Monday, October 13, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Jonathan Hoefler
"It's always amazing to see how they wind up, how they transform the things they inhabit." Jonathan Hoefler
Jonathan Hoelfer was born on August 22nd in the year 1970. He now lives in New York where he owns his own company. Jonathan was a self-taught designer and began designing as a teen. As a typeface designer, Jonathan specializes in the design of original typefaces. He describes himself as an “arm chair type historian”.
Jonathan is best known for his Hoefler text family of typefaces, which was designed for Apple computers. Hoefler text is a contemporary serif antiqua (typefaces designed between 1490-1600) and was created to allow the composition of complex typography. The Hoefler text is included in every Mac OS version since 7.5. Jonathan is the founder of the Hoefler & Frere-Jones (originally the Hoefler Type Foundry, est. 1989) in New York.
Named one of the 40 most influential designers in America by I.D. Magazine really sets Jonathan apart from the crowd. His award winning work original typeface includes designs for the Rolling Stones and Sports Illustrated. He has the honor of his work being exhibited internationally. Jonathan has contributed to some of the world’s best publications, corporations and institutions since the establishment of his company. He creates fonts that stand out with clarity, elegance and durability.
Time
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Vocabulary
Absolute Measurement is the measurements of fixed values.
Relative Measurement is the character spacings that are linked to type size which means that their relationships are defined by a series of relative measurements.
Points is the units of measurements used to measure the type size of a font.
Picas are units of measurements equal to 12 points that is commonly used for measuring lines of type.
X-height is the heights of a lowercase x and all other case letters.
The em is a unit of measurement used in a type setting to define the basic spacing functions, and equals the size of a given type.
The en is a unit of relative measurement equal to half of one em.
Dashes (hyphen, en, em)- em and en are used in punctuation to provide a measurement for dashes. And en is half of an em where a hyphen is 1/3 of an em.
Justification has three different values for type settings: minimum, maximum and optimum. In justified type, word spacing on separate lines is irregular, unlike range left type where all lines have the same spacing.
Flush left is when all of the type lines up evenly to the left margins.
Flush right is when all of the type lines up evenly to the left margin; this is much harder to read.
Letterspacing adds spaces between letter forms to open up words and make it easier to read.
Kerning removes spaces between characters.
Tracking is the adjustments of space between characters.
Word spacing is the spacing adjustments between words.
Widow is a lone word at the end of a pharagraph.
Orphan is the final one or tow lines of a paragraph separated from the main paragraph to form a new column.
Leading is a printing term that refers tot the strips of lead that were inserted between text measures in order to space them accurately. They are specified in points and it allows the characters to "breathe" so that it can be read easily.
Indentation provides the reader with an easily accessible entry point to a paragraph.
Hanging indent is similar to a running indent (which is an indentation from the left or right margin, which affects several text lines) except the first line of the text is not indented.
First-line indent is the text that is indented from the left margin in the first line of the second and subsequent paragraphs.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Adrian Frutiger
Who is Adrian Frutiger?
Adrian Frutiger is one of the most typeface designers in the 20th century. He continues to influence the direction of digital typography in the 21st century. He was best known for creating the typefaces of Univers and Frutiger. He has also produced some of the most well-known and widely used typefaces.
In his early life, Adrian was interested in sculpture and was discouraged by his father and by his secondary school teacher. They encouraged him to work in printing. Although he is a magnificent type designer, his love of sculpture greatly influences his type forms. Adrian then continued his training in typography and graphics at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. He was taught by two well known professors, Alfred Willimann and Walter Kach. He later estbalished his international position as a typeface designer with his Univers sans-serif font.
What makes univers unique?
Univers is a typeface that is in the Swiss Style of graphic design. Different weights and variations within the type family are designated by the use of numbers rather than names, which is something that Adrain adapted. The actual typeface names within Univers familiy include both number and letter suffixes. As of now, "Univers type family consists of 44 faces, with 16 uniquely numbered weight, width, position combinations. 20 fonts have oblique positions, 8 fonts support Central European character set. 8 suppose Cyrillic character set".
Adrian Frutiger decided to design this unique classificaton system to eliminate naming and specifying confusion. The number used in a font is a concatenation of 2 numbers. The first set defines weight, while the second defines width and position.
Typophile
John Baskerville
A brief Biography
John Baskerville lived from January 28th 1706 to January 8th, 1775. he became a printer in Birmingham, England. Then in 1750 he established his own printing business. There , he prepared his own inks and paper and even the construction of the printing press. John was a member of the Society of Arts and designed many different typefaces, being one of the top type designers in the 18th century. he is best remembered as a printer and a typographer and is now recognized as a transformer of English printing and type founding. John Baskerville was the first to introduce the modern, sophisticated style of type with the contrast of light and heavy lines. Some of his most famous works are the Milton's Paradies Lost and Paradise Regained, Book of Common Prayer, and his Bible of 1763. he was greatly admired by the society of Arts and benjamin Franklin, which is who brought his work into the United States. Many typographers in the U.S. became jealous of John Baskerville and his work started to die down. however, today his work revivals and is mostly called 'Baskerville'. the Basterville typeface is classified as very transitional. So what makes Baskerville unique? I would say the way the font changes in weight and the simplistic modern look it has to it.
Infoplease
Myfonts
Farm
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
WHY DO WE (designers) USE A GRID?
A grid is the begining skill of any designer. Way back in the day, when printers, computers and typewrites, had not yet been invented, plain and simple grids helped designers arrange and proportionalize handwritten text onto pages.
Grids are a basic way of orgainizing elements visually; helping us to understand how to create things so they flow harmoniously and communicate the message across with ease.
"An effective grid is not a rigid formula but a flexible and resilient structure, a skeleton that moves in concert with the muscular mass of information."
Ellen Lupton
Thinking with Type
Sources:
MarkBoulton
Image/Example Sources:
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Paul Rand lived from 1914 to 1996. He made a name for himself in the advertising and design world. Rand began designing at a very young age, probably before he was even aware that he was. Once Rand's father felt as if he could no longer teach him he sent him off to school. Paul attended many great schools such as the Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design and the Art Student League. He then began his career with many 'humble' projects, however his early work in page design is where his reputation first began.
Paul Rand first taught himself how to 'design' by looking at certain design magazines. he was best known for his corporate logo designs such as IBM, UPS, and ABC. Rand was said to be so great at designing corporate logos because he was able to be a salesman and explain his identities for the corporation, which was not the easiest thing to do. Rand believed that "a logo cannot survive unless it is designed with the utmost simplicity and restraint".
Rand's career was filled with many projects. His most famous being corporate logo designs. Howeever he also made many books, illustrations and other pieces of work. he was said to be the one who established many of the definitions of the term "graphic design". During Rand's later years he taught design at Yale University.
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