Tag Archives: Typefaces

A type of island: San Serriffe!

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San Serriffe

On 1 April 1977 the Guardian produced a 7 page travel supplement on the tiny tropical republic of San Serriffe, “a small archipeligo, its main islands grouped roughly in the shape of a semicolon, in the Indian Ocean”, which was apparently celebrating ten years of independence.

The country was in fact completely made up as an April Fool’s joke. The name San Serriffe and the shape of the islands were just the first clues; everything connected with San Serriffe was named after printing and typesetting terms.

The name itself refers to sans serif typefaces; Bodoni, the capital, is a variety of typeface; the two main islands are called Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse; the indigenous islanders are known as flongs, a mould for making type, and the whole Republic is ruled over by the dictator General M J Pica, named after a unit of measurement in type. The Guardian

I howled with laughter when I found this, it really appealed to my sense of humour. I love the detail that went into the joke and was amazed by the follow up coverage it has also generated.

What was interesting was how many of the clues I could now spot having done section 4, it was made all the more delicious because I could join in the joke and spot most of the typographic terms. Something I doubt I would have been able to do before the course!

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Assignment 4: Show Me (Part One – development)

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Mindmap show research for a typographic design assignment

Brief:

Design the font for use on the cover of a magazine called type and write a short article for the magazine using a range of typefaces, with typographic illustrations, drawing on all that you have learned in this section. The article should include sections on:

  • What makes a typeface interesting
  • How a typeface is constructed
  • Question marks
Mindmap show research for a typographic design assignment

Show Me mindmap

I began with my usual process of creating a mind map. A brainstorm of all the things that came to mind as I was thinking about the assignment. This raised a number of points:

  • The physicality of the production of type and how much of the history remains in the terminology we use
  • Its variety and the fact that typefaces are constantly evolving and morphing
  • A formalised anatomy and underlying rules for how best to work with type
  • How typography has been integrated into different artistic movements
  • Its role in conveying messages and therefore having a notion of ‘audience’

Three ideas emerged in terms of where I might take the design:

  • A minimalist approach
  • A Pop art/collage style
  • An approach based on the materiality of type and its origins

I had also been sketching, just playing with different approaches and layouts. I think it’s fair to say I’m not the most accomplished at hand drawn type but it helped me evolve the designs I would focus on.

I used a couple of online tools to try and help develop a typeface. One was based on my handwriting, which I deliberately exaggerated:

Example of a handrwitten typeface

Handwritten typeface

This was fun to develop but I don’t think it was ever going to be a serious option for my designs. I tried FontArk but found it difficult to use and it kept crashing.

I also went back to some of my earlier research, and examples in my visual diaries around Pop Art and minimalism. I continued collecting for my Pinterest boards and following feedback from my tutor for Assignment 3 I have started using my ‘Swipe File’ board as a more eclectic collection place, just pinning things that catch my eye rather than being organised into a particular theme.

I found a number of online resources like ‘Thinking with Type,’ that were really useful in terms of understanding type construction and design ideas. Alongside this I watched YouTube tutorials and did a lot of reading around the subject. I found ‘The Typographic Workbook’ particularly helpful.

I was starting to formulate my design ideas but realised I needed the text for the articles so I knew what I was working with in terms of content. I may not have followed the brief precisely but I decided to go with the aspects of typography that interested me. The first was around how typographic design needs to focus on both the micro and macro levels. This is important in relation to how we read and the fact that we don’t read letter by letter but scan and pause allowing time to process the visual information when we pause.

In terms of construction I suspect that was supposed to be about ascenders, decsenders, ligatures etc., but I was fascinated by the more fundamental construction. Western capital letters are based on five archetypal structures that apparently have remained unchanged for nearly 2000 yrs. This was intriguing and I could see how it might be incorporated into a design.

Alphabet laid out to show the five underlying structures

The five archetypal structures

I found a really useful thread on Quora about the origins of the question mark and this suggested some of the visuals I might include.

The research stage helped highlight a number of choices that I would need to make  as I approached my designs:

  • Tone
  • Style – serif or sanserif
  • Readability and legibility
  • Relationships and layout

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Exercise: Lorum Ipsum

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Exercise: Lorem Ipsum (Graphic Design 1, pg.99)

Select one of the designs from your research that you think works. Using Lorem Ipsum dummy text try and copy the layout and design as closely as possible. Having completed your first example try another one. Make notes in your learning log.

