Typography Task 1: Exercises

07.04.2023 - 05.05.2023 // Week 1 - Week 4

Song Yang   0355576

Typography /Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media

Task1/ Exercise

---

LECTURES

Week 1: 

The first class was guidance about this class module such as the assignments and how to proceed with class. Everything information about this module is posted to the Facebook group, and there is a Telegram group for the class for easy information sharing. 

After explanation we set Blogger used as e-portfolio following a briefing video. In the second half of the class we played games to introduce ourselves and remember our names

Week 2

Starting Week 2, our lecturer looked through each of our design works and gave us feedbacks. We were to digitalise our typography into Adobe Illustrator, which our lecturer gave a short tutorial on how we could do so.

Week 3:

Mr. Vinod provided feedback on animated GIFs, which are digitized sketches, and we began to select and create one of the words to proceed with the creation of GIFs from the digitized words.

Week 4 

Week 4 is where we begin with the next task, known to be ‘Text Formatting’. Based on the lecture video(s), Kerning adjusts space between individual letterforms. Tracking, also known as 'letter-spacing', adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters. To carry this out, we will be utilising the 10 typefaces which has been provided by our lecturer. 

LECTURES VIDEOS

Early Greek / 5th C. B.C.E.

Built on the Egyptian logo-consonantal system, the Phoenicians developed a phonetic alphabet consisting of 22 letters.The Phoenicians system then was adopted by the Greeks who added the necessary vowels. Early Greek was comprised of only capital letters, written between two guidelines to organize them into horizontal rows.The words may have been in rows but the direction of reading was not yet fixed. Greek was often read in a format known as boustrophedon or “as the ox plows.” One row would read left to right and then switch from right to left.

"The earliest surviving European letterforms are Greek capitals scratched into stone. The strokes are bony and thin, almost ethereal—the opposite of the heavy substance they are carved in. The letters are made primarily from straight lines, and when curved forms appear, they have a very large aperture. This means that forms like S and C and M, which can be relatively open or relatively closed, are about are open as they can get. These early Greek letters were drawn freehand, not constructed with compasses and rule, and they had no serifs —neither the informal entry and exit strikes left by a relaxed and fluent writer, nor the symmetrical finish stroke typically added to letters by formal scribes.

Early Roman Lapidary
2nd Century B.C.E.

Following the Greek style, the first Roman stone carved letters were of equal width and without serifs. The Romans added some word spacing to divide the words into single units via dots placed midline.

Twenty letters of the modern alphabet are derived from Roman lettering. K,Y, Z came from Greek. Later additions of J (a version of I) and U, W (from V) complete the 26 letters

During the 1st century lettering changed in composition from monoline evenness to forms made from thick and thin strokes. Exactly why this happened remains unknown. Type historians have theorized that serifs resulted from stone cutters following the forms left by a square-cut writing implement; not a reed or quill, but a flat stiff brush.

Classical Roman Lapidary

1st Century, C.E.

In the late 1960's a similar observation was made by Father Edward Catich, a calligrapher, stone carver and expert on the Roman alphabet. While studying for the priesthood in Rome, Catich was able to visit the sites of original Roman stone engravings. He published his findings in a 1968 work The Origin of the Serif, Brush Writing and Roman Letters.

Probably the most revered example of Roman capitals appear in an inscription at the base of a war monument in Rome— Trajan's Column, C. E. 117. Many considered this particular work to embody the ultimate resolution of Latin letterform evolution.

Forms of uppercase and lowercase evolved out of these tools. Uppercase forms were simple combination of straight  lines and pieces of circles.

Phoenicians wrote from right to left. Greeks wrote from left to right (boudstrophedon).

