book and article analysis

The Crystal Goblet or Printing Should Be Invisible

By Beatrice Warde

The main purpose of this article is explaining what type is in the eyes of the author, that “it should be invisible”. The article itself is comparing typography to goblets of wine, and that those who appreciate and understand wine will prefer to drink from a clear, crystal goblet rather than from a gold one. The author states that through a crystal goblet the various elements of the wine can be observes such as the colour and the smell, while those who drink from a gold goblet are more interested in what the actual goblet looks like rather than the content held within it. By comparing typography to wine Beatrice Warde is saying that the true purpose of typography is not what it looks like, but the fundamentals of it, how it works, it is there to enlighten the thoughts and ideas that are contained within the words.

The key question that the author is addressing is just how much designers rely on how attractive a word looks, rather than how it works and gets across its message, she describes this is by saying that a stained glass window will look pretty to look at, but if you are trying to see through it to see outside then you are best to, and should instead look through a plain glass window. The way she compares this with type is that you can look at it to the thoughts and message that have been laid out on the page to see.

The most important information in this article is that “Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.” From this I feel the author means that type should not be obvious, it should not be, “oh look at me, see me look how great and brilliant I am”, but should be more sophisticated, intelligent and properly thought and laid out.

The key primary sources used are that the author has at some point carried out an experiment between those who are connoisseurs and those not so interested in it, choose and react to the shouting out loud look at me object to the subtle more basic one (the gold and clear crystal goblets).

The main conclusions in this article are that type should be structured, planned throughout every step, carefully laid out, not just made to immediately stand out and become less appreciated. Time should be spent to enjoy it, from making it to looking at it.

The key concept we need to understand in this article is it is up to us as designers, typographers to use typography responsibly for others to understand with us. By this concept the author means that we should take full control of the words we create and see around us, we need to understand the words first before we understand and appreciate the look.

The main assumption underlying the author’s thinking is that all type should be like this, it shouldn’t be cheap or tacky, it should be well thought of.

If we take this line of reasoning seriously the implications are that typography would look and feel the same, it would not appeal and be appreciated by everyone, even though it may look good it may not get the point across or disguise the meaning entirely.

The main point of view presented in this article is that words are important, they guide us, explain to us, entertain us, she is seeing it from a designers point of view, of how we should use and understand type.

What is Typography?

By David Jury

The main purpose of this book is to inform the facts of the true depths within typography in all its forms. The book goes into great detail of understanding what exactly typography really is, how should it be used. It states that to understand the grammar of typography, one must gain a knowledge and understanding of language and how it is adapted to function in various social contexts.

The key question that the author is addressing is how we have all come to look and use words throughout our lives. We are taught to read and write from a young age, this is through reading individual words to understand them, and taught to write each individual letter step by step. In the first chapter of the book the author even writes of the steps we take to learn to write, firstly from learning to draw and then write letterforms clearly, how to present words, sentences and paragraphs, how to arrange text on a sheet of paper and how to provide emphasis where required. The most important question looked at here is how much digital technology has changed the nature of typography by making it something everyone does almost every day.

The most important information in the book is all the facts known of typography, throughout the book the author writes of all the key facts designers should know about layouts and how words should be applied within design. This ranges from the more obvious readability, through grids and structures, it even looks at the way in which typography is used and has changed from the days of the likes of the typographer Eric Gill to the modern day in which type is applied.

The key secondary resources used are older books and articles before the dawn of design on the computer, looking at famous typographers that changed the way we look and use type in our lives. Portfolios of designers are used here. “The ‘work of others’ has always been an important resource for the designer.

The main conclusion in this book is typography should be analysed throughout the whole design process, how we use this and how we apply it to our everyday lives should be taken under consideration.

The key concepts we need to understand in this book are that typography has changed so much in our history and is continuing to change even today, I believe at the heart of this book the question is where is typography going? How will we continue to use it in days to come?

The main assumption underlying the author’s thinking is how typography is applied, he is exploring the overlaps, the formal and informal, between typography produced by typographers and typography produced without typographers.

If we fail to take the author’s line of reasoning seriously, the implications are that if we do not apply type in the correct manner it will basically not last and simply fade away.