I looked at two examples from my research so far; the Time Magazine article ‘Two Hermiones’ and My Cat ‘A Changing Nature.’ I don’t think I was complacent about this exercise but it certainly seemed more difficult than I had imagined. Given the number of variables, from font size and typeface to alignment and leading, it took some time to try and get something resembling the original article. I’m not sure I was entirely successful in achieving absolute copies (for example, I couldn’t find the right typeface for ‘A Changing Nature’s’ header) but it did give me a valuable insight into layout choices.

Having achieved an initial copy for both articles I then experimented with different layouts and it was very interesting to see how even subtle differences can have an impact on legibility and readability.

Two Hermiones:

 

I created several versions from the copy:

  1. Justified all lines including heading
  2. Justified all lines, hyphenated, with adjusted leading
  3. Left aligned, ragged and hyphenated

The justified all lines with adjusted tracking initially looks very orderly and legible however it is not very easy to read, and in design terms the header doesn’t look right. I think the similar version but without adjusted tracking is harder to read because of the lack of white space. The left aligned version is for me the most readable, but again the heading and subheading do not work in design terms.

Changing Nature:

I also created three versions for this article:

  1. Justified all lines
  2. Left aligned leading adjusted
  3. Centred

The left aligned version is quite close to the original but the subhead and text box items are justified. It is interesting to see that the different tracking makes this look more ragged and less legible. The justified larger text doesn’t work because of the additional white space it introduces. The justified all lines again looks neat but is harder to read, it is also easy to see the ugly white rivers that run through the middle of the columns. I did the centred version just for fun but it definitely highlights the issue of how layout can affect legibility and readability.

 

Research Point: Magazine typefaces

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Research Point: Magazine typefaces (Graphic Design 1 pg. 97)

Go through the print material you have collected and divide it into ones that look easy to read immediately and those that don’t. Is this due to the typefaces used, the way the type is laid out – the number of words per line and the column width, or its alignment?

Work out from your examples what the designers have done to make things more legible and readable.

I can see that this activity could easily become a bit of an obsession! It was fascinating to note how fast I made the decision about what I felt was easily readable and worked well for me. It wasn’t until I started measuring and analysing the characteristics of the pages that I realised how much sits behind that almost instantaneous decision. I looked at a wide variety of print materials from the “Lakeland” catalogue and “Your Cat,” to “Time Magazine” and the “British Journal of Photography” (BJP) on the basis that this would give me some very different house styles to consider.

As I started deconstructing the layout I was very aware that my needs in terms of legibility and readability may not be the same as everyone else’s. I wear varifocal glasses and have a slight astigmatism in my left eye; for the most part I take my glasses off when I’m reading but that is dependent on type size.

In the end I analysed eight pages from six magazines, ranging from those I thought were quite legible and readable to examples I found very difficult to read. Rather than try and do everything on the computer I photocopied the pages that I wanted to look at and marked them up by hand. I was then able to scan them and add them to my learning log.

In order of preference in terms of my ability to read them, from best to worst, the articles are:

  1. A Tale of Two Hermiones: Time Magazine
  2. A Changing Nature: Your Cat
  3. In Print Lotus: BJP
  4. Labour of Love: Good Housekeeping
  5. The Mood: Elle Magazine
  6. Video: People Management
  7. You don’t want to alarm anyone…: People Management
  8. Experience: Elle Magazine

The first two were very close and I was surprised at choosing a justified text as this is usually harder to read. I think the centred headings and use of white space is probably what worked for me. It is a very simple layout, which is something I have taken note of.

I was also slightly surprised with ‘Your Cat’ because it is the only one I looked at that has four columns. I was attracted by the quite informal header typeface, and the San-serif body text with no more than six or seven words per line I found very easy to read. I think this was helped by the ragged, rather than justified edge. Overall, the tone set by the typeface seemed causal and friendly.

The BJP has used three equal width columns with a serif text and a bold sub header. My critique of this design would be that the typeface is a little small for me, but that may be expected as the emphasis seems to be more on the photographs than the text.

The Good Housekeeping page I just find really messy and I’m not sure where my eyes want to go. It uses six colours, mixed cases, regular, italic and bold typeface. It feels like the whole toolkit has been thrown at it. The serif typeface with ragged edge is reasonably clear to read but the overall design put me off reading.

