Whats Your Type 2010-2011

Personal Typefaces Final Presentations & Critique

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:16:00 -0500

Personal Typefaces Final Presentations & Critique

Personal Typefaces Final Presentations & Critique

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:16:00 -0500

Personal Typefaces Final Presentations & Critique

Personal Typefaces Final Presentations & Critique

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:16:00 -0500

Personal Typefaces Final Presentations & Critique

Personal Typefaces Final Presentations & Critique

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 10:16:00 -0500

Personal Typefaces Final Presentations & Critique

The Best Hamburger Day

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:21:00 -0500

Thank you all for an incredible final typeface presentation. All of the hamburgers came together to form cohesive, balanced, unique and expressive typefaces. Your final projects possessed high quality of work, attention to detail, craftsmanship and execution.

Here are a few shots from today’s final critique. (More to be posted later!)

A beautiful array of concepts.

We had strong final presentations in explaining the inspiration, history, use and concept of each student’s typeface.

East Village by Claire, a display typeface inspired by walking around in the East Village and mapping her route.

Dandelion by Jin Sook, a sans serif display typeface inspired by the lightness of a dandelion flower. Hand-embroidered stitching with clear beads. Each letter took an hour to embroider!!

Congratulations on stellar work everyone!

Feedback for Final Work

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:03:13 -0500

Some of you emailed us during the week for feedback on final work, and there are a few points that are applicable to everyone’s final posters.

- For your final format on Thursday, scan your hand-lettered letterforms, clean it up in photoshop and lay it out in a poster.

- Include the typeface name on the poster and all letterforms.

- Give the forms whitespace all around and make sure your poster composition is balanced and proportioned.

- The poster should be set in one format: either flush right, flush left, justified or centered.

- Make sure everything is optically aligned and check that all margins are equal.

Please print out your final poster and feel free to bring additional photos or process photos that you’d like to share with the class as an extra option to your presentation. You will be presenting your final printed posters.

I’m excited to see everybody’s final work on the wall tomorrow!!!! Yay!

Typography holiday gift idea! Helvetica Cookie Cutters via...

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:55:25 -0500

Typography holiday gift idea! Helvetica Cookie Cutters

via vneckandacardigan

Sewing Typefaces

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:39:00 -0500

SEWING INSPIRATION

For anyone doing stitching/sewing for your typeface, check out this work-in-progress of a stitched typeface.

via kanella

Tools used: Couple of needles, yellow thread, thick carton, Black & Decker drill, a Mac, hours of designing and sewing!

Personal Typeface Critique Great work and progress on your...

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 18:09:00 -0500

Personal Typeface Critique

Great work and progress on your personal typefaces! A general note to everyone is to make sure you set up a grid (from the class handout) and create the necessary adjustments for a cohesive set. Every letterform needs to conform to a baseline, mean line, ascender and descender line, etc.

The best way to attain consistency is to repeat elements from your key word. Remember that “HAMBURGERFONTS” contain all the basic strokes used in the alphabet, including stems, diagonals and rounded strokes. Besides incorporating the basic letter shapes, key words are also useful for establishing letter spacing. Other variations of key words are HAMBURGEVONS/hamburgevons, HAMBURGEFONSTIV/hamburgefonstiv, HAMBURGEFONS/hamburgefons and CHAMPION/champion. These words are called key words, test words, or trial words. If the key word looks good then the rest of the typeface will look good!

So for those of you back at square one, sketch out the keyword first, and then repeat elements to create the full set.

Feel free to email us in-progress work for feedback before our final critique this Thursday!

Download Issues of U&lc!

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:59:00 -0500

This. Is. Awesome. Past issues of U&lc are now available for download. If you remember from our Typestory lecture in the beginning of the semester, ITC first published U&lc in 1974. Under the editorial and art direction of Herb Lubalin over the course of 26 years, U&lc grew in acclaim to become the most important typographic publication of its time. The last publication year of U&lc was 1999.

