Typography Brief
1. | MM401.3 – Graphic Design & Illustration
Typography: The style and appearance of printed matter. The art or procedure of arranging type or processing data and printing from it. Typography is the design and use of typefaces as a means of communication. It is considered to have begun with Gutenberg and the development of moveable type. But typography has its roots in handwritten letterforms. Typography encompasses everything from calligraphy through digital type and type on Web pages. It also includes type designers who create new letterforms as well as designers and calligraphers who use the letters as part of their designs.
Typography uses typefaces and the whitespace around and through them to create a whole design.
Elements of Typography
Typefaces and Fonts: Typefaces are a family of fonts (such as Helvetica Regular, Helvetica Italic, Helvetica Black, and Helvetica Bold). Fonts are one weight or style within that family (such as Helvetica Bold).
Typeface Classifications: These are sometimes called "font families". They are large groupings of typefaces based on generic classifications. On Web pages, there are six types:
•serif
•sans-serif
•monospaced
•cursive
•fantasy
•script
Typeface Anatomy: Each typeface is made up of different elements that distinguish it from other typefaces. Unless you are going to go into type design, Web designers don't generally need to know the specifics of typeface anatomy. But if you're interested, there is a great article on typeface anatomy on the About.com desktop publishing site. The elements you should be aware of are:
•Cap and x-height: This is the height of the capital letters in the typeface and the height of the letter x. It tells you how tall the largest letters will be, and how big most lowercase letters will be.
•Descenders and ascenders: These are the portions of letters that go below and above the x-height line. These typically refer to lowercase letters.
Spacing Around Letters
There are several adjustments that can be made between and around letters that affect typography.
• kerning - space between individual letters
• tracking - space between groups of letters
• leading - space between lines of type
•measure - the length of lines of text
•alignment - placing text to the left, right, centered or justified
•ligatures - letters moved close together so that their anatomies are combined
Typography is more than just the typefaces that are used and the whitespace around them. There are also some other things you should keep in mind when creating a good typographic system:
Hyphenation: Hyphenation is the addition of a hyphen (-) at the end of lines to help prevent problems in readability or make justification look better. Most Web designers ignore hyphenation, as it is not something that is handled well automatically by Web browsers.
Rag: The uneven vertical edge of a block of text is called the rag. When paying attention to typography, you should look at your text blocks as a whole to make sure that the rag is not impacting the design. If the rag is too jagged or uneven it can affect the readability of the text block and make it distracting.
Widows and Orphans: A single word at the end of a column is a widow and if it's at the top of a new column it's an orphan. Widows and orphans look bad and can be hard to read.
Grid Systems and Alignment
“ The grid system is an aid, not a guarantee. It permits a number of possible uses and each designer can look for a solution appropriate to his personal style. But one must learn how to use the grid; it is an art that requires practice. ”Josef Müller-Brockmann In graphic design, a grid is a structure (usually two-dimensional) made up of a series of intersecting straight (vertical, horizontal, and angular) or curved guide lines used to structure content. The grid serves as an armature on which a designer can organize graphic elements (images, glyphs, paragraphs) in a rational, easy to absorb manner. A grid can be used to organize graphic elements in relation to a page, in relation to other graphic elements on the page, or relation to other parts of the same graphic element or shape. The less common printing term “reference grid,” is an unrelated system with roots in the early days of printing.       |
All my work has been based on the vertical grid system layout. Making sure that the designs and a4 layout look aesthetically pleasing for the viewer.
I also used the alignment tool and ruler too align my work, to make sure that all my font is linked and on the ruler line, and that the spaces between my designs - if there is any - which again, would at to the aesthetically pleasing aspect.
Colour Idioms in Typography
My brief says that I am to research into 4 idioms and translate, research, and find out the meanings of the 4 idioms I choose which I shall then, turn into an original typography design.
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My four chosen colour idioms and their origins
Blue Blood
The blood that which flows in the veins of old and aristocratic families.