Elle Magazine’s ‘The Mood’ uses a more limited typeface range and has more coherence than the Good Housekeeping page but it is too small for me to read comfortably, which I find off putting particularly because all the paragraphs run together without any space between them. The tone of the typography feels quite formal and probably aimed at a readership that I am not part of.

Both the People Management pages look overloaded to me. There is so much going on I am inclined to just flick past them. I think it has not long been redesigned to a smaller format, which I suspect was intended to make it look more contemporary. The heavy solid lines on “You don’t,” and the mix of colours and symbols and text on “Video” make the typefaces leap about on the page for me. The typeface on “Video” is also too small.

Again it was a close decision but Elle Magazine’s “Experience” is the least successful from my perspective. Small dense serif text, uneven column widths, justified text, narrow side margins all make this page very unappealing and something I am unlikely to read. The designer has used indents and the large capital “M” in an attempt to break things up but I don’t find it effective.

This was a really useful activity in terms of thinking about my own work. It has highlighted for me that I have a preference for a simple clear typographic layout but that I shouldn’t rule things out too quickly – like using justified text – as there seem to be ways to make it work in terms of readability and legibility. I was surprised to see the extent of the variation within each of the magazines in terms of design. Most seem to stick to two to three typefaces but these can have different formats, type sizes and colours.

 

 

Exercise: If the face fits 1

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Exercise: If the face fits Graphic Design 1 pg: 94

This exercise comes in two parts, the first being to create a sample book of typefaces. Organising the typefaces into:

  • Serif for continuous text, and headings
  • San-serif for continuous text and headings
  • Script fonts
  • Decorative fonts
  • Fixed width, techno and pixel fonts

Identify which typefaces have bold, italic, black or light fonts.

Oblong sample book page

I took two approaches to this first part of the exercise. The first being to start to create a sample book and the second being to use software to organise the typefaces.

I decided to use the sample book as an opportunity to take the plunge and use InDesign. I have used other packages before like Publisher but a couple of earlier attempts to get to grips with InDesign were not entirely successful. I decided on a landscape format with a very simple design so the typeface could be easily identified and I could feature the different formats.

I learnt a number of things in setting up the sample book:

  • How to set up an apply master pages
  • How to set the document language
  • Turning off hyphenation
  • Fill and stroke
  • Adjusting typeface and characters
  • Locating and adding glyphs
  • Using past in place

I’m not convinced I produced the samples as efficiently as I could have but at least I’ve got started.

As an alternative I also signed up to MyFontBook, which allowed me to quickly identify and tag the typefaces on my computer. This is a great way to do the work of the sample book quickly but I’m glad I started with InDesign before I used this.

I can see how useful the sample books might have been in the past and can be helpful as a quick reference guide now; this feels like the start of an on-going process. I have only done two of each form of typeface in my sample book so far but have found the process very good for familiarising myself with InDesign and the typefaces on my computer. It was useful to see the different formats that typefaces come in (reglar, light, bold, italic etc.) and the different tone they can each evoke from fun and informal to serious and formal.

 

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Typefaces around you

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Collage of typefaces from a journey to London

Street Typography

I used my trip to see the Crewdson show at the Photographer’s Gallery in London as an opportunity to look at some of the typefaces I encountered on the way. To say they were ever present seems like an understatement. Typography was there in every aspect of my journey from my number plate and parking ticket to underground adverts and Emergency call systems.

The most common feature, with the exception of the Royal Academy logo, was that all the typefaces were sans serif. A couple used a script typeface. They were also a mix of all uppercase and upper/lower case. By the time I got home the exercise had almost become overwhelming, and it was interesting to note how much I probably screen out everyday.

I was intrigued that most of the typefaces were sans serif because my understanding was that serif type is easier to read (although Poole’s research suggests this is not a clear cut debate). Sans serif typefaces certainly look more contemporary but for me it highlighted the importance of the relationship between design and purpose, particularly where the intention is to convey a specific message.

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Research Point: Magazine typefaces

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Paragraph of text from Elle magazine with analysis marks
Paragraph of text from Elle magazine with analysis marks

Typeface analysis

(Research point: Graphic Design 1, page 87)

Choose a magazine and look at the main typefaces they use for the body text and headlines.