When I was in college, this publication influenced me tremendously. It opened my eyes to design and typography. Herb Lubalin is a master of typography and layout. I still find so much inspiration in these pages and I hope you do too.

Download Link:
http://fdcblog.net/2010/10/25/ulc-back-issues-to-be-made-available/

Three Little Owls

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:00:07 -0500

Have I ever mentioned that I love cute-little-owl-related things? I died when I saw this letterpress owl illustration by Greek designer Leanda Xavian. OMG. I love it. I want it. I need it.

"A typeface’s name should reflect its best characters."

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 08:06:07 -0500

“A typeface’s name should reflect its best characters.”

- Ed Benguiat, legendary typeface designer, on choosing name for a typeface

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:23:19 -0500

Just My Type: A Book About Fonts:

From The New York Times:

DESIGN: The Look of Letters

Simon Garfield in “Just My Type: A Book About Fonts” looks at the geeky world of typography and how it pervades urban life.

17 Amazing Inspirational Typography Videos

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:01:07 -0500

17 Amazing Inspirational Typography Videos

Anatomy of Type

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 08:00:06 -0500

It’s important to know the proper terms of typography, especially when we critique and review your typeface designs. Take a look and study these anatomy of type basics.

You can also read an article on the Basics of Typography: http://www.thefloatingfrog.co.uk/tag/typography/#ixzz0sxlHNtJQ

Amazing stop-motion music video made with typography.

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 16:14:10 -0500

Amazing stop-motion music video made with typography.

Object Typography Inspiration

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 10:00:00 -0500

Some more inspiration for your project:

Sewing

Thread

This thread type is by designer and Cranbrook MFA graduate Elle Kim.

Found objects

Water

Food

Wire

Graffiti-ami

A brilliant experimental blending of two art forms: Graffiti + Kirigami (a variation of origami; most people know kirigami as paper snowflakes). This experimental style is called Graffitiami

You can find more at http://designby31216.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/graffiti-kirigami-graffitiami/

What other artforms can you name which can be combined to create experimental typography?

German Type Specimen Book

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 22:15:00 -0500

I found the link from where I downloaded the German book pdf. Hope it helps out those who wanted a closer look at it.

Arty Lettering—Collection of all sorts of capital letters and initial caps of german, latin and italian lettering created by diferent master craftsmen— Nürnberg, Paulus Fürsten, arts dealer).

http://www.archive.org/details/kunstrichtigesch00fran

submitted by Elvin

Fire + Slow Shutter = Awesome

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:23:00 -0500

How cool is this!? Designer Nir Tober spent 2 sessions (7.5 hours each), and 30-50 shots per letter to successfully complete the whole alphabet. (That’s an average of 1,200 photos to do 26 letters). THIS is exactly what we mean when we say do it again, and again, and again, and again…..and again….until it works!

Great class!

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:53:00 -0500

Thank you everyone for superb presentations today. You showed successful, interesting, engaging, unique and conceptual work. Lara and I were impressed by the broad range of inspiration, wonderful presentations and smart ideas! Some of you are really far ahead, and others need a little more work. Those of you who need to re-submit your presentations (or if you were absent), remember to email your pdf’s to me and Lara by Monday 12/3.

Overall, here are suggestions for the majority of the projects shown:

*** DOCUMENT YOUR WORK AND TAKE PROCESS PHOTOS!***

- Start with a classic typeface as your guide.

- Sketch, sketch, sketch!

- Use a well-developed grid (like the one from Young’s presentation).

- For inspiration, look at visual objects rather than typography.

- If you do look at typography, choose it carefully and discard quickly. Instead, study the masters!

- Sketch some more!!!!!!!

- Experiment! It’s easy to do something you’ve already done before—so take risks!

- Always consider formal design and typography principles (balance, unity, harmony, contrast, etc.)

- Did I say sketch ???!????

If you find something interesting (image, article, photo you take, etc.,) please submit it to our tumblelog. I want more people to submit to our class blog.

Good job and great class. Get sketching!!!!