Advanced Typography - Lecture Notes

30.08.2023 - 27.09.2023 / Week 01 - Week 05
Ilhan Rayan bin Khairul Anwar / 0361205
Advanced Typography / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Lecture Notes

---

Week 1: Typographic Systems

Structural Systems

There are 8 major variations with an infinite number of permutations in a structural system that all designs are based off of. 

• 1) Axial
• 2) Radial
• 3) Dilatational
• 4) Random
• 5) Grid
• 6) Modular
• 7) Transitional
• 8) Bilateral

Elements are dependant on communication, hierarchy, order of reading, legibility, and contrast in order to function. The structural systems provide a solid framework for learners to be guided in their explorations as they develop and mature.

Axial System

• All elements are organised to the left or right of a single axis.
• Information is divided into groups and placed on different sides of the axis.
• The axial doesn't have to always be straight, it can be bent and have angles, though having the axial not be a straight can be considered as a different system.

Radial System

• All elements are extended from a singular point of focus that spreads out based on the origin.
• All sentences point towards the point of focus.
• There can be multiple points of focus in one design.

Dilatational System

• All elements expand from a central point in a circular manner or design.
• You can have multiple rings of circles with information on either sides or in line.
• The most important circles can be placed on either the inner or outer circles, depending on what is being presented.
• Hierarchy is an important factor when dealing with this design as there is no set way to present information in an order that makes sense. The way in which it is presented depends on the designer.
• The circles don't always have to be within each other, they can be next to each other or be only parts of a circle rather than a full circle.

Random System

• Elements appear to have no specific pattern or system.
• It can take a certain level of effort to be able to understand the system and utilise it effectively.

Grid System

• A system comprised of vertical and horizontal divisions. 
• The most common system that is used due to it's simplicity.
• Different sizes and weights are used to create emphasis and hierarchy due to the basic nature of the system.

Transitional System

• A curve-based system comprised of layered banding (segregating certain information into certain bands)

Modular System

• A series of non-objective elements that are constructed in standardised units.
• This system is used to create and design storyboards for film and television.
• Each unit can be moved and replace other units in the design since all units are standardised.

Bilateral System

• All text is arranged symmetrically in a singular axis.
• Commonly used in invitational cards.
• It can get tedious and boring at times, however that depends on how the designer utilises the system.

Conclusion

Student designers may often find certain systems difficult to work with due to the rules set in place for that structure. However being able to work continuously with the different structures can allow for the designer to see the full creative potential.

Week 2: Typographic Composition 

There are many dominant principles when it comes to composition in Typography, such as emphasis, isolation,  repetition, symmetry, asymmetry, alignment, and perspective to name a few. 

Rule of Thirds

• A photographic guide used heavily in compositions to help guide framing using three columns and three rows, with the intersecting lines acting as a guide for points of interest. Realistically the rule of thirds is seldom used in typography and is more often featured in photography and filmmaking.

One of the most pragmatic and commonly used Typographic systems, the Grid System, was further enhanced and became known as the Swiss/Modernist style of Typography.

• While the grid system may seem old and rigid, it's versatility and somewhat modular nature allows for it to create an infinite amount of adaptations, hence why it's still commonly used.

After the very ordered approach to Typography, a group of younger designers questioned the notion of this order and challenged it which lead to the post-modernist era of Typographical systems where chaos, randomness and asymmetry were explored further. 

Environmental Grid System

• A system based on exploring existing structures or numerous structures combined. An extraction of curved and straight lines which are then organised using this structure to create a unique mixture of texture and visual stimuli.

• Using key elements from the images, key lines are formed and the background elements are removed. From there its further simplified before text is added.

Form and Movement

• A system based on the exploration off of the Grid System where designers explore the multitude of options that the grid system to offer and dispel the serious tone of the system as well. 

Week 3: Context & Creativity

Handwriting

• Handwriting is important in Typography as the first mechanically produced letterforms were made to imitate handwriting and was the basis for form, spacing, and conventions that mechanical type would try and mimic.
• The shape and line of hand drawn letterforms are influenced by the tools and materials used in the process.
• Things such as sharpened bones, charcoal, plant stems, brushes, feathers, and pens all contributed to the unique characteristics of letterforms.
• Materials used to write on such as clay, papyrus, leaves, animal skin, and paper also contributed towards the unique characteristics.

Cuneiform (circa 3000 BCE)

• One of the earliest systems of writing was Cuneiform, which was used by a number of different languages between 34 BCE all the way to the first century CE.
• It's distinctive wedge-like form was due to pressing the blunt end of a reed stylus into the wet clay tablets.
• The cuneiform system was designed to be written from left to right.

