because, in metal typesettings, the overhanging ascender in the letter "f" would crash into an ascender or the dot of an "i" if it directly followed the "f." If extra letter spacing is used in a text these combinations of text have to be set separately. Sans-serif typefaces hardly ever have this problem. Didot does have ligatures, with the "fi" and "fl."

A foot mark is meant to indicate feet and is an angled line. It is different from an apostrophe in that an apostrophe is shaped almost like a number nine. These are similar an inch mark which is made from two foot marks and quote marks are made of two apostrophes. Smart quotes are used to make sure inch marks are not used as quotation marks. 

Hyphens are used as a symbol to break words. The en dash is longer than a hyphen and is used to demarcate the parenthetical thought or to indicate a sudden change of direction. Usually these dashes can be replaced by commas, or the phrase can be bracketed. The en dash is used to indicate range in values as well, such as with years. The em dash is used to demarcate parenthetical thought in English texts, but the dashes are unspaced (without white spaces on either side). 

Car Graphic

For the third graphic for information not included on my resume, I created this based on my car which I named Thumper awhile ago. In class we have critiqued the two previous graphics I have posted here. Our final project will combine five graphics, and these critiques have given me input that will help improve each graphic before the final presentation.

Didot Research

Didot is a Didone or Modern typeface. This classification is based upon the typefaces produced in the late 18^th and 19^th centuries in Italy. These are late neoclassical seriffed types and their name is a combination of the French printing family Didot and the Italian printer Bodoni of Parma. The typeface Bodoni by Giambattista Bodoni, also known as the “king” of the typographers or “printer to the kings” is seen as the highlight of the Didones. The monumental symmetrical build and the balanced proportions give the typeface a cool elegance. Legendary is Bodoni’s Manuale Tipografico, a handbook with 142 typefaces and pages of ornaments which his widow published in 1818 in a limited edition of 250 copies. The second volume includes numerous ornaments, Arabic, Greek, Russian, and Tibetan types, to name but a few. Bodoni was a perfectionist and he let his feel for proportion and quality come through in the design, the paper quality, and even in the composition of special ink in order to print in a deep, glossy black. When designing a letter Bodoni allowed for the thickening of the thin serifs when printing with metal type on paper, in combination with the spread of ink and the so-called impression in the paper. With the new techniques such as offset, which does not result in an impression, the thin parts of Bodoni often turn out too thin. Also, the contrast was adjusted for different sizes in metal type, which is not the case in most digital versions.  Other well-known typographers for this classification include Firmin Didot in France, Justus Erich Walbaum in Germany.

Didones are characterized by a pronounced contrast in weight between the vertical strokes and the horizontal hairlines. This serves to emphasize the vertical stress of the letters. These qualities allow for extended typeface families, incorporating a wide range of width and weights. This includes both extended ultra-bolds and condensed faces. The typefaces show a strong emphasis on the vertical stroke, sharp contrast, symmetry, and sharp transition to the straight serifs, which are as thin as the thin parts of the letter. The axis of the thick-thin contrast is vertical. Some typefaces have a great many variants, because it was very easy to adjust their thickness and width. Unlike the analytical, transitional period, Didones reflect the expressive ideals of Romanticism. The Didone style exaggerates key features of the earlier Transitionals. These exaggerated features include the fact that letters are drawn with vertical stress, and that there is extreme contrast.

            Francosi Ambroise Didot cut the first Didone typeface in 1781. His son was Firmin Didot. Firmin Didot developed and refined the trademark characteristics that have become associated with the family name, culminating in the Didot of 1800. This typeface has formed the basis of the genre. The typeface Didot diverged from pervious typefaces by abandoning the hand penned style in favor of a cleaner, more precise vertical stroke. The serifs also had almost no bracketing. The strong clear forms of this alphabet display objective, rational, characteristics and are representative of the time and philosophy of the Enlightenment which was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18^th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. Due to improvements in the printing process as well as paper and ink, the punch cutters of the Modern period were able to cut letterforms that previously would have been unthinkable. Didot greatly benefitted from these improved techniques.

