Study Task 1 - Typography Terminology

Researching type & terminology 

Brief - To develop a knowledge and understanding of the use of typography, develop cognitive skills as well as practical and professional skills.

Today I was given a lecturer about typography terminology, from my previous education at college I was fortunate enough to have studied quite a lot of typography terminology so this lecturer helped me recap on some terminology that wasn't confident with. 

Typography Terminology:

Lettering - Illustration of a unique image/ a system of letters that can be mixed and re-worked together. 

Text - The main body of words or copy in any type of document. 

Font - The complete set of characters for one typeface at one particular type size, excluding attributes such as bold or italic.

Typeface - A collection of fonts. 

Serif - Serif's are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols.

Sans serif - In typography, a sans serif or sans-serif typeface is one that does not have the small flicks at the end of type. 

X-height - The height of the lower-case letters, ascenders or descenders, typically exemplified by the letter x. The connection of the x-height to the body defines the perceived type size. 

Cap Height - The height form the baseline to the top of there upper case. 

Baseline - The imaginary line upon which the letters in a font appear to rest. 

Body - Main part of a piece of text 

Bowl - The curved part of the character that encloses the circular or curved part of some letters such as 'd', 'b' and 'o'. 

Ascender  - Any part in a lower-case letter that extends above the x-height.

Descended - Any Part in a lower-case letter that extends below the baseline. 

Aperture - The partially enclosed, somewhat rounded negative space in some characters such as 'n', 'c'.

Apex - The point at the top of a letter where two strokes meet. 

Arc - Any curved contour of a letter 

Arm - The horizontal stroke in a character that does not connect to a stem at one or both sides. 

Ball Terminal - A terminal the resolves into a circular shape 

Cross Stroke - The horizontal stoke that intersects the stem of the lower-case. 

Kerning - Kerning refers to the horizontal space between individual pairs of letters.

Leading - Its original meaning is increasing the vertical space between the lines of metal type by literally inserting lead strips. 

This is a video John Maeda who talks about how art, technology and design and how they all work mixing together, A little bit into his speech he starts to talk about typography and how it works. 

During my spare time I've also looked at some books which I bought during the summer. I've been inspired by some of the typography which I found in the books, which I thought would inspire me to be more creative in my choices for the ' Help Link' assignment. 

book research 

These photos below are creations of Shiva Nallaperumal, MFA studio. The pieces of work are called 'Record a Day' this is about a guy who  challenged  himself to match the  musical moxy and tenor of a collection of his favourite albums, using colour, composition, and custom typography on a series of daily LP cover designs. 

I like the 'Nick Gave'  typeface on the bottom left It's sophisticated and looks smart yet it also looks quite simple, I really like the the basic colour scheme which is black and white, as I think the simpler the better the typography in some cases. The font that Is used is called a serif font, the kerning is irregular as some of the letters such as 'E' and 'D' are linked together, the cap height is also the same in all the letter forms. 

These are some more typography designs which I found in a book called ' Graphic Design The New Basics' by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips.

The poster on the left is called 'Extreme Heights', 'In the poster at right for a lecture at a college, designer Paul Sahre put his typography under severe pressure, yielding virtually illegible result. He knew he had a captive audience. (Paul Sahre')  

The textural bright pink poster on the far right hand side, is trying to resemble and urban 

grid. The textural physicality of these types studies artfully reflects the active processes featured in the words. The criss-crossing lines on the piece of art are of an artist's cutting board. I think this is a particularly interesting piece of work created by artists; Jonnie Hallman, Graphic Design 1. Bernard Canniffe, Faculty.

The middle picture is some typography terminology which I  found in the same book ' Graphic Design The New Basics' such as:

• Full-Range Type Family - Many typefaces include variations designed with different proportions. The Helvetica Neue type family includes, light,medium,bold, and black letters in normal, condensed, and extended widths. The strokes of each letter appear uniform. That effect is destroyed if the letters are unevenly scaled. 
• Scaling Letterforms -  If the horizontal and vertical dimensions of a letter are scaled unevenly, the resulting form looks distorted. With vertical scaling, the horizontal elements become too thick, while vertical elements  get too skinny. With horizontal scaling, vertical elements become disproportionately heavy, while horizontal elements get thin. 
• Scaling images and objects - Uneven scalling distorts images as wall as typefaces. Imagine if you could scale a physical object, stretching or squashing it to make it fit into a particluar space. The results are not pretty. (image in the middle)