Today’s Plan:
- Did You Complete the English Department Student Survey?
- Introduction to Typography
- Upcoming Schedule
- Homework
Introduction to Typography
So far this semester we’ve generally worked with layouts and alignment. We’ve talked about creating focal points (often by) developing contrast. In a sense, we’ve been thinking about design in terms of grabbing attention more than communicating information. Most of our designs have included minimal amounts of body copy, if any. Now we are going to transition a bit to working with more text, and that means we have to talk about typography.
For homework I’ll ask you to read the WSINYE chapter on Typography. But, to be honest, I learned a lot about typography from websites and communities dedicated to mocking bad typography. Here’s my theory, typographers and designers are often a fragile bunch because no one really wants to pay them for the work they do. Everyone sort of thinks that they can just do it. This is a problem with art in general. My wife has an MFA in painting, worked in some great theaters over the years. After our daughter was born, she decided she would do some painting to make some extra money. She found that people generally were willing to pay about $100 for a portrait of their child or dog. A portrait that might take her 8 hours to complete. Do the math. It is bad.
Hmm. Might be time for this. (As a counterpoint).
Anyways, on to the mockery.
- Epic Design Fails
- The Real Crime is that Kerning
A few keys terms:
- Font: style (serif (traditional, old style, modern), sans-serif (thin or slab), decorative (script, weird stuff). (see WSINYE for which fonts work best on paper and which on screen). Note that Canva has a useful page for pairing fonts.
- Font: weight, thick / thin
- (Vertical) Space
- (Horizontal) Space: tracking and kerning, space between letters. Do we have time for a game?
: leading (pronounced ledding), line-spacing. If your letter has exaggerated x-height, then you might increase line-height.
Upcoming Schedule
- Friday (today): Typography, HW: Read WSINYE Chapter on Type (you do not have to read the section on logo design). HW: Adobe InDesign Classroom in a Book, start chapter 4 “Working with Objects” (90 minutes).
- Monday: Intro Menu Assignment. Discuss Typography. Quick InDesign Assignment.
- Wednesday: Work on InDesign Classroom in a Book 5 “Flowing Text”(45 minutes) and 6 “Editing Text” (45 minutes).
- Friday: Work Day. HW: Menu draft.
- Monday: Menu Crit.
- Wednesday: Final Menu / IFS Posters Assignment / WSINYE Color. HW: InDesign Classroom in a Book 7 “Typography” (60 minutes).
- Friday: IFS Poster Work Day, HW: WSINYE Mini-Art School
- Monday: IFS Poster Crit
- Wednesday: IFS Poster Final
