Ben Dunkle's Canisius College Web Site

Over the course of the semester, you will collect samples of typography. You may sketch, photograph, cut items from magazines, find scraps of paper on the street, or cut out bits of packaging. Web typography is OK if it is really good-remember though, its low resolution will yield poor printouts.

Create a two-inch-square sample of each specimen that you find. (Making a viewfinder will help you frame your samples nicely as well as cut them out without measuring.) Arrange your specimens in a simple grid (2 columns, 4 rows, all cells touching) and adhere to a page in your sketchbook. On the back of each page, include notes about why you chose the sample, what typefaces you think each sample uses, etc. Complete 8 entries by end of semester.

• Find 5 typefaces in everyday life that you can't identify. Look in magazine ad headlines, packaging, anything printed-nothing from the web.
• Scan the samples onto the computer, 200dpi, color.
• Use the following services to identify the fonts:
• http://www.identifont.com/
• http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
• Design a basic chart showing each typeface with the name of the font next to it. You can do this in photoshop, indesign, html—whichever you are most comfortable with.
• Class discussion: Which service is more user friendly? Which one is "better"? Why?

• http://ilovetypography.com/
• http://typophile.com/

Objective

Instructions

Design a new font whose forms relate to a 12 x 12 square grid. Each box in the grid must be either black or white. You have no curves or true diagonals.

Consider proportion, weight, and structural features such as height of cross bars, how elements end, how to accommodate curves and diagonals within the grid of squares, etc.

Build your file out in a photoshop file. Use the 1-pixel pencil tool to plot your letters on a 10x10 pixel grid. It will help to use a duplicate window to observe the letters at native resolution while working on the 1600% zoom view.

Consider the characters that can be accessed either directly or by holding shift on a mac keyboard, yielding 94 characters you must construct. Your photoshop file should show these characters in a neat grid, but the arrangement is up to you.

Give your typeface a name.

Print out your typeface and mount on foam core adhered to black mat board. Post your design on your website.

`1234567890-=qwertyuiop[]\asdfghjkl;'zxcvbnm,./~!@#$%^&*()_+QWERTYUIOP{}|ASDFGHJKL:"ZXCVBNM<>?

Due

Thu
Jan 31

Examples

• Man of letters (pdf)
• Silkscreen, a popular free pixel font.

• Wander around forest lawn in search of interesting, unique typefaces. Collect rubbings and digital photos of at least 10 samples of the same or similar typefaces. Look for the same word if possible (see http://paulshawletterdesign.blogspot.com/2009/09/gravestone-typography.html).
• Document the typefaces on a web page or psd file (like in exercise 1), and describe how the faces relate.
• Try to identify the typeface used, or suggest a similar face. Not the time period of the gravestone. Can you find designs from that period in other media, like posters/newspapers/advertising/books that use a similar typeface? Show them in your document.

Title

Word, Text, and Paragraph compositions

Goal

To understand how the appearance of words influences their meaning.

Description

Typography utilizes the medium of type, just as sculpture utilizes clay and metal. Unlike those lifeless materials, however, type is packed with a-priori meaning. The words speak independently of their format. But the format can enhance the meaning. This project will encourage you to seek ways to enhance the meaning of your type.

Directions

Choose two words from the list below. In 6 different compositions, arrange each word to express its meaning (one word per composition). The composition is 6 x 6 inches square. You may vary the size, spacing, placement, and orientation of the letters. You may execute your project by tracing letters, cutting and pasting photocopied letters, using a computer, or any combination of these methods. Use the typeface Futura Bold.

You may repeat, omit, slice, block, or overlap words or letters. Do not use drop shadows or horizontal/vertical scaling (distortion). Consider the entire space of the square. Mount your two best designs to foam core and black museum board.

• compression
• transition
• contraction
• addition
• subtraction
• disruption
• repetition
• elimination
• migration
• expansion

Part 2: Text exercise as part of project 2

Pick your best two word designs, and both of your paragraph designs, and present on foam core/black mat board.

Here's the text for the parapgraph part of the project:

Print situates words in space more relentlessly than writing ever did. Writing moves words from the sound world to a world of visual space, but print locks words into position in this space. Control of position is everything in print. Printed texts look machine-made, as they are. In handwriting, control of space tends to be ornamental, ornate, as in calligraphy. Typographic control typically impresses most by its tidiness and invisibility: the lines perfectly regular, all justied on the right side, everything coming out even visually, and without the aid of guidelines or ruled borders that often occur in manuscripts. This is an insistent world of cold, non-human, facts.

Design 3 paragraphs, using Adobe Garamond. Pick your best one, mount to foamcore/mat board.

Examples

http://www.papress.com/other/thinkingwithtype/teachers/word_project.htm

Fix up a poorly designed table. Find a chart from an old science book, or use this one for reference. Eliminate unnecessary lines or other elements; consider shaded bars, other methods for showing quantities, alternative labeling systems.

Design and produce at least an 8-page (at-least) book.

Description

Find a poet who you like (it can be you or someone you know). Use their poems for the content of your book. Search the library, bookstores, etc. for examples of poetry books for inspiration. If the text is online, just copy/paste. If it's in a book, type it in, or try the OCR scanning software in the web lab. NOTE: Per today's (11/8) discussion, song lyrics are acceptable. Graphic elements such as lines and shapes are ok; images are not.

Final project will be critiqued during the final exam.

Links