Fat Face

HisGD 01/24

Transition type family

            -Rococco- intricate, detail

            -copperplate printing- more detail

England

            Political turmoil, limited printing

            Giambattista Bodoni

                        Revolution brings about neoclassicism

                        Inspired by transition typefaces- step between old and modern

                        Helps introduce modern

                        Redesigns alphabet to be more geometric and mechanical

                        Reinvents serif, removed brackets

                        Limited number of interchangeable units.

                        1 of 5 historical faces

Neoclassicism

            Bodoni evolves into “fat face”- display font

            Industrial revolution- advertising, buying, and selling

            Rural to urban, world change

            Rise of the middle class, breeds envy and contempt

            Social cost, long, days, unemployment, and tenants.

<Delancy street, New york- tenant museum>

<Gangs of New York- watch>

            Need to sell, competition= large Typefaces

            Wood Type-

Brought about by machines, power and routers

More styles, not limited to casting

            -Egyptian faces- just-for-fun name, even weight and big serifs

Two line Egyptian- also known as sans-serif

Tuscan face- “cowboy” face, crazy decoration

Dimensional letters, knocked-out letters

Compositor-lines up type for printing

Ephemera- printed material not to be saved or kept. Ex. Movie tickets

Ivan schmia-luggage tags

Turf wars broke out over poster placement between poster houses

Size and composition based on availability and organization, not design

5 historical faces

            Old style- Garamond

            Transitional- Baskerville

            Modern- Bodoni

            Egyptian-

            Sans Serif

Display

Black Letter

Hand

Script

Digbats

Leading- measured from baseline to baseline

- generally 20% (point size + 20%)

!!!!!!DO NOT USE AUTO LEADING!!!!!!!

12 points= 1 pica

6 pica= 1 inch

72 pica= 1 inch

Thoughts:
I find the Rococo type not as intricate as other rococo art. Im not a fan of rococo art but the type is nice and simple.
More importantly, it surprises me that, with printing type coming about in the 1500s, that it wasn't till the neoclassical era that Bodoni approached from a geometric standpoint and developed a more planned and mechanical typeface. But it must have been the growing industrial revolution that began the thought of looking at things from a mechanical stand point. Did geometric type make type easier to cast and easier to read when printed? Regardless of the reason, it later developed into a display font called fat face. It never even occurred to me that some fonts were designed only to be display fonts, which explains the lake of punctuation and other characters in font sets. But the advent of typography and wood type brought us the art of advertising. A trillion dollar market all developed from printers, type, and the industrial revolution. It was the first time that early graphic design gained exposure and type was seen as more than books and manuscripts. Although some of the types that came out of this era were not the greatest, it produced two great things:  2 line egyptian (sans serif fonts) and the understanding of typography. Sans serif fonts are one the staples of contemporary type and it was born so early on! But also, with wood type, printers could design their own fonts and use them in posters for advertisers. Since fonts had to radically stand out to grab attention, printers made some crazy and ridiculous typefaces. They may not have all been good, but it propelled type forward and began the thinking how type looked and was used.
I personally love the rise of ephemera. Since it is so simple and  quickly  designed that it has an attractive, warm quality. Also since ephemera, especially tickets, can represent a significant event or memory, it nostalgic qualities makes them all the more desirable.


Questions:
Up to this point we have been looking at fonts and typefaces in english lettering. But the other day i was looking in a type magazine and saw typefaces for other languages such as Arabic, chinese, and others. Was printed typography progressing at the same right in other parts of the globe and if not, what is the history behind printed type in the Middle East or Asia? Also, because ephemera is such a social icon and are appreciated much more than designers and advertisers perceive they will be, should we as future designers take a more thought design eye to how we design ephemera in order to capitalize on this old and consistent trend?

Literacy Takes Power

Day 002:

History of Graphic Design- 01/17

Early art- pure function

Literacy takes away power

Terms and Topics

Lascaux                      scribes

                                    -writes manuscripts

Sumerian                   Illuminated manuscript

                                    -spreads knowledge

Cuniform                    Book of Kells

-early style of wrting

Fall of Rome(476 AD)- Celtic Writing- Charlemagne

As society gets better, technology gets better, when technology gets better, communication gets better

800Ad-Charlemagne crowned holy roman emperor

-saw importance of literacy

Alcuin of York- head scribe

- create standardized writing system

-Caroline minuscule

1400AD- playing cards

- form of entertainment for all

- changed thinking- sequence, strategy, memory

- printing makes reading materials accessible to all

Ars Moriendi- Book on Death

-Church propaganda

Gutenberg- brings systems together to create movable type

-regular guy

Environment for type revolution

-Growing middle class

-Increased literacy

-increase in University population

-monopoly on literacy taken from church

-demand for writing

develops alloy, ink, press, type forms, ligatures.