I had bought a number of magazines to use for the various exercises and research points and decided to use ‘Elle’ magazine for this activity. This is not a magazine I’m particularly familiar with and it seems to have a very distinctive style so I thought it would be a good starting point. I used various online tools (Identifont, WhatTheFont and Font Matcherator) with mixed success. The various searches gave five matches for the main heading:

  • Nimbus Roman Modern Compress D
  • Euphonia Latin
  • Redeye serif bold
  • Ambroise Std Francois Demi – this was the closest match as far as I could see

On further research a couple of blogs suggest it is Didot, which having seen it, I think is correct. I am obviously getting a bit typeface nerdy because this blog piece on Didot’s history was fascinating!

The brief was just the kind of challenge that Hoefler & Co. loves: we were asked to create a typeface that works like no other, a Modern which — unlike the commercial cuts of Bodoni — would have hairline serifs, and maintain them over a range of sizes. From the Didot collection we chose the grosse sans pareille no. 206 of Molé le jeune as a historical model, and extended the scant material in Didot’s 1819 Spécimen des Caracteres with quite a bit of invention: italics designed to work at large sizes, a range of different weights, and the many characters that Didot’s workshop never made. In the service of the design’s thin hairlines, we drew each of the family’s six styles in seven different “optical sizes,” each designed to be used at a different range of sizes, for a total of forty-two fonts.

The ‘July’ subhead got 9 matches:

  • Vedo Book
  • Irma Light, Regular & Medium
  • Cyntho Pro Regular
  • Relay Wide
  • Family Bird
  • Relay Wide Light

It looks to me like Relay Wide Light is the closest match. At the beginning of the activity I noticed I was broadly scanning the words and the typefaces but I was then looking in more detail (see the image above). The sorts of things I started picking out were:

  • Bowl shapes
  • Whether there were serifs
  • The position of serifs – were they either side of the line or just above/below, right or left
  • Where serifs sharp or rounded
  • Angles – this was noticeable particularly on the ‘S’ character, did the top and bottom line up or where they slightly offset

This was another good activity for really looking at typeface construction and understanding the characteristics that enabled me to decide which typeface is the closest match. It was also interesting to see that although a magazine like ‘Elle’ has its own house style much of its content includes advertising with additional typefaces. I was struck in looking through the magazine at just how many typefaces are included; this must make presenting a consistent style challenging.

Once I had finished my typeface searches I came across this blog piece, mystery solved!

Domaine and Galaxie Copernicus in use for Elle UK by Suzanne Sykes & Mark Leeds in the UK.

Suzanne & Mark have really mixed it up with three totally different typeface families, including a forthcoming sanserif from Mário Feliciano. On paper and in theory, these typefaces shouldn’t “mix”, but in Elle they totally work. It’s a testament to the typographic skills of the designers that they’ve created a sympathetic environment for the fonts to thrive! The magazine is thoroughly contemporary, as it needs to be, and the pacing various throughout. Some spreads verge on controlled mania, others are calm and tastefully restrained.

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Research Point: Typography 2

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Images of protest placards

Protest Typography

Our civilization is based on the alphabet and numerals. These elementary marks have no semantic meaning, but have been assigned roles as visual substitutes for speech sounds and arithmetic quantities. (Meggs, 1992)

…typography with its ability to corporealize language can be a capable tool of intervention against issues that concern us as citizen-designers. In order to understand typography’s capacity as a means for design activism there is the need to perceive typography as part of a greater system, –a network that includes written communication, language, technology, politics and society. (Özkal, 2016)

Typography, it seems to me, has a crucial role to play in capturing our thoughts and putting them out in the world. Often this is probably done without much thought – we just happen to use whatever is set as the default on our computer or device. I remember for a long time in the organisations I worked for everything was Times New Roman for day-to-day communication.

Having worked with a designer when setting up my consultancy business I am aware that the relationship between the typeface used and the message you want to convey is very nuanced. We worked through a series of questions around the tone I wanted to set, as well as practicalities like legibility and readability. The typeface was saying something important about me and the character of my business.

