Typography - Task 2: Typographic Exploration & Communication

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7.10.2022 - 14.10.2022 (Week 6 - Week 7)
Michelle Kong Chin Ling / 0347603 / Bachelor of Psychology
GCD 60104: Typography
Task 2 (Typographic Exploration & Communication)

LECTURES

Lecture notes: Here

Week 6: 
Physical Class:

Mr Vinod marked our e-Portfolio as we were giving comments to each other about our drafts for Task 2. After giving each other feedback, Mr Vinod told us how we can improve on our skills in our e-Portfolio and what we did wrongly for Task 1.

Week 7:
Physical Class:

Mr Vinod asked to submit our Task 2 and we were given a short brief on what to do for our Task 3. Then, we were given 10 minutes to create a letter using Adobe Illustrator to make our own typeface. 

Week 8:

Independent study week where I used this time to catch up on my assignments as well as watch the lectures that I have missed in the past.


INSTRUCTIONS





TASK 2: TYPOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION & COMMUNICATION

I watched the video Mr Vinod recorded on how to make the two master pages where they are side-to-side and has to be on the Left and the Right. Then, I looked over at the text and chose one out of the three given. I chose the "Follow the Code" text and began drafting the drawing. At first, I attempted where the lead-in-text was included in the body text. I wanted the lead-in-text to be more noticeable and away from the body text, and it lead to my second idea.



Fig. 2.1: Draft of first layout, 5.10.2022


Then, I added negative spaces to my lead-in-text as well an extra element at the side to make it more interesting.



Fig. 2.2: Draft of second layout, 5.10.2022


I realised that the word "the" going downward such as above was a bit simple, and I tried exploring by rotating the entire word either from the up to down movement or the bottom to up movement. 



Fig. 2.3: Draft of third layout, 9.10.2022



Fig. 2.4: Draft of fourth layout, 9.10.2022

After the feedback given by Mr Vinod, he mentioned I should reduce the point size of the body text as my title text was elegant and the body text should follow that elegance. However, my point size for the body text was 8pt and I found that making it 7pt would be too small. So, I decided to increase my title text point size instead. I also explored the lead-in-text to be at the end of the elements and liked how it turns out.




 
Fig. 2.5: Draft of fifth layout,13.10.2022


Final Design


Head
Font: Univers LT Std 75 Black / Univers LT Std 57 Condensed Oblique
Type Size: 46 / 63

Body
Font: Univers LT Std 55 Roman
Type Size: 8 pt
Leading: 10 pt
Paragraph Spacing: 4mm
Alignment: Left



Fig. 2.6: Final Design of Typographic Exploration & Communication, 13.10.2022






PDF of the Final Design with Baseline




PDF of the Final Design


FEEDBACK

Week 6:

Specific Feedback:

The point size should be smaller because the head text have some sort of elegancy going on.

General Feedback:

The head text should expressed what either the body text is saying or the words in the head text. We were also given questions when evaluating our classmates work. 

Text Expression:

1. Do the expressions match the meaning of the words?
2. Are the expression well crafted (crafting/lines/shapes)?
2a. Do they sit well on the art-board
2b. Are the composition engaging? Impactful?
3. Are there unnecessary non-objective elements present? 
4. How can the work be improved?

Text Formatting:

1. Is kerning and tracking appropriately done?
2. Does the font size correspond to the line-length, leading & paragraph spacing
3. Is the alignment choice conducive to reading?
4. Has the ragging been controlled well?
5. Has cross-alignment been established using base-line grids?
6. Are widows and orphans present?

Week 7:

We were not given any feedback as it was submission week.

Week 8:

We were not given any feedback as it was independent study week.

REFLECTIONS

Experience

It was nice exploring text expression where I had to brainstorm on how to express the text creatively. It was hard brainstorming as there was a lot of good ideas out there but those ideas were not mine.

Observations

A lot of us were coming out with interesting text expressions. Barely anyone got bad comments, only comments on how interesting and creative they were and how we could improve them.

Findings

I know I am far behind my peers in terms on skills. However, Mr. Vinod did mention this was no a competition but a way to improve our own skills and our creativity. It was hard trying not to feel belittled when someone else's work was much more better than mine. I am slowly learning not to take it too hard and be more kinder to myself as I know that I am trying to learn.

FURTHER READING

The Vignelli Canon

Vignelli, M. (2010). The Vignelli Canon. Lars Muller.


One thing that stood out to me in this book was when the author briefly mentioned the typefaces (the basic ones). There are a lot of typefaces and most of them are used for commercial reasons. However, there are really limited amount of good typefaces. 



Fig. 3: Cover e-Book of The Vignelli Canon, written by Massimo Vignelli, 19.10.2022.



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