            Didot’s of the twentieth century origin include the Linotype Didot. This was drawn by Adrian Frutiger in 1991. He based it upon the fonts cut by Firmin Didot between 1799 and 1811. Adrian Frutiger also studied the Didot types in La Henriade by Voltaire that was published in 1801. The upright and highly contrasted forms of Didot alphabets are representative of the modern genre. In reality they are quite similar to those designed by Bodoini around the same time in Italy. Characterized by a rigorous geometry and substantial bracketed serifs, Frutiger’s Linotype Didot family has twelve fonts and includes non-lining “Old Style” figures, a headline version, and an “open” display face and two fonts of ornaments. Today, the Didot typeface appears on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. The “Foundry Daylight” version of Didot was commissioned and used by the broadcast network CBS for many years along side its famous “eye” logo.

The Didot family was active as designers for about 100 years in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were printers, inventors, and intellectuals. Around 1800 the Didot family owned the most important print shop and font foundry in France. Pierre Didot was the printer. He published documents with the typefaces of his brother Firmin Didot. Firmin Didot was the typeface designer. The family’s paper manufactory was located at Essones, a ton thirty kilometers southeast of Paris near Corbeil which had notable paper factories. The printing company still exists today under the name Firmin Didot, Societe Nouvelle. Firmin Didot was born in 1764 in Paris, France. He died in 1836 in Mensil-sur-I’Estree, France. He was a punch cutter, type founder, printer, publisher, and author. He studied classical languages. In 1783 he was granted a patent for his developments in the field of stereotype printing. Adrian Frutiger’s Didot is a sensitive interpretation of the French Modern Face Didot by Firmin Didot.

            Adrian Frutiger has produced some of the most well-known and widely used typefaces. He was born in 1928 in Interlaken, Switzerland. He was the son of a weaver. As a boy he experimented with invented scripts and stylized handwriting in negative reaction to the formal cursive penmanship then required by Swiss schools. His early interest in sculpture was discouraged by his father and by his secondary school teachers; they encouraged him to work in printing. By the age of sixteen he was working as a printer’s apprentice near his hometown. Following this he moved to Zurich where he studied at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. After his education in Zurich Frutiger moved to Paris where he worked at the Deberny & Peignot type foundry.

Adrian Frutiger’s first, commercial typeface was President, a set of tilting capital letters with small, bracketed serifs released in 1954. A calligraphic, informal, script face Ondine was also released in 1954. In 1955 Meridien, a glyphic, old-style, serif text face was released. The typeface shows inspiration by Nicholas Jenson, and in the Meridien type, Frutiger’s ideas of letter construction, unity, and organic forms are first expressed together. In 1956 he designed the first of three slab-serif typefaces, Egyptienne on the Clarendon model. In the early 1970’s the RATP, the public authority of Paris, asked him to examine the Paris Metro signage. He created a Univers font variation, a set of capitals and numbers specifically for white-on-dark-blue backgrounds in poor light. The success of this modern, yet human, typeface, spurred the French airport authority’s commissioning a “way-finding signage” alphabet for the new Charles de Gaulle International Airport in the Roissy suburb of Paris. This commission required a typeface both legible from afar and from an angle. Frutiger considered adapting Univers, but decided it was dated as too sixties.  The resultant typeface is an amalgamation of Univers tempered with organic influences of the Gill Sans, a humanist sans-serif typeface by Eric Gill, and Edward Johnston’s type for the London Transport, and Roger Excoffon’s Antique Colive. Originally titled Roissy, the typeface was renamed Frutiger when the Mergenthaler Linotype Company released it for public use in 1976. Frutiger’s 1984 typeface Versailles is an old-style serif text with capitals like those in the earlier President. In Versailles the serifs are small and glyphic. In 1988 Frutiger completed Avenir, inspired by Futura, with structural likeness to the neo-grotesques. Avenir has a full series of unified weights. In 1991 he finished Vectora, a design influenced by Morris Fuller Benton’s typefaces Franklin Gothic and News Gothic. The resultant face has a tall x-height and is legible in small point sizes. He created Linotype Didot in 1991. In the late 1990’s Frutiger began collaborating on refining and expanding the Univers, Frutiger, and Avenir in addressing hinting for screen display. Univers was reissued with sixty-three variations. Frutiger was reissues as Frutiger Next with true italic and additional weights. Collaborating with Linotype designer Akira Kobayashi, Frutiger expanded the Avenir font family with lightweights, heavy weights, and a condensed version that were released as the Avenir Next font.