A literal translation of the Spanish 'sangre azul', attributed to some of the oldest and proudest families of Castile, who claimed never to have intermarried with Moors, Jews, or other races. The expression probably originated in the blueness of the veins of people of fair complexion as compared with those of dark skin.
That was certainly the understanding in the 19th century, and there seems little reason to doubt it. In 1834 Maria Edgeworth published 'Helen', which reiterates that opinion:
"[Someone] from Spain, of high rank and birth, of the sangre azul, the blue blood."
When I think of the idiom Blue Blood, I think of a pearl wearing upper-class woman with pale skin and someone who you could refer to as an 'English Rose. This image comes to mind thanks to Melissa de la Cruz's book Blue Bloods. Not that its a bad thing or anything, actually this book has given me the idea to integrate a silhouette of a woman's face into my 'Blue Blood' idiom as what says upper class better than a lady wearing a pearl necklace and pearl earrings?
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 Sabine Pieper 
Berlin-based illustrator Sabine Pieper was born in Germany in 1980. Starting her career as a photographer she always kept her interest for drawing and fine arts. After her first daughter was born and after almost ten years of work experience she followed her passion and set her focus on illustration from 2010 on. As her work remained influenced by photographic technics a soft, almost unnoticeable use of mixing media became her signature.
 
Pieper has worked for fashion advertising clients like Valentino and Vlisco and created illustrations for magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Flair. Her work has been shown in international publications by Taschen, Gestalten and Monsa. Since 2011 she participated in exhibitions in Berlin, London and New York.
Although her work isn’t entirely graphics based, her sketches were very similar to my own initial ideas. What I had initially planned to do was sketch out my design, then scan them onto illustrator and work over them with the typography. Though unfortunately, I had no taken into consideration the time management. I only have a week to complete these four original designs and I have definitely tried to overcomplicate things for myself. So for now, I’m going to draw out/create my designs all on illustrator, and leave the technical things like sketching and scanning till a later project.  |
This is my silhouette design based around the book cover of Melissa de la Cruz’s ‘Blue Bloods’ – based loosely I may add. I am new on to illustrator so just creating this silhouette with basic shapes and adding and deleting anchor points and lines, took me all day.
I then integrated the type font of ‘Blue Blood’ into my work but didn’t know where to place it. I actually accidentally copied and pasted it and it went behind the silhouette and then I thought, ‘why don’t I copy, paste, and duplicate it and have it as a background’?
So I tried this and found that interestingly, the font behind the image really worked and decided to use that.
Pink Elephant
"Seeing pink elephants" is a euphemism for drunken hallucination, caused by alcoholic hallucinosis or delirium tremens. The first recorded use of the term is by Jack London in 1913, who describes one kind of alcoholic, in the autobiographical John Barleycorn, as "the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants.
He is the type that gives rise to the jokes in the funny papers." London may have derived his metaphor from the 1890s saying "being followed by pink giraffes". A reference to pink elephants occurs in the 1941 Disney animated film Dumbo. Dumbo, having taken a drink of water from a bucket spiked with champagne, begins to hallucinate singing and dancing elephants in a segment known as "Pink Elephants on Parade".
He is the type that gives rise to the jokes in the funny papers." London may have derived his metaphor from the 1890s saying "being followed by pink giraffes". A reference to pink elephants occurs in the 1941 Disney animated film Dumbo. Dumbo, having taken a drink of water from a bucket spiked with champagne, begins to hallucinate singing and dancing elephants in a segment known as "Pink Elephants on Parade".
Pink elephants do exist in nature, as it is possible for albino elephants to be pink, as well as white.
In 2008, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin used the phrase "pink elephants" to refer to Anti-abortion Republican women such as herself, Carly Fiorina, Sue Lowden and Jane Norton.
I’m not sure who the artist for these designs is, but this is definitely an idea in the making for me. I want to create a design with font, similarly to the designs here – though I am going to use all the letter in the font.