Hieroglyphics (circa 2613 - 2160 BCE)

• The Egyptian writing system was a mixture of both rebus and phonetic characters, both of which were the first link to a future alphabetical system.
• There are three different ways hieroglyphs can be used:
• As ideograms, to represent what they're representing / depicting.
• As determinatives, which come before the word and are used to convey the general idea of the word being written
• As phonograms, which represent sounds that "spell out" the individual words.

Early Greek (circa 5th Century BCE)

• Built on the Egyptian logo-consonantal system, the Phoenicians (Syria, Lebanon, Israel) developed a phonetic alphabet consisting of 22 letters.
• This system was then adopted by the Greeks who added in necessary vowels.
• The Greek system used to be only written in capital letters with two horizontal guidelines.
• The direction of the Greek alphabet was not fixed and used the boustrophedon (left-to-right then right-to-left) format for it's texts.
• Early Greek letters were drawn freehand and didn't have basis / guideline on how it should be written.
• Over time the strokes became thicker, apertures lessened, and serifs appeared. This new form would then be used as the model for formal letters in imperial Rome.
• From the Roman letters, which were written using a flat brush at a certain angle, then carved into stone with mallet and chisel, they would become the definitive models for calligraphers and type designers for the next two-thousand years.

Roman Uncials & English Half Uncials

• By the 4th century, Roman letters became more rounded which allowed for less strokes and faster writing.
• In England, the uncial became more slanted and condensed.
• While English and Irish uncials evolved, writing in the rest of Europe needed to evolve as it devolved considerably. This lead to the Carolingian Handwriting Reform.

Emperor Charlemagne (circa 8th Century CE)

• After the fall of the Roman Empire, the end of an advanced culture resulted in general illiteracy and a breakdown of handwriting in different regions. 
• For 300 years the knowledge of writing was kept alive mainly in remote religious cloisters and  retreats.

Carolingian Minuscule

• A court school was established under the direction of Alcuin of York. During Charlemagne's rule book production increased and language was standardised.
• Pronunciation, spelling & writing conventions, capitals at the start of a sentence, spaces between words, and punctuations.
•   It was used for all legal and literary works to unify communication between the various regions of Europe and it's expanding empire.
• This style became the pattern for the Humanistic writing of the 15th century, which would then become lower case roman type.

The Italian Renaissance

• As the gothic era reached it's apex, other areas of Western Europe were revitalising ancient cultures in order to bring forth a new creative wave of art, architecture, literature, and letter form design.

Movable Type (circa 11th-14th Century)

• Printing (on wooden blocks) had already been practiced in China, Japan, and Korea.
• The earliest known printed book was the Diamond Sutra, a 16 inch scroll with the world's first printed illustration.
• China had attempted to use the printed system on a movable type but was unable to due to the number of characters and materials.
• In late 14th century, Korea had established a foundry that was able to cast movable type into bronze, which allowed for them to reset text when done.
• Summary: Movable type was introduced in 1000-1100 CE and started in China but was perfected in Korea. In the late 1300-1399 CE, the Koreans established the bronze foundry for their movable type.

In the 19th century, it became out of style to credit Africa or Africans with anything of value due to the rise of the British Empire. Because of that, Greek and Roman influences were elevated over more influential civilisations such as the Egyptian Empire, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, and China.

Thanks to the digital revolution, the west was able to digitise many historical creations and type foundries would create, market, sell, and license them to others. However due to colonisation of the east from the west, many cultural practices in literature, arts and crafts, languages, and scripts would be halted or stunted.

Evolution of the Middle Eastern Alphabet

Evolution of the Chinese Alphabet

The Brahmi Script

Brahmi Script (circa 450-350 BCE)

• The Brahmi Script is the earliest writing system developed in India after the Indus script.
• It is one of the most influential writing systems as all modern Indian scripts and hundreds of scripts found in Southeast and Eastern Asia are derived from this script.
• The origin of the script is very much debated due to cross cultural pollination and is theorised to have come from Semitic scripts. 
• The oldest script in Southeast Asia was Pallava / Pallawa, a south Indian script originally used to write Sanskrit and Tamil.
• Pallava became influential in writing systems across Southeast Asia.
• Another Indian script used was Pra-Nagari, an early version of the Nagari script used in India for Sanskrit.

Record of sale for a female slave to the British (in Jawi)

Jawi Script

• The Jawi Script is an Arabic-based alphabet that was introduced along with Islam. 
• Ancient Hindu societies in South and Southeast Asia were classist and caste-based, which caused the lower classes to be illiterate. 
• While Islam didn't change this completely, they did encourage teaching it so that they could convert others to their own faith.
• When traders engaged in missionary work, they taught Jawi to people who didn't read and/or write which allowed for it to spread among the upper and middle-class trading ports. 
• It took a while for Jawi to replace many other scripts, and in some areas it didn't replace them at all.