Throughout his career he has produced a number of books, and today his typefaces are readily available from a number of different foundries. His books include Type, Sign, Symbol (1980), Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning (1989), The International Type Book (1990), Geometry of Feelings (1998), The Development of Western Type Carved in Wood Plates (1999), Forms and Counterforms (1999), Life Cycle (1999), The Univers (1999), and Symbols and Signs: Explorations (1999). In the course of his career, Adrian Frutiger developed more than one hundred and seventy typefaces. Many of them have become our reading habits. Since 1992 Adrian Frutiger has again lived in Switzerland.

Bibliography

“Adrian Frutiger, Typophile.” Typophile: Celebrating 11 Years of Typographic

Collaboration. Web. 26 October 2011. <http://typophile.com/node/12118>

Cheng, Karen. Designing Type. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2005. Print.

“Firmin Didot – Font Designer of Linotype Didot.” Download Fonts from Classic to Cool –

Linotype.com. Web. 26 October 2011. <http://www.linotype.com/370/firmindidot.html>

Hill, Will, and Christopher Perfect. The Complete Typographer: A Manual for Designing

 with Type. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Person Prentice Hall, 2005. Print.

Graphic 2: Where You've Been, Where You Are, and Some Other Interesting Facts About Your Life So Far

My Closet

For Project 2 in Visc 204 we were first given the assignment to document the contents of our closets. This is what I created:

Infographics Websites

For our infographics project in Visc 204, we were required to look at these websites:

www.edwardtufte.com

www.coolinfographics.com

www.good.is

Photos Inspired by the Artist Miranda July

1. Recreate the snapshot given. 

2. Take a picture of the sun. 

3. Take a picture of strangers holding hands. 

4. Take a flash photo under your bed. 

5. Climb to the top of a tree and take a picture of the view.

6. Make a video of someone dancing. 

Food Truck

I have completed my O-Ah Gourmet S'mores Food Truck for Visc 204. View it here:
http://www.behance.net/gallery/O-Ah-Gourmet-Smores/2327338 

Classification of Type

Old Style: 1475
-Wedge Shaped Serifs
-More Upright Stress
-Horizontal Crossbar
-Greater Thick-Thin Contrast
Examples: Bembo, Garamond, Plantino, Sabon, Albertina

Transitional: 1750
-More severe, business like, and sharper
-First types that were really designed
-Axis of thick-thin contrast is almost vertical or slopes slightly left
-Bare serifs only a little or not rounded at bottom
-Top Serifs of lower-case letters are roof shaped
Examples: Baskerville, Concorde, Fournier, Perpetua, Caslon Old Face

Modern: 1775
-Strong emphasis on vertical stroke
-Sharp Contrasts
-Symmetry and sharp transition to the straight serifs
-Serifs are as thin as thin parts of the letter
Examples: Didot, Bodoni, Walbaum, Linotype Centennial, Walbaun

Slab-Serif: 1800's
-Only a slight thick-thin contrast
-Heavy rectangular serifs are as thick as the letters
-Serifs are the defining characteristic
-Differences in subdivision most visible in lowercase letters
Examples: Antique, First Clarendon, Beton, Memphis, Serifa

Sans-Serif: 1920's
Humanist 
-No Serifs
-Line widths visually equal
-More distinguishing forms than other sans-serifs
Examples: Gill Sans, Profile, Frutiger, Scala Sans, Myriad

Grotesk (and Gothic)
-Axis of the rounding is vertical
-Ascender height is usually equal to the capital height
-Narrow, vertical, construction of the letters
-Capital Angular
Examples: Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica, Franklin Gothic, Vectora, Bell Gothic

