OUGD403 Learning The Components Of The Anatomy Of Type

Due to the fact that we were in the middle of a module based around type I wanted to improve my knowledge about the anatomy of typefaces, so I went to the library to seek out a  book of which had a good diagram that explained the components of the anatomy of type. I took out a book called TYPE MATTERS by Jim Williams of which has a diagram that explained all the components of the anatomy of type, I shortened the diagram to short enough that it encapsulated all the needed components. The diagram below is the diagram I drew out so that I would remember the components;

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OUGD403 Studio Brief 1 Alphabet Soup Interim Crit

For the interim crit we were asked to select a final ten of our total amount of designs to take and for them to be crit'd by a group of other students. This interim crit is used as a middle way point through the module to get some feedback and advice on how out work is going. I presented my ten individual letterforms I designed and then took the feedback that people gave me on which I should use to go forward with and make into a whole alphabet.

When I went into the crit I had a good idea about which idea I was most probably going to use as I was really in favour of the idea that stemmed from the Penrose triangle, the first idea on this sheet, but I took a selection of ten of these to the crit with me;

I showed the group my final ten designs of which were number  2,4,5,7,8,9,10,12,13 and 15 if you read from top to bottom and left to right on the first picture and then the second picture. I ran the group through the meaning behind my chosen idea and the routes i went down. Of which were down the routes on intricacy, machinery and the ones with a heavy robust aesthetic.

The crit was quite beneficial to me because the group including Simon (my tutor) agreed that the sleekness but the intricacy of the Penrose triangle design coupled with the fact it isn't that hard to reproduce and the simplicity of it works quite well that I should take this font further and look at it as my main option for this task.

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OUGD403 Studio Brief 1 - Alphabet Soup

For the first studio brief we were told to use the chosen font we decided that was most relevant to us from the previous task to adapt into a font of our own and make all of our adaptions around the word that we selected at random at a later point.

As we all looked blatantly confused the tutors helped us out by giving us an insight into what we needed to do we split up into groups and were given a word by the tutors to have a practice at what we were going to do.

We were given the word Technical.

We decided to start out our insight into the word by making a spider diagram and listing off words of which we believe related to out given word;

With this method it is a very quick an easy way to adapt a single words in to a large selection of ideas to use.

I was then given my word of which I would have to use for the actually us for the adaption of my typeface, the word I was given was;

mechanical |mɪˈkanɪk(ə)l|adjective1 operated by a machine or machinery: a mechanical device.• relating to machines or machinery: the helicopters are prone to mechanical failure.2 (of an action) done without thought or spontaneity; automatic: she stopped the mechanical brushing of her hair.3 relating to physical forces or motion; physical: the smoothness was the result of mechanical abrasion.• archaic (of a theory) explaining phenomena in terms only of physical processes.• archaic relating to mechanics as a science.4 relating to the exclusive legal right to reproduce a particular recorded version of a song or piece of music: mechanical copyright | mechanical royalties.noun1 (mechanicals) the working parts of a vehicle.2 (usu. mechanicals) archaic a manual worker: rude mechanicals.[with allusion to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream .]DERIVATIVESmechanically adverb,mechanicalness nounORIGIN late Middle English (describing an art or occupation concerned with theconstruction of machines): via Latin from Greek mēkhanikos (see mechanic) + -al.

I then set off making a spider diagram around the word mechanical and it all come together to produce this;

The word mechanical worked immediately for me because it started spanning ideas in my head as soon as I started thinking of it, the ideas came flowing. This is good because i do know that some people seemed to struggle creating ideas from their word but mine seemed to work very well for me. 

With this at my side I started off creating some very rough initial ideas on a sort of really rough design board.

On this I just jotted down some very rough ideas that I developed from my research on the word mechanical. I started looking into creating work of which displayed the intricacy of which can be related to the word mechanical. One of my biggest initial ideas was based around the route of intricacy that I gained from my word mechanical. I had an idea to use a theory of the impossible triangle or also sometime called the Penrose triangle, the idea is that the side of the shape in this case the letters don't really work normally and the side of the shape never end. I then continued to jot ideas roughly on some design boards. We then had a group crit to identify what other people though was good and bad about the designs. I then after a while of making rough ideas and working with the feedback give set out starting to make my final initial idea's, in the end I created 15 solid ideas of which I was going to take through as my final ideas.

The feedback I was given was that I should look into the fact that mechanical can be linked into machinery and that I should look into using cogs and gears to resemble machinery. Furthermore form this idea i should look at the fact of things fitting together and should look at puzzles and jigsaws. Furthermore could my design where it looks like a maze could it be made from one line the entire thing and could I link it to circuitry and circuit boards. Finally I was advised to look into textures in my lettering and also look into of the letter that it plot apart could it be split into more parts.

With my feedback I also created some of my other letters from this notion of intricacy by using a lot of small and over-crossing lines to create the effect of patterns and this gave the notion of intricacy. I also looked at some other route that I took from my word machinery, the first of these avenues that I also discovered was the heavy and robust connotation to mechanical, so I designed the three designs, the middle and the top right of the right hand picture and the middle of the second row down in the same picture.  I designed these with the intention in mind that they would be heavy and robust but simple. The final avenue that I went down was down the route of a more literal look at mechanical and I designed the letter made up of machinery cogs and puzzle parts. 

OUGD403 Study Task 1 Feedback

In the earlier task I assessed six fonts on the basis of nine questions and then made a decision to which of these fonts is most related to me. I presented my assessment of this and people gave back feedback about what they like and dislike about my presentation style. The comments I got where;

Firstly I should have expanded on the fact that are don't think serif fonts are for me. I think this because in a font I believe the serif adds a more old fashioned and traditional sense to the word where as i prefer the more sleek modern nature of a sans serif font.

