05/04/19 - 26/04/19 (Week 1-Week 4)
Piyaphon Inthavong (0337589)
Typography
Exercises
LECTURE NOTES
Lecture 1: BriefingApril 5th, 2019
There were no lectures on the first day of the class. As an introduction to the Typography course, Mr. Vinod carefully introduced the subject module to us and explained the importance of the individual e-Portfolio that is essential as a compilation of our academic work and learning progresses which will later be used for our final evaluation.
Mr. Vinod then gave us guidance on e-Portfolio components and formats as we started our first blog on WordPress. After finished figuring things out and understanding the blog, we were given a short lecture on the differences between lettering (draw) and calligraphy (write). Lettering exercise was given out in the end which were to draw ten typefaces according to our personality.
Lecture 2: Introduction to Typography
April 12th, 2019
Lectures were canceled on the first hour as the lecturer announced that we redo our blog using Blog spot instead of WordPress since technical problems were found using WordPress. After finishing setting up our individual Blog spot quickly, lectures began and continued for an hour. Mr. Vinod talked about the basics, the proper terms and types of typography then later talked about the history and how typography began. Advice about further learning was also given.
The lecturers walked around the entire class to look at each of our artworks so they could give us a short critique session, this is for us to improve our typeface. They gave suggestions and chose the typeface that's most suitable for our chosen personality in which is made during the previous class. Lastly, we were given enough time in the last hour of the class to digitize our chosen typeface using Adobe Illustrator.
Lecture 3: Basics in Typography
April 19th, 2019
The class began with a lecture about the basics in typography. Mr. Vinod first taught the basic components and terminologies such as the baseline, median, X-height and moved on to the basic structure of letter forms while going through each term separately (stroke, apex/vertex, arm, ascender, beak, bowl, etc).
We learned that the full font of a typeface contains much more than just alphabets. They consist of symbols, numerals, punctuation marks, miscellaneous fonts, and even different languages that are all packed in a complete set of a typeface. Mr. Vinod also showed us the differences between capitals and small capitals as its uses are often misused by most people. Small capitals are letters in form of capital letters but are reduced in size of lowercase under X height.
Majority of class time were spent on lettering animation, we were quickly shown by both lecturers on ways to animate our digitized lettering using both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Before class being dismissed, Mr. Vinod assigned the class a new exercise which is to express 6 words in any way separately so that it represents the meaning of itself. Limited typeface were given for use, distortion of texts are not permitted.
Lecture 4:
April 26th, 2019
Today we learned about the cultural influences in Typography, focusing on how much changes that have been made in the world of typography. Asians innovation are often overlooked when it comes to
We learned that 200 years ago people write using only capital letters, while the Phoenicians write in the reverse direction of left to right. The new style of writing was then developed by the Greek called the "Ox plough" as the letters are written in alternating matters from left to right, then right to left (every second line is mirrored).
The revolution of cursive script evolved from the purpose of speed writing as to when letters' style is not as important as the communication itself. Lowercase letters were then formed and revolutionized from the results of speed writing.
As time continues to change type and letters, technology now has a high influence on typography as stone or chisels carvings and the traditional ways of writing are slowly fading and changing.
"If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree."
- Michael Crichton
INSTRUCTIONS
EXERCISE
Week 1:April 5th, 2019
As our first exercise, we were assigned to draw 10 lettering font styles that represent ourselves through arts. Fun and playful was the first two words that I believe signifies my own personality most. In honesty, I have to admit that I've been mixing varieties of personalities that I see within myself such as shown below to the reference photos. I can be picky, mysterious, a foodie, and even dreamy sometimes.
Once I was sure about the "fun" personality, a doodle style was the first one that came across my empty thoughts, it was the first lettering drawn on the paper and the one chosen by Mr. Vinod.
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| Figure 1.1. First sketch of the exercise; Varieties of styles are drawn for my chosen personality, "Playful." |
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| Figure 1.2. Part of the first attempt; 5 varieties were drawn per page. |
Week 2:
April 12th, 2019
Digitizing the lettering was not the difficult part of this exercise, but to understand the best way to communicate our personalities through our lettering. Mr. Vinod felt like my first draft wasn't playful enough even after being digitized at first with doodle effects. He mentioned about making the letters more "lively & playful" so that they look more exaggerating and fun.
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| Figure 2.1. The outlines of the firstly digitized lettering |
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| Figure 2.2. Drafts of all the scribble effects of Illustrator |
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| Figure 2.3. Several attempts and hours of failure have been spent on this exercise. My main aim was to give the overall picture a friendly look, which I think doughnuts works pretty good. |
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| Figure 2.4. The final work for this exercise. The doughnut plays an important role in helping the composition look playful and friendly, not to mention that the scribbles often reminds most of us about being young, careless and playful. |
Week 3:
April 19th, 2019It may sound difficult at first to turn our lettering into a short GIF animation, but we quickly learned it and turned our digitized lettering into an animation representing our qualities and personalities.
Frames are the first step towards animation and that is done by Adobe Illustrator. We drew multiple frames differently to display movements of our lettering and export them as JPEG file when we finish.
As stacks of JPEG files are loaded into Photoshop, we began adding our frames into the "Timeline" window and placed the frames accordingly as we finalized the animation.
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| Figure 3.1. My first trial on making the animation; Few frames were drawn here, the lines doesn't move in a constant rate. |
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| Figure 3.2. The final outcome. After creating the optimal movement for the scribble of the shadows and the doughnut sprinkles, bite animations were added to further help covey the overall message of playfulness. |
Week 4:
April 26th, 2019Another exercise for lettering expression and animation. This time expressing certain words according to their own meaning.