Geometric
-Line thicknesses only visually and minimally corrected
-Axis of the rounding is vertical
-Letters seem to be drawn using ruler and compass
Examples: Futura, Avant Garde, Eurostile, Erbar, Nevzeit Grotesk

Didot

Having completed animating our weather compositions using Flash, we are now moving on to a project about font in Typography. The font I have been assigned is Didot. Didot is a serif font. It falls under the classification of modern, or Didone, roman style. This font was originally designed by Firmin Didot in Paris in 1783. Adrian Frutiger designed this font for digital technology in 1992. This is called the Linotype Didot family. This font is one of the greatest for book work, and the delicate lines that make up each letter are good for display uses. A fun fact related to this font is that the "Foundry Daylight" version was commissioned and used by CBS with its logo (the eye).

Didot

Visc 204 Owl Poster

For Project 1A in Visc 204 we used sixteen different categories of drawings to create a poster. My animal was an owl, and this is my final poster, which can also be viewed at www.behance.com/alliefields. We did this same project last year in BDS, but I really enjoyed the chance to do it again a year later, this time with an animal rather than a hand tool. I had a lot of fun exploring owls with each category, and I think I was able to complete my drawings in a much faster and successful manner than last year. My favorite categories were the behavioral characteristics, the one line, and the painterly. Drawing eyes for the behavioral characteristic really allowed me to gain some detail in my drawings I had not found in other categories. The one line drawings I did were fun because of their simplicity. I enjoyed the painterly category because I was able to really use black and white tones to capture the owl. Overall, I enjoyed creating this poster. I really wanted to use this poster as a method to showcase the work I had done with my drawings, and I feel I was successful in this aspect. I am looking forward to the next part of our project where I will really get to transform my drawings in a graphical sense for a food truck company!

Weather Compositions

I have completed my first project for Elements of Typography. You can view it here: http://www.behance.net/alliefields 

Font Designers

5 Living Font Designers:

1) Erik Spiekermann (1947-?)
Spiekrmann is a type and graphic designer from Berlin. After his commission for the Deutsche Bundespost was cancelled late in development he decided to start his own type company, FontShop. Meta was the first typeface designed under this company. Meta is an informal and youthful typeface best for informal documents. It has small capitals.

2) Hermann Zapf (1918-?)
Zaph designed the typeface Optima which became available starting in 1958. He has designed many typefaces, and he is also a well known calligrapher. Optima was inspired by fifteenth century Florentine inscriptional capitals. He also worked as the type director of D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt.

3) Hans Eduard Meier (1922-?)
Meier is the type designer of Syntax. It is a sans-serif font that relates to the Renaissance humanists. It would not be categorized with Swiss design. Meier designed Syntax in 1955 but it was only used in the market in 1968 for cast metal typesetting.

4) Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum
These two designers work for their company LettError. They designed the typefaces ErikRightHand and JustLeftHand based off their own handwriting. They also have designed 'readymades' like Trixie which is based off of a type writer letter.

5) Carol Twombly
Carol Twombly worked on the font Adobe Trajan. She studied incriptions on the pillar of the emperor Trajanus. It was built in 113 AD in Rome. She corrected the letters so that they could be digitalised. She also added punctuation marks to the letters. This typeface is only available in capitals in Bold and Regular.


5 Dead Font Designers:

1) Bruce Rogers (1870-1957)
Rogers was schooled as both a painter and illustrator. He was famous for being one of the designers for bibliophile books. He designed the typeface Centaur. He first drew it out in ink and the calligraphic influence can be seen.

2) Charles Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790)
Cochin was one of the best engravers of his time. He was an illustrator in the court of Louis XV. The Peignot type foundry rendered Cochin's lettering into a typeface in 1912. It was redesigned in 1977 by Matthew Carter. It is not a conventional type for body text, but it is very useful in a decorative manner.

3) Claude Garamond (c. 1510-1561)
Famous both in the past and present, Garamond is known for having cut Greek types for Robert Estinne in Paris. Garamond created some of the best types ever known during his life, and printers used them in Europe. Robert Slimbach based the roman of 1989 Adobe Garamond on some surviving material from his work.