Also it was suggested that my presentation might have been just too heavy on the text and could have benefited from drivelling on slightly less and being a bit more concise.

It was pointed out by the viewers that they quite enjoyed my decision stage to my presentation and they said that it is quite useful to do as I did and if when having to come to a conclusion rule out the options of which definitely aren't relevant at all to you leaving only the ones that are to make your decision from. This makes the choice easier to make.

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Whats My Type? (OUGD403 Study Task 1)

I was asked to answer a set of nine questions about myself in order to give me an insight about me and my personality. We were then given the six fundamental fonts from Massimo  Vignelli's canon and asked to relate one of the six fonts to myself from the way I answered the nine questions and then from this create a three minute presentation with an insight into the questions, an insight into the fonts and then choose the font of which I believe relates most to me and explain why i believe this.

The six fonts from Massimo Vignelli's cannon are;

Garamond

Bodoni

Century Expanded

Futura

Times Roman

Helvetica

The questions we were asked were;

When are you the happiest?

When listening to music of any kind, Im a massive fan of all genre's of music.

What is your greatest fear?

Spiders

What is your happiest memory?

Waking up on Christmas as a child

What was your most embarrassing moment?

Jumping off a swing trying to look cool and falling and breaking my leg

What makes you unhappy?

When people around me aren't getting along

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Originally I wanted to be an architect

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

I quite like to watch geordie shore in my free time.

What is your favourite hobby?

My favourite hobby must be either playing my guitar or playing rugby.

Where is your favourite pace?

The United States of America must be my favourite place to visit, more specifically California.

The first of the six fonts that Massimo Vignelli suggests are the only fonts actually needed when creating graphic design is Garamond. Garamond also happens to be the oldest of the six fonts too. This font of today is to be believed that it has origins from two different locations the first being that it was designed by Claude Garamond in 1533 and was designed in a very different way to the other typefaces this was almost a crucial part of the first humanist typefaces. The second being that it may derive from the work of Jean Jannon in circa 1550’s of who took his influence massively from the work of Claude Garamond.

The second of the fonts suggested by Massimo Vingelli is the typeface Bodoni. Bodoni was named after its creator Giamattista Bodoni, an Italian National in 1788. Giamattista was often referred to as the King or Printers. The Bodoni font loosely follows the ideas of another font Baskerville designed around 30 years earlier. Bodoni was part of a big fashion for using typefaces with stronger contrasts between thick and thins, un-bracketed serifs and stronger vertical stress in the 18th Century causing all fonts that didn’t follow these rules to become the old style typefaces.

Century Expanded is a font of which didn’t come too far after the original of its kind made called Century. This expansion on the original font was designed by the Benton's, father Linn Boyd Benton and son Morris Fuller Benton. This font was designed originally as a wider version of the normal century font for Theodore De Vinne’s press and it was called Century Broadface. In the 1900 is was released for general typeface youth and called Century Expanded. Since that day Century Expanded has been used as the type face for the New York Daily news.

Futura was designed during the times of the Bauhaus way of design. The typeface was designed by the designer Paul Renner around 1924/1926 and although he wasn’t actually a member of the Bauhaus he shared the majority of their views that a new modern typeface should reflect on modernity and should not be designed as a rival of a previous typeface. It was commercially released in 1927 by the Bauer type foundry. When designing Futura Renner avoided non-essential elements such as frills and serifs. The most major way Futura has been used it it was the typeface chosen for the writing on the commemorative plaque left by the astronauts on the moon in 1960.

The penultimate font named by Massimo Vingelli is Times Roman of which was released for use in 1931. The names Times comes from the origin of its creation. It was originally created by a typographer called Stanley Morison and and funded by the Times of London newspaper to create a new typeface and that is where it takes its name from, The Times of London newspaper. An advertising artist called Victor Lardent oversaw the creating of the typeface and drew the letterforms. Two type companies owned parts to the font and therefore monotype company now labels it as Times New Roman and Linotype now advertised it as Times Roman.

Finally the last of the typefaces is called Helvetica. Helvetica was originally designed by Swiss nationals Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas type foundry in 1957. Helvetica was quite closely based around a Swiss font called Schelter-Grotesk. It was designed with a general neutral sense, so that the typeface itself carries no meaning. It became popular in a post-war Europe where companies wanted to go away from decorative fonts and more toward a straight forward typeface. Over the years it has been used for a lot of very big work such as the logos of American apparel to Microsoft and also such big projects like the underground system in New York.

Massimo Vingelli  believes that only the six prior fonts are needed in the creation and design of work. The first things I would like to do is eliminate the typefaces of which are very much the opposite of the typefaces I relate to. These typefaces are Garamond, Bodoni, Century Expanded and Times Roman. I am ruling against these fonts straight away because they are totally opposite to the fonts I like to use and am related too. I say this because I am not a fan of the overzealous nature to these fonts through the serifs and the frills in the font. I much prefer a font that is a lot more simple of which leads me on to…

After looking into all of the type faces suggested by Massimo Vingelli I seem to be stuck between two for which I think is most relates to my personality. My decision is between the typefaces Helvetica and Futura. My reason I say it is between terse two fonts is that they both have a straightforward, simple and sleek look to them which is much more related to the style of work I like to do where as the frilly non-essential nature of the other four fonts aren't really suitable for me. Although I would say that my decision will go to Helvetica as can relate to the typeface in the way that I agree that the use of text in work is mainly carry a message and therefore the use of plainer texts leaves the onlooker in no doubt that the meaning is in the artwork design and not the text in the artwork.