Thursday, 8 October 2015

Anatomy of Type

Anatomy of type...
05 / 10 / 15

Our first lecture on Monday was designed to open our minds up to typography and encourage us to start looking at and understanding type in a more personal way. Having only studied Product Design and Fine Art at A level, typography is something I feel I have not yet properly explored and adventured with. But this lecture made me realise the depth in which it influences industry and how much experimentation with type I am going to actually get to do.

The lecture covered 3 main points involving:
 -the key principles of type
 -the correct terminology when referring to type
 -how context plays such a strong role on how we perceive the typography and what it stands for.


We recapped on an extensive list of the terminology involved in typography and I think we all learnt something new!                 For example, I was already familiar with the Kerning and Tracking tools on Photoshop, but didn't realise the actual names and functionality of them! Other new terms for me included diacritics, superscripts and subscripts,and then the names for specific serifs and cures within certain typefaces.  
____________________________________________________________________



A TED Talk with John Maeda really reiterated this concept of form and context when using typefaces for me. Around halfway through the video he displays the concept perfectly playing with the word 'Fear' and then 'Free' in different typefaces. With this in mind, we were briefed of our first Study Task - Collaborative Branding (OUGD403),  which involves redesigning a series of logotypes for a given company. Using only type, we have to experiment with scale, stroke, spacing, contrast and alignment to interpret our company. Considering who the company is and their traits, what they do, the target audience and where the logo will appear, etc. However, the only condition is that we have to settle on one of Vignelli's six basic typefaces for logotype.

I look forward to gathering our initial ideas for the project and we'll see how it develops!



No comments:

Post a Comment