4) Eric Gill (1882-1940)
Gill was a controversial figure. He named his typeface Joanna after his daughter Joan Gill. He was Catholic, socialist, a social critic, sculptor, and a type designer. Joanna has many unique characteristics. It has a narrow italic and the serifs are very angular.

5) Frank Hinman Pierpont (1860-1937)
Pierpont with his team at Monotype designed the typeface Rockwell. It is a slab-serif. He is well known for his technical improvements in the Monotype machine park. He also contributed to the revival typeface Plantin.

All designers were researched using the book Letter Fountain: The anatomy of type

Type Found Letters

In class today we were sent to search around campus for the word Type. Claire and I decided to use newspapers to create each letter. This is what we came up with:

Adrian Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger is a well known typeface designer of the twentieth century. His most well known typefaces are Univers and Frutiger. He introduced Univers in the mid-twentieth century. Bold weights did not come into play until the end of the nineteenth century, so Univers was unique in that was a tightly packaged type family with different weights of type. Today this is taken for granted in that we have come to expect bold and light counterparts along with a typeface. Univers was the first type family to use numbers to name the various weights associated with the typeface. Built around the Roman version, there were a total of twenty one variations when Frutiger released this typeface. Univers is unique in that it uses even strokes, as well as a large x-height. This greatly increases legibility when it is used in very large or very small forms. In 1997 Frutiger used the Linotype to expand this typeface. It then had sixty-three fonts, and the numbering system for these fonts required a third digit. 


The Univers grid was introduced in 1957 along with the typeface. The simplest explanation for this grid would be that it was used to show the different labels for the typefaces within Univers without actually writing out bold, heavy, light, and so on. The numbering system used by Frutiger went along with the Univers grid. Using numbers was a popular part of the Bauhaus movement. The first number refers to the character weight. The number 2 represents the thinnest weight, and goes to 9 as the thickest. The second number gives the character width. The number 3 is the widest with 9 being the most condensed. Odd numbers mean it is roma, while even numbers mean the typeface is italic. The following image shows an example of this grid system of labeling typefaces:

Logos, Flags, and Escutcheons

Reading "Logos, Flags, and Escutcheons" by Paul Rand brought up many interesting points about logo design. Towards the end he writes "Design, good or bad, is a vehicle of memory." I feel that this is definitely something all designers strive for. In logo design and beyond, creating something memorable is the key to a successful design. He also brought up many other important points about logo design including the idea that simplicity within design is often what is most successful, yet most difficult to achieve.

Typography Definitions

Define weight:

• The density or the lightness of the individual letterforms.
• Example: Light vs. Bold Text 

Define width: 

• How wide a letterform becomes from extending or compressing 
• Example: Compressed, condensed, narrow, normal, wide, extended

Define style:

• Variations in thickness of stroke in letterforms that emphasize the appearance of certain characters
• Example: Light, bold, italic etc. 

Define font

• Font refers to a specific size and style of a given typeface. 
• Example: 12-point Helvetica

Define typeface:

• Typeface describes a complete alphabet including letters, numerals, punctuation marks, accents, special reference marks etc. 
• Example: Every letter, numeral... in Helvetica

Define x-height:

• The height of the lowercase x.

Define cap height:

• The height of capital letterforms. 

Define leading:

• The spacing between the lines of letters (pronounced 'ledding')
• Example: 10/12 Helvetica refers to 10 point Helvetica and 2pt leading.

Define letterspacing (tracking):

• The practice of inserting tiny spaces between words set in capitals or in small capitals to make them more agreeable to the eye. 
• Example: Capitals and small capitals require letterspacing so that they do not appear tightly packed together. 

How is type measured in inches, mm, points or picas?

• Type is traditionally measured in points. 

Define point:

• The unit used for the measurement of letterforms. 

Define pica:

• A printer's unit of type size that is equal to 12 points, about 1/6 of an inch. 

How many points are in an inch?