---

INSTRUCTIONS

<

Task 1 | Exercise 1 (Type Expression) 

Week 1 :
I've chosen the words; love, surprice, slient, and party for me to work on. I later came out with 4 sketches on each word and 16 sketches in total 

Fig 1.1 sketch of “love”

Fig 1.2 sketch of “surprice”

Fig 1.3 sketch of “silent”

Fig 1.4 sketch of “party”

Week 2 

After receiving feedback from Mr Vinod, I made a few changes on my type expressions to digitize it onto Adobe Illustrator, and this are the outcomes.

Fig 1.5 final sketch of “silent”

Fig 1.6 final sketch of “party”

Fig 1.7 final sketch of “surprice”

Fig 1.8 final sketch of “love”

Week 3 :

After I received feedback, I started making animated GIFs. I started with the word "party" to make an action of releasing a balloon.

Week 4 : final work

Fig 1.9

 

Task 1: Exercises 2 - Text Formatting
Text Formatting: Kerning and Tracking

Final Design

---

FEEDBACK

Week 1

Specific Feedback：We were advised on how to create and manage content for our blogs.

General Feedback：-No specific feedback was given this week-

Week 2

General feedback:  Mr. Vinod gave us advice on our work and how to digitize it. 

Specific feedback：I came up with three forms, and Mr. Vinod told me that the third one was good. He wants me to to move on.

Week 3

General feedback: Mr. Vinod commented on our assignment and demonstrated digitizing Grow and Wink. 

Specific feedback：Mr. Vinod suggested that my ”pop” should be simple, and my “COUGH”, saying that my element dependence is a little too much, which makes the graphics look complicated, and the lines would be better if they were outside. 

 

Week 4

General feedback: Although the animation was successfully made, it was not perfect and still needed more practice.

Specific feedback：The E can grow more slowly, and the S can squeeze more.                          

                         

Week 5

General feedback: Mr. Vinod looked at our blog and told me that I should tag my blog. And hopefully we can explain the font and format we use for typography.                              

                         

Specific feedback: Mr. Vinod looked at my animation and told me there was no new progress, hoping to see my progress. 

                                          

---

REFLACTIONS

Week 1
Experiences: I started my own blog under the guidance of Mr. Vinod. This is my first time to use blog, I feel a little difficult to learn it.
Observations:  I felt that my classmates all spoke better English than I did, and Mr. Vinod organized a game that I couldn't participate in because I was online. I hope I can integrate into the group soon.
Findings: I find it a very interesting process to create words, but I can only draw on paper with a pencil because I don't know how to use software yet.


Week 2
Experiences: After learning, I had a preliminary understanding of the software and successfully digitized the sketches.
Observations:  When I saw my classmates' works, they were so vivid and interesting that I should learn from them.
Findings: I found digitization easy, not as hard as I thought, and creating is a fun process. I find it faster and more convenient to digitize on a computer than I do on paper.


Week 3
Experiences: I failed to make GIF twice, and each time I encountered different problems. First, when I exported it after making it in Illustrator, all my drawing boards were scattered, so I could not import Photoshop. I can't find out where is error, so I restart the Illustrator, made a again, this time can be successfully exported, but when I import the ps, cannot be inserted into the layer, I go online to check the reason, my version of the ps version is 2019, so I can't open, I have to uninstall reinstall, this time, I am done.
Observations:  Some students have been able to make GIF in this class, but I did not make it because of my poor operation. After class, I watched the video provided by Mr. Vinod repeatedly and finished it
Findings: I found being dynamic a little difficult for me as a novice. Probably because I haven't used Adobe software before. So it might be a little laborious at first.


Week4
Experiences:In the fourth period, a lot of people had already handed in their work, and I thought the work didn't start until after the fourth week. I felt that I had written the wrong homework, I was so scared, I made up the homework after class, and Mr. V told me how to write the feedback. Finally I caught up with the class progress. Mr. Vinod patiently told me how to export and upload my works, and I corrected it. 
Observations:I saw that the tape format designed by my classmates was very creative. I need to learn more  and refer to it to improve my creativity.
Findings:  I find that when formatting text, pay more attention to the layout of the text and adjust the font and have appropriate white space.