Lasts till modern printing

Typography- printing with type, important advance

Gutenberg Bible-1455                                 Go to British library

Called the 42 line book- about 42 lines/page

210 copies- 180 on paper, 30 on velum- (need 5000 sheep)

Gothic type- even texture

1455- Fust sues Gutenberg, takes over production and bibles. Goes into business with foreman.

            Forman may be responsible for quality of bible

Incunabula- baby carriage (literal), first 50 years of printing

Mianz, Germany center of printing

By 1500, 35 editions of 9 million books

Typographic printing is the major communications advance between the invention of writing and 20^th century communication

1498- frames removed from images, allows negative space to interact, understanding of alignment

Exemplar page- example layout page

Swevyheyum and Pannartz- evolution to Roman letters

1465- printing based on humanistic writing

Rediscovery of classical text

1467- type drastically refined

1475-William Caxton- translates Stories of Troy in to English- First English Book

Calendarian- 1476

Tip in- inserted by hand after printing

1639- Steven Day brought printing to the Colonies

- first print-Book of Psalms, 1640

Rococo- fanciful language, ornate, time of inquiry and science

French king commissioned creation of royal typeface

- done with scientific principles and a grid of 64 units with 36 units each.

More throughout, planed than older fonts

Philipee Grandjean- craved typeface

Spur on lower case L indicated royal typeface

Manuel Typographique, Le Jeune- 1764 and 1768

Flurions- decorative type elements

Rise in popularity of copper plate printing

-allows artist to directly draw on plate in detail, extreme contrast in line weight

-influences letterform design

Days thoughts:

I find it fascinating that playing cards left the dramatic impression that it did. Its interesting that its introduction led to a whole new way of thinking including memory, strategy, and sequencing. Plus its also fascinating that much of what was created during this time such as format and layout have stayed very similar up until today.

Although I found the type video, which seems to be as old as type itself, difficult to watch, the process of  printing type does fascinate me, especially with the inclusion of Tip-ins. After this class, i now want to take a look at the printing press and mess around with hand aligning type and experimenting with different processes.

Comments and Research:

When we were discussing the pages involving the exemplar pages, i noticed how the pages themselves were formatted in a way different from previous examples. The text blocks were justified to the left and right and not just center and images were treated the same way and were much larger. Were these formatting changes new at the time or had occurred earlier?

Design Eats Itself

Notes:

London Calling- The Clash

Design eats itself- historical context

Harmon Hoffman -> Wolfgang Vingard

Dorianism- “Design is a religion, not something you do, you live it”

“Everything is a remix”

Basic elements of creativity

Copy: Transform: Combine

Presentation:

Lasquax cave paintings- visual communication

Cuneiform tablets- clay tablets with markings

3500 BC beginning of Gods and hierarchy- used tablets

picture to abstract symbol- quicker, efficient

next step: Greek

after that: Roman

Capitalist quadrada- square, formal

Capitalist rustic- informal, casual- 475 BC

Book of Kells- Ireland

Isolated from Roman influence- Celtic

Masterpiece of Celtic art

If everything is a remix then everything comes from something and not nothing, even though I have a t-shirt that contradicts that. But from the perspective of the Xerox vs. Apple story, that appears to be true. Therefore the idea of true inspiration is outdated and fictional. This would define creativity as the combination, transformation, and presentation of elements into a new conception. This would make design like a puzzle, forcing things to work together that may not have been put together before. Apple stole the graphical user interface, but transformed it and retooled it into something revolutionary and user friendly superior to its origin. Therefore creation is evolution and evolution makes way for more creation. The pictographs of early man evolved into cuneiform and cuneiform evolved into Capitalist Rustic.

So stressing over being original is redundant cause anything can be traced to something else. This can be summed up in Picasso's quote "good artists copy, great artists steal." 

Copy, Transform, Combine- Take what others have done and make it better

The About Me:

Raised in Lakeland, Florida, I have practiced art since my parents put me in art school at the age of 5. However, never really grew on me until my sophomore year Harrison, the art high school i attended in Lakeland.  High school was the most defining time for me, it was then that I began to be self-aware of what I wanted for myself and fully embraced what being young was about. Art and high school during the week and bonfires and football on the weekends, it become the primetime of life. With college now, it only has gotten better. Work hard and play hard, thats what it is all about.

"Its everything and its everywhere" The beginnings of A history of Graphic Design

My mom and dad always ask "what exactly is graphic design?" I tell them that its almost anything from product packaging to websites. I can tell them what it is, but I cannot tell them why. I hope this class will be the answer.