• A point is equivalent to 1/72 of an inch (0.35 mm) so 1 inch is equal to 72 points. 

If a letter is set in 36 points about how many inches tall is it?

• 1/2 inch tall

How many picas are in an inch?

• There are six picas in an inch. 

How many points are in a pica?

• There are 12 points in a pica. 

Owl Pictures

While working on my word lists and word cluster for my owl project, I came across these pictures of owls. I was inspired by their expressions and I hope these images will be helpful later in this project.

Caspar David Friedrich

When reading for my Modern Art History class I found this painting by Caspar David Friedrich. It is called Cloister Graveyard in the Snow. For some reason it really stood out to me, and I decided I would share it. I also found this video showing some of his other work:

Typography Terms and Definitions

Define the word “grid”

• The grid is an infrastructure upon which to build both complex and austere layouts that enable hierarchy and accessibility through flexibility and consistency. The grid is tied to Swiss Design. A mathematically constructed grid allows simplicity and uniformity in design elements within the layout. 

Why do we (designers) use a grid? What are the benefits?

• The gird is strongly connected to Swiss Design, and designers employ the grid to allow their designs to have simplicity and uniformity. The grid allows different design elements to work together in a cohesive manner within a layout. A major benefit of using a grid is that it allows you to specifically outline design elements for perhaps a project like a corporate manual. Uniformity is easily achieved when using a grid as an outline for a corporate project. 

What is a modular grid?

• A modular grid is formed by the intersections of horizontal and vertical lines. These lines create zones for different pieces of information. 

Margins: The space that surrounds the content of a page.

Columns: A column is one or more vertical blocks of content positioned on a page, seperated by gutters and/or rules. 

Grid Modules: The unit of measurement within the space that are divided consistently from top to bottom both horizontally and vertically. 

Flowlines: The horizontal line that appears on a page that your eye follows. 

Gutter: Empty space between and around columns of type and images on a page. 

Define hierarchy:

• Hierarchy is the arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being above, below, or on the same level as one another. More simply put, it is an ordered set based on importance. 

Define typographic color: 

• Typographic color is the relative lightness or darkness of a block of text. Factors like font size, and the size between letters, and the size between lines dictates the shade of color in a text block. 

What are ways to achieve a clear hierarchy? 

• Hierarchy is achieved within design by consciously emphasizing significant information, while gradually minimizing attention to other design elements. This can be done by exaggerating text or image size, or by isolating certain design elements. Additional graphics can also be used to call attention to a specific feature. 

Define white space:

• White space is the negative space beween images and text that is important to placing objects and achieving a hierarchy. 

Define contrast:

• Contrast occurs by forcing distinction between one thing and another as a way to communicate a message. Contrast can be achieved using size, color, and by using or not using an amount of space. 

Made Exercise for Type

The Owl

The animal I have chosen for our first project is an owl. Not only do owls appear commonly in our society during Halloween and in children's stories as wise creatures, they have commonly been depicted throughout history. Cave paintings of owls have been found in France as far back as 20,000 years ago, and they are also in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Symbolically owls stand for wisdom, death, prosperity, or misfortune. Here are some more facts about owls:

• Owls are nocturnal predators.
• Owls' eyes are fixed in their sockets, forcing them to turn their heads to look in different directions.
• Owls have a long bill, often partly covered by their feathers.
• While most owls do hoot, some do not and owls often make many other sounds as well.
• While some owls have ear tufts they are only for display, and do not contribute to their acute sense of hearing.
• There are approximately 205 species of owls.
• Owls can fly while being practically silent, and have incredible eyesight.
• The owl is Athene's favorite animal in Greek mythology. 
• The Greeks watched over owls, and many owls lived in the Acropolis.
• If an owl flew over an army before battle it implied victory, and they believed the gods favored the owl and gave them the power to see in the dark.
• Romans viewed owls as a creature from the underworld. If an owls' hoot was heard it implied death or doom. 
• Later the English and Irish both viewed owls as unlucky, yet in the most northern parts of England and Scotland owls were viewed as lucky. This is due to the fact that Romans never conquered these parts.