{TYPOGRAPHY} Excercise 1

9/23/2024 - 28/10/2024 / Week 1 - Week 5
Melvern Owen Tjia / 0373754
Typography / Bachelor of Honor's in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Task 1: Exercises 1 and 2

The Task's MIB

Introduction and Summary of The Provided Lectures

Lecture 1 Intro Summary:

- Typography: A process that involves rearranging type utilizing varying type families and methods.

- Typography: Is often used for promotional purposes as the jobs that utilize them are non-other than                              graphic designers, compositors, etc.

- A Typeface is a term that is commonly used to describe fonts in Typography.

Lecture 2 Development Summary:

As mentioned in lectures, it began with the Phoenicians as they started writing from right to left compared to the traditional method we have today. Soon enough serifs were created as small lines and strokes were commonly used on the ends of letters and symbols. Not long after the first few Roman letters were developed from the Phoenician and Greek letters.

Example of the Old Roman Cursives

Typography has gone a very long way since its initial debut as one of the earlier instances was a movable type within the Song dynasty by Bi Sheng (990-1051).

Image of one of the first movable type printing press

A little while after Rustic capitals, an ancient Roman calligraphic script, came into the picture around the 1st and 9th century along with uncial (miniscule letters) as a main script text. The capitals itself are considered to resemble the Roman's square capitals while being done on papyrus showing descenders that extend below a baseline.

A Surviving Work Example

Lower case letters were then developed from the initial uncials and was referred to as the half counterpart. With the usage of these aspects that were developed, communication lessened its complications.

Second Wave Lecture Summary 1:

Letter forms are introduced along with many of their aspects.

- Descenders are vertical strokes within every letter that extends below the baseline.

- Serifs are usually shown as decorative lines added to letters.

- Ascenders, the opposite of a descender which extends upwards instead of down.

- Bars are known as horizontal strokes within the letter.

- Teardrop Terminals are usually found as droplet shaped ends.

- Ears within the letters are small strokes that appear not on the tip but on the right side.

- Counters and Open counters are spaces found within the letter, as there are two types.

- Loops are would usually take the form of hook like strokes.

- The Stem of a letter would be the main vertical stroke of a letter.

- Fonts have elements and variants like lowercases and uppercases. Small capitals can also be found as  they are often mistaken for lowercase letters. Italic and Roman fonts are one of the more common forms of fonts used for numerous amounts of typefaces. Symbols are also found within as punctuation marks and additional characters are found within.

Summary for Each Individual Week

Week 1 was the introduction to Adobe Illustrator, Only the basics were told as we were then asked to develop sketches. A vote was initiated to determine the four words, I suggested revitalize as a word but it ultimately ended up not being used for the final four regardless. The chosen words were sleep, swirl, climb, and cry. During the final segment of the class session, we were requested to view video lectures on YouTube in order to better understand the inner workings of Adobe.

1(a): The Introduction's Summary 

- Typography required us to develop 4 renders.

- A vote was initiated to choose 4 words for the purpose above.

- 10 fonts were given to be used.

- The application "Adobe Illustrator" Was introduced.

1(b): The Project's Initiation Summary

- The chosen words were the following: sleep, swirl, cry, and climb.

- Sketches of the 4 words are to be illustrated by any means before week 2.

- The application of choice to illustrate the 4 words was Ibis Paint X.

1(c): The Illustration process / Concept Development

- The concept of the 4 words is required to be designed with future animation ideas in mind.

- All 4 words were illustrated without difficulty on an 1888x3047 canvas size.

- 4 iterations of each word were made to ensure the approval's success.

- Cry as a word caused difficulties as the words were forced to be designed in a generic fashion.

- Swirl yields proper results as it allows more freedom.

- Sleep faced difficulties as originality is hard to come by, and ended up designing with a joke embedded.

- Climb faced no obstacles whatsoever as the word's interpretations were diverse.

1(d): The Illustrated Concepts

Week 2, The sketches needed to be approved as I have already started on development towards getting the designs approved. 3 out of 4 designs were approved on the spot as one of the words being cry caused certain complications such as the design limitations. We were not allowed to work with outside props and additional colors either so that word in particular took quite the time.

2(a): The Project's Consultation Summary

- Out of 4 of the words 1 design is to be selected from the iterations.

- Cry as a whole was asked to be revised as all of the illustrations were said to be generic.

- Swirl had a 1 iteration approved.

- Sleep was also asked to be revised.
- Climb had 2 out of 4 of the iterations approved with no complications.

2(b): The Iteration's Completion Process

- Using the input given, cry was changed to appear much like an abstract expression.

- As swirl was improved, the illustration decided to add a whirlpool illustration on top.