I would argue that typography has an innate power. I have been collecting examples of protest typography on Pinterest and it is interesting to see that in most images of marches in particular, the placards are ubiquitous. The protest typography I have looked at so far seems to have a number of common characteristics:

  • It is designed to ‘shout’, to be big and bold
  • It is generally black, although reversed out typeface, and sometimes red are also used
  • Whether handwritten or printed it is predominantly all caps
  • It is also generally san serif, with quite a slab typeface
  • The message is usually conveyed as succinctly as possible – of the 117 images I have pinned so far the word count is generally between three and seven
  • Some are ‘designed’ and mass produced, others are handwritten on found materials

Its role seems to be to reinforce an uncompromising point. A statement that makes it clear what the bearer thinks about the issue in hand and that this view often sits in opposition to what might be regarded as a dominant ideology. I think this is what Oskal (2016) is referring to when he talks about being watchful of the invisible actors in typographic communication. This leaves me with a question about whether typography in itself is benign, is it purely the application that positions it?

Letters in their attempt to confront letters, create a crack that makes us become more watchful; hence recognize the invisible actors in typographic communication. Typography can work with or resist these actors, but in whichever way, to use its capacity it is necessary to perceive typography in its relation with other systems, such as language, technology, ideology and politics. (Özkal, 2016: 8)

References

Meggs, P. B. (1992). Type and image: The language of graphic design: John Wiley & Sons.

Özkal, Ö. (2016). Letters against letters: Typography as a means for Design Activism. Paper presented at the 5T Design & Resistence Conference Proceedings.

 

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Research Point: Typography

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The history of typography, printing, and reading are all linked; what else can you find out about this history that you find interesting?

A quick online search of the ‘history of typography’ reveals a wealth of information primarily documenting the timeline from its earliest developments through to the present day. This short animation is fun.

This TedX is also a playful look at how we see typography

I was struck by the statement that ‘typography, printing and reading are linked’; for me this has political connotations. It is closely linked to education and goes back to the debates about providing the masses with the ability; a political act that was seen as controversial. Much of my secondary research has therefore focused on typography in relation to politics and protest.

When I first started GD1 I watched lots of graphic design documentaries, it was a new field for me and I knew that this immersive approach works for me. One of the videos I watched was Wim Crouwel Talking About Swiss Style.

While it was not specifically about typography in relation to protest what I was struck by was the fact that typefaces I may take for granted were not universally available, he describes how difficult it was to get the Grotesque typefaces in the Netherlands when he started working. This is an extraordinary concept in an era when I can pretty much download any typeface I want (as long as I can pay for them). I think this is important in terms of the cultural history of typography. I was intrigued and previously unaware that typefaces were so closely associated with particular countries of origin.

 

 

 

Research Point One

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A series of different typefaces - based on 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' phrase

Research Point (pg.38 OCA Graphic Design)

What sort of items have you collected so far?

What was it that made you want to keep these items?

My research to date has been broad in terms of getting to know the field a little better, and narrow in terms of the specific exercises and assignments. A core part of my strategy involves using different Pinterest boards extensively to collect visual examples:

I am also following a number of OCA Pinterest boards as that gives me access to more examples and includes things I might not have collected myself. I have a growing pile of books that span practical guides through to theoretical and conceptual approaches. These are particularly useful for weaving into other aspects of my life as I travel!

I am making use of my sketchbook to collect examples of the work of a range of Graphic Designers. This has been very helpful in terms of the HG Wells book cover design exercise. I have also been collecting magazines and online pages to get a feel for different design and layout approaches.

A series of different typefaces - based on 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' phrase

Collecting

The current collecting focus for me is typefaces. I have learnt how to add new typefaces to my apps on the desktop and am making use of lots of free resources. It has been interesting exploring a number of websites that talk about trending typefaces. The Google fonts site is also helpful in that it suggests typeface combinations (this is helping me gain confidence in thinking about what I would use). Typography is the area I probably feel least comfortable with and although it comes later in the course I feel it is something I need to be thinking about as soon as possible.

The reasons for collecting these different materials vary. With some it was purely because I had some form of immediate response to them, approaches I really liked and disliked. Some surprised me or showed an idea I would never have thought of. Some of the illustration based examples made me full of awe – a case of illustration envy! In many cases it is an aesthetic response, something beautiful, ugly, funny or sad. In this process I have also found myself particularly drawn to work with a socio-political message. I am more interested in this field than the commercial ‘selling’ aspects of graphic design although I accept that there can be complex messages in those too and the dividing lines can be fuzzy.

I love research and as such this all feels quite natural to me. I think the thing I need watch is the never-ending data collection syndrome. The collecting bit is easy, it is knowing when to stop and make decisions that is the challenge!

 

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