Lecture 8 History of Typography:

The history of Typography

General
Typography  is the intersect or crossover between visual and verbal communication.
Typography covers: a meta communication - a language that is used to comment on another language, paralinguistics - structures another language or the rhythm of communication and - gestures alongside words to change meaning.
Type classifications include:
Humanist, old style, transitional, modern, slab serif and sans serif.

Typeography through time
During the Roman Age most of our alphabet originated from this time. Tragans column.
Dark Ages  there was a gap of around 1000 years of no development
Medieval - during this period the lower case was developed.
Age of Print - Guttenberg printing press was invented in 1450, moveable type. First moveable  typefaces were based on human writing, black letter/gothic.

Humanist - 
The first typeface was created by Nicolas Jenson and it was named Jenson.
This typeface was much more readable and modern than the previous black letter.
Designed to resemble the easthetics of  Italian renaissance.
Some of the characteristics are: There is little difference in first and second stroke and inclination of the 'e'
Painter Geofroy Troy believed the alphabet should reflect the proportion of the human form.

Old Style
The following 50 years of type really started to drastically develop.
There was a huge shift between imitating human writing to type, as an art form on its own.

Transitional 
Type as a distinct form.
Now type wasn't based on the human form but created on quasi-scientific lines.
During the enlightenment period, 1693.
Characteristics are difference in stroke width. Also as society became more rational the letterforms where now becoming much more vertical.
During the late 18th century John Baskerville created a typeface with a contrast between thick and thin.

Modern
Start of Modernity.
Sometimes called Didone.
During1784 -  French Modernity, Giambattista Bodini.
Characteristics are very high stroke contrast, every angle horizontal and vertical, ordered, represented elegance and style.

Slab Serif
1880's, industrial revolution.
The nickname 'Egyptian' was very random and did not relate to the style in any way.
Characteristics are not sophisticated, rules of hierarchy where broken, type was condensed to fit lots on a page.
Typewriter font.

Sans Serif
Around in the 1800's but extremely popular in the modernist era.
Progressive, looking to the future.
Uni cameral, all text lower case.
Grotesk typefaces are simple and stripped down, all about communication and historicism.

Lecture 7 Low culture vs Hi culture

Designer Speed Dating

Company/Agency:

Proud Creative


"We are a creatively led multidisciplinary design
studio based in London.
Our goal is to create
work that makes our
clients and everyone at
the studio proud. It’s the
reason for our name."

The main reason for loving "Proud Creative" style of design is that it is heavily influenced by the modernist graphic design movement where communication is its key feature as shown below strict column grid.

The designs to me look clean and professional, and highly effective in creating a design with importance. i will keep looking back over these designs taking inspiration from different aspects of their designs.  

Male designer:

Mario Hugo:

Mario Hugo uses a range of different techniques throughout his work, I love the way that with his experimentation's with typography he sacrifices a large amount of readability and legibility to create a design that to me works far more effectively than using a simple legible typeface. His designs at first cause confusion but this draws the viewer in allowing them to look closer becoming intrigued.  

Female Designer:

Ramona Todoca

"I am a visual communicator who believes that society and culture can be shaped through 
design. My work reflects this view conceptually across a variety of mediums. My interests include branding, design for sustainability, museums graphics and semiotics. I am currently based in New York city and work as an art director on the IBM account at Ogilvy & Mather."


I love the simple clean  style i feel that this is influenced by the modernist graphic design movement. Another feature that i love is the use of white space i feel this calms the viewer displaying the content cleanly and in a highly effective way.

Designer Speed dating:

We organised our self into rows like a speed dating layout and exchanged designer that we where inspired by and who's work they found aesthetically pleasing. We all had a form each in which we would then tick off whether the suggested designer was to our taste and if we could use this designer for inspiration in the future:

Here are 3 examples of work my peers have suggested that i feel will be inspirational to me in the future:

Olly moss:

The use of negative space is a huge like of mine i feel it has the potential to communicate two messages at once, his design reminds me of one of my favourite designers. Saul bass who is well know for his Hitchcock film posters.

Andy Gilmore: 

I love how the lines and colour choice combined with different opacity options: Makes the design look 3 dimensional i have currently being experimenting with techniques to try and achieve these styles as i feel it draws the viewers attention instantly.

Vessa Samallisto:

The main feature of her design i find most appealing is the colour pallet that is used with the designs i feel that the pastel colours give the design a warm feel that is common with alot of vintage design. This is something that i never really work with. However i feel that after seeing this style of design i feel it is somthing that i can experiment with to widen the range of design outcome i am capable of.