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| Figure 4.1. All my progresses, failures and success of the exercise in one picture. All sketches are done digitally. |
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| Figure 4.2. The full sketches of ANGRY expressions. Angry seemed to be the only one I struggled with most as well as spending most time on. |
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| Figure 4.3. The final of the 6 expressions. |
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| Figure 4.4. The process of drawing frames in Adobe Illustrator. |
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| Figure 4.5. The final outcome of the FREEZE animation. The main idea here is to show that the letters are shivering, freezing. |
FEEDBACK
Week 2:April 12th, 2019
Mr. Vinod carefully selected one of the lettering styles for me as he advised that the lettering style was the best fit for my chosen personality, playful.
He suggested that it could've been better, more playful by adding some more playful elements into the letters, perhaps a little more exaggerated by turning the letter "O" into a beach ball or making the edges rounder. Mr. Vinod likes the texture of the shadow and the irregular shapes of the letters.
Week 3:
April 19th, 2019
Mr. Vinod was happy about the first animation I showed him. However, he advised that the overall animation is still lacking that "playful" element that I'm trying to communicate with the lettering itself. I thought about creating a bite into the doughnut and he quickly agreed with the idea.
Week 4:
April 26th, 2019
As we went through the 6 given expressions to work with, Mr. Vinod gave me lots of useful tips for expression designs. "Don't be too decorative" as extra elements do not help with design communication. My FREEZE text was way too minimal at first, the letter A in ANGRY is way too huge, the FAINT design looks like falling instead of fading, Mr. Vinod suggested that most of the designs are communicating more than one single expression which causes confusion to the viewers. I was also told to make use of the white space for the ANGRY expression as spaces may communicate into other things and not anger itself.
REFLECTION
Experiences
Week 1: Learning to create blogs for our first class is interesting, it is my first time and I have to admit even as a little of a computer geek, I find it challenging to an extent, especially with WordPress.Week 2: The most interesting part about the class was the use of Adobe Illustrator, we learned few cool shortcuts and advanced tips for AI; It was also my first to digitize a font. Really enjoyed the practical sessions of Typography.
Week 3: It feels like a big jump from digitizing to animating, but I was satisfied with the outcome of my first GIF animation. It takes a huge amount of effort to draw multiple frames repeatedly to create movement for the animations. The exercise helped me realize how much of an effort animators have given in to create quality movies and animations.
Week 4: I'm starting to become more familiar with the idea of creating basic animations. I started working a little faster on drawing frames and making GIF animations. The animation exercises also taught an important lesson for designers which is to be clear with the idea that you're trying to communicate; Decorations matter less.
Observations
Week 1: It's difficult in the beginning to express my personalities with lettering as a lot of time is wasted just sitting, thinking and questioning myself.Week 2: I was not that happy about the chosen lettering, I thought it was one of the ugly ones, but I tried to consider Mr. Vinod's advice.
Week 3: I'm way behind on my blog and updates. I keep guessing about what to add on my blog later when I'm all busy with different assignments.
Week 4: I keep on making repeated errors like not being clear with the design; Sometimes too many meanings in one piece, sometimes the designs are way too minimalist and does not communicate enough.
Findings
Week 1: Even though I want things to be as perfect and nice as possible, blank paper does not help with anything. Stop overthinking and start drawing anything, an ugly sketch may lead to the very unexpected results.Week 2: Asking for feedback and advice is important. Understanding that communication through type and lettering is essential, it has more meaning than us liking the design or not. There's no limit in design, if you do not like it, you can always improve or alter the design without having to change the whole concept.
Week 3: Always keep a reminder to update the blog right away after class, this keeps the information fresh and detailed.
Week 4: Stop being decorative without any good reasons. "There are differences between designers and decorators," says Mr. Vinod; This quote truly made me understand how designers are supposed to think. Do more critical thinking and less of the "look" of the design itself, designing is more than the look.
FURTHER READING
An Essay on Typography is one of the timeless and classic book which talks about the long history of Typography, its art and production. Its essential to consider learning certain things from the root in order to fully understand the subject and this book carries out the job excellently for Typography.
Its interesting how the author started off being quite critical and somehow skeptical about industrialism and it's revolution. To be honest, I agree to some extent to how the industry plays an important role on human's mind despite them being good or bad, right or wrong.
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| A page from the book; The revolution of letter A, uppercase and lowercase using different tools such as brushes, chisels, broad pen... |
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Here's one reference for a good example of good lettering (top) vs. bad lettering (bottom);
Differentiation of lettering and typefaces is one important rule to have in mind especially for most type designers.
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One thing that is essential and definite to human being is communication, that being said, "You cannot not communicate" is very well said because good communication is the key to life itself.
"Type is everywhere."
Type is hugely involved in our everyday lives that we do not even notice it, let's give an egg as an example for this; When we see each egg with data stamped on it, we wonder how the type got there. Do different chickens have their own stamp? Are all eggs rolled by a machine which then prints of the surface of the egg?
Here's the important part, the decisions that designers make on typefaces, the placement of texts or its composition strongly allows us to feel undistracted and present while reading the presented piece. Even though all the paragraphs and text in a newspaper look obvious and normal, the truth behind them are careful and hours of planning that are applied to all the sentences, paragraphs, line breaks and spaces by a typographer before publishing.
No one would use the same shoes to go dancing, run a smile, climb the north face of the Eiger, and walk to the office."
The phrase strongly describes the message that style matters even in type using the analogy of how we make decisions on our footwear every day. Think about it, we don't wear the same pair of shoes for everything, just like how designers don't use Helvetica for everything. Different typeface have their own characteristics, they tell different stories, and each of them is beautiful in its own uniqueness.