- Sleep had a new design illustrated with the first and last letter now turned to shape a boat.

- Climb remained mostly unchanged as the main nitpick was to simply change the height of a letter.

2(c): The Revised Results Comparison

Initial iterations

Revamped iterations

Week 3 proceeded to the digitalization phase on the Adobe Illustrator as we learned the basics once again in order to start creating text on top of the sketch while selecting the fonts given during week 1. The process went quickly and smoothly as I utilized functions like outline creating, layer locking to prevent the grids from moving on accident, and finally, effects that would enhance the texts via texture adding.

3(a): Digitalization Process

- A template was provided to place the selected 4 designs within.

- 4 of the 10 fonts were to be used.

- Chosen fonts are then adjusted to match the size and placement of the illustration.

- The render utilized text tools, shapes, the grid locking function, and the transform tool.

3(b): Fonts Used

- ITC New Baskerville Std Bold Italic for the word cry.

- Futura Std Light Condensed for the word climb.

- ITC Garamond Std Light for the words sleep and swirl.

3(c): Render Results

Week 4 directed us to start with the animation process using Adobe Photoshop as a medium. Out of the four renders we are to choose one iteration and transform said iteration, which will be animated according to the theme of the illustration itself.

4(a): The Animation Process

- The word climb was chosen for this task's animation process

- The animation itself will contain around 24 or more fps to fit in with the standard.

- Each individual frame was altered in Ibis Paint X to animate.

- Each frame is to be placed within Adobe Photoshop and altered accordingly using the timeline board.

- A set duration was to be formatted onto the frames to control the speed of the animation.

4(b): The Animation's results

The finished and revised iteration of climb before animating

The animated version of the revised iteration of climb,

the animation was heavily inspired by the tale of Sisyphus as the rolling dot that climbs up the word represents the boulders ascend and descent as it cycles through.

Week 5 introduced us to the idea of text formatting as the previous weeks were used to create a single rendition of an animation whereas this current project requires us to work with all 10 fonts that were provided to us during the first week of task 1.

5(a): Theoretical Information and Usages of Formatting

- The main focus of this exercise is to understand and apply kerning, tracking, and leading.

- Kerning, an option that is used to manually move individual words to adjust spacing in between.

- Leading, used to perform an action similar to kerning, but is used to alter vertical space instead.

- Tracking, the focus of usage is heavily emphasized on loosening or tightening text.

5(b): Additional Trivia Formatting on Paragraphs

- The continuation of this exercise requires us to utilize the three aspects of formatting mentioned.

- Concepts such as orphans and widows were introduced.

- Widows are commonly known as a short line of text left out of a column of text

- Orphans are normally seen as sentences that appear separate from their parent paragraph.

- Rags were also introduced as the default appearance of a text that has yet to be justified.

- The lecture has also introduced multiple types of text justification on the application InDesign.

- Information regarding the option hidden characters and note grids was introduced.

- Applied during the second segment of the exercise there are things such as Hyphens and Rivers.

- Hyphens are punctuation marks used when a sentence is unable to support the word as a whole.

- Rivers or white gaps are essentially an excess of white spacings leftover in between words.

- Hyphens and rivers are usually the result of improper text alignment and spacing.

5(c.1): Results of the First Segment of Text Formatting

5(c.2): Explanation for The Sample Above / Fonts Used in Order

- Adobe Calson Pro

- ITC Garamond Std

- Univers LT Std

- Bembo Std

- Bodoni Std

- Futura Std

- Gill Sans Std

- ITC New Baskerville Std

- Janson Text LT Std

- Serifa Std

5(d): 6 Results of the Second Segment of Text Formatting

5(e): The Chosen Layout PDF Format Included

Reflection

My Experience

Starting out with the very first task, I get to see how certain tasks with a systematic approach work. Going into typography as a program for the first time ended up leaving me a little disoriented as the first task already required us to dabble into the domain of animation. Fortunately, the learning curve wasn't exactly that high as many of the students including me were able to follow and replicate what was told during the first few weeks of this entire semester. And to that I thank this class for providing me with insight that can be used for other personal projects in the future.

My Observation

Since these couple weeks were more design oriented, I didn't exactly encounter that many issues with developing designs and renders especially due to the consultation sessions that were generously provided within the first 2-3 weeks. With references provided by the lecturer the task proved to be exponentially more lenient in terms of difficulty despite being very demanding. 

The Findings

Discovering the world of typography and its functions I found that animations, font styling, and typefaces matter so much more when it comes to designing promotional things like headings and company name promotions. This class has taught us to also pay attention to aspects that would otherwise not be visible to the average person when developing simple heading designs.