19th Century Javanese Manuscript from Demak (Muslim Javanese Kingdom)

• In modern Malaysia, Jawi is of great importance as it is used as the basis for all of our famous works of literature.

Handwriting (Continued)

• Studying handwriting is important because the first mechanically produced letterforms were designed to imitate handwritten letterforms.
• For decades, Asia has neglected much of it's written heritage and adapted Western principles and technologies which made it difficult to create many of the old text in printed form due to time, money, and effort.
• Due to a small renaissance in the East thanks to computer technology, we are starting to see an increase in indigenous scripts.
• More vernacular scripts are being produced by software companies such as Google due to there being many Asian programmers in their midst.

Creativity and originality are two concepts that are more often intertwined with one another. It is important for young designers to explore their history, civilisation, culture, and communities from the past into the present day and expand upon them rather than blindly appropriating cultures and developments that have no connection to us.

Week 4: Designing Type

Why design another typeface?

• Type design carries social responsibility, so it's important to continue to improve it's legibility.
• It's a form of artistic expression.

Adrian Frutiger

• A twentieth century Swiss graphic designer.
• Considered responsible for the advancement of typography into digital typography.
• He created the typefaces Univers and Frutiger.
• Frutiger is a sans serif typeface designed in 1968 for the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in France.
• The purpose was to create a clean, distinctive, and legible typeface that's easy to see up close and far away.
• Because the letterform needed to be recognised in poor lighting conditions or when the reader is moving past the sign. He tested with unfocused letters to see which ones were visible and could be identified.

Universe (left) and Frutiger (right)

Frutiger expanded into an Arabic form.

• He also designed a new Devanagari font for modern typesetting and printing processes for the Indian Design Institute.
• His goal was to simplify sacred characters without compromising their ancient calligraphic expression.

Matthew Carter

• His fonts were created to address specific technical challenges, such as those posed by early computers. One of the fonts he made was Verdana.
• The purpose was for it to be extremely legible even at very small sizes on the screen due to the popularity of the internet and electronic devices.
• Characteristics for Verdana came from pixels rather than the pen, brush, or chisel.
• Lowercase letters like i, j, and l can often be confused with one another.
• A fontroversy (font + controversy) with Verdana was when IKEA announced they would use this font in place of Futura.

Creation of Verdana

• In 1997, AT&T commissioned him to design a new typeface to be used in telephone directories / phone books. The design had to solve multiple technical issues related to the previous typeface used, which was Bell Gothic. His new design would be named Bell Centennial in honour of the company's 100th anniversary.

Edward Johnson

• Created the influential "London Underground" typeface, which would later be known as "Johnston Sans" in 1916.
• He was asked to create a typeface with bold simplicity that was both modern and rooted in tradition. His final design combined classical Roman proportions with humanist warmth.
• He applied the proportions of Roman capital letters so it was rooted in history and traditional calligraphy. But it also had elegance and simplicity which suited the modern age.
• His typeface would be used for posters and signage in the underground.
• The main goal for this typeface was to unite all the companies that utilised the London underground to promote their content as there was always a combination of different typefaces and fonts which would clash.

London Underground Font

• When Eric Gill was commissioned to design a typeface for a sign board, he used Johnson's typeface style to create Gill Sans.
• The success of the typeface went to Eric Gill instead of Edward Johnson, which the former felt guilty about and wrote a letter to the latter explaining how he owes his success to him.

General Process of Type Design:

1. Research
1. When creating type, we should know the history, anatomy, and conventions.
2. From there the type's purpose can be determined, such as what it could be used for or what applications it can be used for.
3. We should examine already existing fonts similar to it for inspiration, reference, ideas, context, usage patterns, etc.
2. Sketching
1. Some type designers sketch out their designs on pen and paper first then digitise it later as they feel more confident with their hands.
2. Other type designers use digital tools for faster and consistent strokes at the cost of natural movement.
3. Digitisation
1. Professional software such as FontLab and Glyphs are used for digitisation.
2. Apps like Adobe Illustrator are used to design and/or craft the letterforms and then refine them using specialised font apps.
3. Form and counter form are important factors to consider when designing digital typefaces.
4. Testing
1. A very important step in typeface design.
2. The results of the testing process can help refine and correct aspects of the typeface you may not notice.
3. Prototyping is also part of the testing process and also leads to important feedback.
4. Depending on the typeface category, the readability and legibility of the typeface becomes an important consideration.
5. Deploy
1. Even after deploying a typeface there's still problems that may not show up during the prototyping and testing phases. Because of this, revision doesn't end after deployment.

Typeface Construction

Essentially the kinds of methods you can use to design a typeface.