I began my design by tweaking each letter to see where it worked best to create my ‘pink elephant’, and I found the ‘S’ worked the best for the head/trunk, then the rest of the letters all began to fit and merge in perfectly.
I had to do some major tweaking with certain letters as a wanted them to bold into the shape of an elephant; it now has a sloped back due to that. I –of course – then coloured the font pink, and decided for the background, I’ll pick a colour completely opposite to pink, and decided to use green.
The green and pink definitely help to enhance the design and I’m really happy with the result.
I began my design by tweaking each letter to see where it worked best to create my ‘pink elephant’, and I found the ‘S’ worked the best for the head/trunk, then the rest of the letters all began to fit and merge in perfectly.
I had to do some major tweaking with certain letters as a wanted them to bold into the shape of an elephant; it now has a sloped back due to that. I –of course – then coloured the font pink, and decided for the background, I’ll pick a colour completely opposite to pink, and decided to use green.
The green and pink definitely help to enhance the design and I’m really happy with the result.
Green Thumb
An exceptional aptitude for gardening or for growing plants successfully:
Houseplants provide much pleasure for the city dweller with a green thumb.
According to James Underwood Crockett, it comes from the fact that algae growing on the outside of earthenware pots will stain a person’s thumb (and fingers) if he or she handles enough pots. Hence, a person who is always working with flower pots has a green thumb.
According to James Underwood Crockett, it comes from the fact that algae growing on the outside of earthenware pots will stain a person’s thumb (and fingers) if he or she handles enough pots. Hence, a person who is always working with flower pots has a green thumb.
Another theory is that it originated during the reign of King Edward I of England. He was fond of green peas and kept half a dozen serfs shelling them during the season. The serf who had the “greenest thumb” won a prize.
For my design, I decided to stick with a similar idea to the thumbs up sign as seen above, but just wanted the main focus to be on a 'green' thumb.
So I took an image off of google, drew round it with the brush tool, then removed the photo and coloured in the thumb green. Pretty simple, but that's what I wanted it to be.
I thought about just using the original image of the hand with the green thumb as I though people would be able to tell what it was, which is a green thumb. But I thought it was 'too' simple, so I integrated the font and words 'green thumb' into my design.
I didn't want to copy my earlier design of the blue blood font exactly, although it worked with that image, this one didn't work as well as I'd hoped. So I decided to duplicate the writing quite a number of times so you could still see that it said green thumb but from a far, it would be lost in translation and appear to just be a textured background.
White Lie
A white lie is harmless or trivial, frequently one said in order to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.
It’s based on the ancient Western idea of polar opposites, represented in popular culture through white meaning good and black its evil antithesis. We have white magic, for example, beneficent magic that’s opposed to the malign black variety. The term white paternoster meant a prayer or charm recited to protect against evil at night (of which one version that survives is the old children’s rhyme “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Bless the bed that I lie on”). The opposite was a black paternoster, a spell recited to conjure up evil spirits or devils.Along the same lines, a white lie is one that lacks evil intent, as opposed to a black lie, which is most certainly malevolent, though normally we don’t bother to specify that lies are evil.
I decided to sway away from physically designing something by stretching anchor points, molding shapes into faces, drawing hands, and creating green thumbs. I wanted to create something refreshing, something literally just including type fonts in their natural forms.
So, I looked into stacking sentences on top of one another, but knew I didn’t want to copy my previous design of the green thumb font.
I looked into what the most common white lies are and integrated these sentences into my work. Some of them are quite comical, and very relatable. I fitted it all to the background of my image, but didn’t like the plain format size. So began tweaking certain ones, by changing the font, the size, changing them to italics, making them bold, and overall just changing everything up.
It made quite a desirable effect and I really liked how it looked.
My next idea was to fit the words, ‘It was just a little white lie’ onto the left side of the design, all fitted together and in a plain font (unlike the background) with a white outline too.
I really like how all of my designs turned out and believe I understand how to integrate typography into my designs.
Check out my work on Behance: https://www.behance.net/gallery/20710119/MM4013-Typography-Brief
