Assignment 4c: Classification booklet

Assignment brief:
For this project, You will design an 4-page booklet which reflects and discusses your specific type class. The size of the book will be predetermined, but otherwise, this can be as experimental a booklet as you desire, as long as it describes various aspects of the type class, or typefaces within your class. Therefore, you will have the opportunity to explore grids, and other layout options, hierarchy, color choices, etc. It should include an ‘informational’ design aspect, including scaled-up letter-forms with labels, showing the distinct aspects of the class. There must also be text which gives some historical background on your type class.

Consider how your design might both inform, as well as reflect your type category and its given typefaces in some interesting and/or meaningful way. The booklet must be primarily typographic. You may use colors, shapes, and lines as well as text, but no falling leaves or angels. You can include examples of designs which include typefaces from your type class. Feel free to explore the parameters of type: type can be used as pattern, image, etc. Be free to be expressive. Ask yourself what you want to express?

print specifications:
Page number: 4
Size: Flat: 12 x 9” / Folded: 6 x 9 in.”

For next week (4/7):
Taking into consideration feedback from this week, refine your type classification booklet. For next week, bring in the final printout—printed full-size and mocked up—as discussed in class. Keep in mind what you are trying to express, and how every decision made can either support your concept, counter-act it, or remain a ‘null-factor’. Also, keep in mind that the front cover, inside spread and back cover should each work alone, but also within the grid system that you’ve established.

Assignment 4a: Classification booklet / Text, Images + Hierarchy

For this project, You will design an 4-page booklet which reflects and discusses your specific type category. The size of the book will be predetermined, but otherwise, this can be as experimental a booklet as you desire, as long as it describes various aspects of the type class, or typefaces within your class. Therefore, you will have the opportunity to explore grids, and other layout options, hierarchy, color choices, etc. It should include an ‘informational’ design aspect, including scaled-up letterforms with labels, showing the distinct aspects of the class. There must also be text which gives some historical background on your type class.

First, we will go through a gathering phase.

1. Do RESEARCH: Gather text + Images:
The booklet might include any of the following information:
a. Historical information about your type class.
b. Historical information about type designers/type faces within the class.
c. Reasons specific classes developed.
d. Information about the period or movement that influenced the class or specific faces in the class.
e. Letterforms that are unique within the class.
f. Any other information that you think is pertinent or interesting.
g. Find as many images (eg books, posters, magazine covers) where a typeface in your classification was used. You can reference design styles perhaps either within your layout,
and you can also include some of these images in your layout, if it fits with your design.

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It’s also important to create a typographic hierarchy that you can incorporate into your design. Using the parameters below, we can start to look at how hierarchies can be defined and created. In the final booklet, you will have to establish a hierarchy as a set of cues for the reader to follow. You may end up developing your final hierarchy further, but for the time being, follow these parameters.

2. Create 4 different hierarchies:
Create four different typographic hierarchies using only one type family within your class. You do not have to use the same typeface which you sketched last week, but it has to be in the same class.

Your hierarchy should include:
headline: main title
subhead: subtitle; functions to break up body text into parts
body text: running text
captions: a brief appended piece of information
folio: page number

4 options should include:
option 1 should vary the type size only, but maintain one weight.
option 2 can incorporate the entire family such as roman, bold, italic, and small caps.
option 3 should vary the size and color only.
option 4 can vary the entire family such as bold, italic, small caps, the size, the color, as well as tracking of the type.

due Wednesday March 10th:
For next wednesday, bring in all of your research and gathered materials on your type class, as well as a printout of the 4 hierarchies you’ve created, following the parameters above.

CMYK Alphabets from Elaine Kim

CMYK Alphabet is a typographic experiment, a set of 26 sans-serif uppercase letterforms on a grid of 5x5 inch. Each letter is hand embroidered using a combination of two overlapping CMYK colours. The colours are halftoned at 90 and 45 degrees and these low resolution screens are turned into handmade cross-stitch embroidery.

From Dan Croak

Standard & Helvetica

Updated Assignement for this this week!

Due Wednesday February 17th:
Continue to refine your design. Feel free to email me if you'd like for feedback.
For next week, bring in your developed typographic solution and the printout of your quotation. Make sure you consider how you might set the type in an interesting and integrated way. We will be looking at some inspiration next week, and have time to work on the design of your quote in class as well.

Final due Wednesday February 24th:
Adjust design in relation to feedback from our February 10th class critique, and mount your final design (both the portrait and the quotation) as noted below.

Specifications:
1 Size: 11 x 17” vertical preferred; black typographic forms on a white background.

2 Media: You can generate the letterforms or texts on the computer, cut them from magazines, or hand-draw them. You can create your collage by hand or on the computer.

3 Final Project: Please print the final version of the portrait and your quote, and mount it on 16 x 20” black board.

Final project due Wednesday, February 24th.

Introduction to Typography

Typography is a field of graphic design used to give voice to the printed word. This introductory course will lead to the knowledge of creating and organizing letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs to visually communicate an idea, and aims to help develop your creative processes in new and powerful ways. Topics include the anatomy of letterforms, type history and classification systems, how to choose type, legibility, readability, and the expressive qualities of type. There will be discussions and critiques, slide show lectures, and demonstrations, as well as hands-on problem-solving exercises and assignments. While this is not a software-based course, there will be frequent use of Macintosh computers. Open to beginner and intermediate graphic designers or individuals developing their professional skills in visual communications.

Objectives:
To discover and utilize the expressive qualities of typography.
To learn basic typographic terms and their meaning.
Become familiar with the structural qualities of typefaces.
To learn the measuring units associated with type.
To learn the basic typeface classifications.
To explore ways of creating contrasting typographic voices.
To to see and understand typography as “visible language.”