• Roman Capital: A grid system comprised of squares, with the inclusion of circles and rectangles to aid in shaping the letterform.
• Depending on the letterform and it's construction, the 26 characters of the alphabet can be separated into groups with specific distinctions on how each letter is crafted.

•  Most typefaces come from a need or a demand and the motivation for it can be intrinsic and extrinsic.
• Intrinsic typefaces are driven by an interest to design a typeface and seek out a form that comes close to the designer's desire. It is also possible that the designer uses their typeface to solve an issue / problem.
• Extrinsic typefaces are usually commissioned or student-designed typefaces.
• For a design to be successful the designer needs to be invested in the idea behind it and understand the requirements and limits.

Week 5: Perception & Organisation

Perception

• The way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted.
• Essentially what you see is what you understand.
• Perception in typography deals with visual navigation and interpretation from the reader via contrast, form, and organisation of the content being presented.
• Context can be textual, visual, graphical, or colourful.

Methods of creating contrast

Contrast in Size

• Draws the reader's attention so that they focus on what the larger elements are presenting.
• If you have a bigger letter next to a smaller letter, you will notice the bigger letter first.

Size being used for contrast

Contrast in Weight

• The boldness of a type and how it can stand out amongst lighter types of the same style.
• Use of rules, spots, squares, and other elements can help provide a "heavy area" for visual attraction and/or emphasis. 

Weight being used for contrast

Contrast in Form

• The distinction between a capital letter and it's lowercase equivalent.
• Or the roman letter and it's italic variant.
• Condensed and expanded versions of the typeface are also included.
• Essentially two different styles of a typeface being used within the same sentence.

Form being used for contrast

Contrast in Structure

• The different letterforms of different kinds of typefaces.
• For example: Monoline sans serif and traditional serif (Italic & Blackletter)

Structure being used for contrast

Contrast in Texture

• By combining the contrasts in size, weight, form, and structure, we create the contrast in texture.
• Texture refers to the way the lines on a type look as a whole both up close and from a distance.
• Depends partly on the letterforms and how they're arranged.

Texture being used for contrast

Contrast in Direction

• The opposition between vertical and horizontal, and the angles in between.
• Turning a word on it's side can have a dramatic effect on the layout.
• Text blocks also have their own vertical or horizontal aspects of direction and mixing them together can create contrast.

Direction being used for contrast

Contrast in Colour

• The use of colour is suggested as a second colour is often less empathic value than black and white.
• It is important to figure out which elements are to be emphasised and to pay attention to the tonal values of the colour as well.

Colour being used for contrast

Form

• Refers to the overall look and feel of the elements on a typographic composition.
• Plays a role in the visual impact and first impressions.
• A good form in typography tends to be visually intriguing to the eye which can lead it from point to point, resulting in a more memorable composition.

Examples of form in a composition

• The word "typography" originates from the Greek words "typos" (form) and "graphis" (writing).
• Typography means to write in accordance with form and has two distinct functions
• To represent a concept
• To do so in a visual form
• Displaying type as a form can provide uniqueness to a letterform's characteristics and presentation.
• The interplay of meaning and form can bring balance and harmony both in terms of function and expression.
• When a typeface is perceived as a form, it is no longer read as a letter as it has been manipulated by distortion, texture, enlargement, and extruded.

Examples of form and communication come together

Organisation / Gestalt

• Gestalt is a German word meaning "the way a thing has been placed or put together."
• Gestalt Psychology is an attempt to understand the laws behind meaningful perceptions.
• Gestalt psychologists such as Max Wertheimer developed laws/principles that predict how perceptual grouping occurs under different circumstances. 
• Law of Similarity
• Elements that are similar to each other tend to be perceived as a unified group.
• Includes features such as colour, orientation, size, and motion
• Law of Proximity
• Elements that are close together tend to be perceived as a unified group.
• Items close up to each other are usually grouped together while items further apart are less likely to be grouped together.
• Law of Closure
• The mind's tendency to see complete figures / forms even if a picture is incomplete, partially hidden by other objects, or part of the information is missing.
• Law of Continuation
• Humans tend to perceive each of two or more objects as different, singular, and uninterrupted objects even when they intersect.
• Their alignment plays a major role for this principle.
• Law of Symmetry
• Law of Simplicity

Gestalt Principles

• Gestalt theory emphasises that the whole of anything is greater than the sum of it's parts.
• Based on the idea that we experience things as a whole rather than in parts.
• Instead of breaking thoughts and behaviours down into their smaller baser elements, it is believed that you should look at the whole of the experience.
• In design, components/elements that make up a design is only as good as the overall whole when they're put together.
• The sum of it's parts are not greater than the whole.
• Organisation of information in the form of laying out complex content in a hierarchical manner requires practice and knowledge obtained from reading, listening, and viewing which must then be put to use for it to be retained.