The main points of view presented in this article are how typography was, is and will be. It looks at how type is used within everyday situation such as business, rural and urban. What I gather from this is the point the author is trying to explain is we need words and we need to use them properly, without them we would not understand anything, we would not understand who we are.

the 100th post

Very surprisingly I have managed to get to my 100th blog post. I should have actually gotten to this point a lot sooner than this, but aim to do more blogs more often. I hope that everyone who has read any of my previous blogs have enjoyed them and hope they continue to do so. I will update any of my upcoming projects as well as things that have caught my attention. Keep in touch

if you carry a knife, then you are in so much trouble

Yet again I am currently working on another team project, one that yet again is a video based project. I don't mind as I have enjoyed working with the channel project with Ross. Now I am working with Conner and am enjoying this too and believe we are on our way to making a strong final outcome.

At the moment the 3rd year Graphics class are doing individual projects for the Roses Awards Competition. Roses has sent out a number of briefs, given out by various design company's to present different and unique pieces of work. Twelve briefs were given out for us all to choose. The one Conner and myself have decided to tackle is the brief on knife crime.

"Knife crime is on the increase and Scotland is already the murder capital of Europe. Present a film concept (or a storyboard) that will make teenage boys think twice about picking up a knife before they go out. It should speak to 11-17 year old boys from poor backgrounds who go to schools where there are gangs of youths who already carry knifes. They know the boys who carry, but so far they have never carried one themselves. Consider that this is a low budget 15k project."

The reason I chose this brief was because it stood out the most to me, a bit more of a challenge, the problem with speaking to the tutors was that they said no one had ever won this brief, design companies still have not been able to come up with a strong idea that would make people think twice about carrying a knife. For this reason Phil and Gordon decided we should team up and work together on this. To be honest we were both quite happy to do this as individually we would most likely have struggled.

Right now we have come up with and idea and a style to produce for our storyboards all we have to do is get all the filming and photography done, edit it and place it on our boards. I am enjoying this project too as the more experience I have working in a team, the better I will get at working with others, and like how we both have the same sort of ideas is making the project seem more appealing and we believe it will be a good one.

what a peach!!

For another of our team projects I have teamed up with Ross Douglas to re-brand: ident: sting a t.v channel.

"With the proliferation of Digital television (Freeview, Sky etc.) comes an increase in channel idents and stings. Current cutting edge examples in this field include Channel 4, E4, BBC3, Five, dave, Sky 1, Mtv, the list goes on and on. Implementation of the identity extends to digital on-screen graphics (or DOGs which appear usually in the top left of your screen) to animated or filmed short channel identity 'stings' which play in between programs."

From the brief we were given for this project.

So what did we do? We discussed the possibility of re-branding the History channel, and we talked about certain styles we could do this in, but we felt that we weren't coming up with a strong name and we wanted to change the channel title, and couldn't come up with a comfortable style. Very quickly we decided to change our channel to one that would show cult films, one that would be better than the current Skymovies channels that show the same films over and over and over again.

We also had slight trouble coming up with a name, but by complete mistake when we were talking about some films and I happened to say 'yeah that film was a total peach' we realized we had found our name, Peach. We are both very happy with this title and think it is very strong and works really well with the channel. From this we quickly came up with a style for the stings, we both like the idea of filing certain scenes from picked films the draw over them with a cartoon style that we had seen in the film Juno.

When we presented this idea to our tutor he seemed really pleased with it and later suggested that instead of making the stings obvious of what they are advertising, why not simply do them as a charades game, then say what film is playing and at what time at the end of the advert.

Currently we have filmed a number of stings and are editing three of them so they can now be drawn over then edited further more till the final outcome. I will upload the final videos and logo once we have finished the project.

what's that, dissertation time?

Yesterday for our lecture, Hamid had a little surprise for us, he had invited a few of the 4th years to come along a give a talk for a little insight of what they are currently doing for their very own dissertations. They spoke of how they came up with their topic, how for some of them it just came to them in their sleep, and how they chose to do something that they find interesting, something they knew and felt they would enjoy doing. They told us of the research they did, how you should do all your research first before you start any writing and leave plenty of time to complete, go over and adjust any of the work before the hand in.

One of the girls that was speaking spoke of how she loves mythology and symbology, and how she is taking this into her work for her 4th year personal project. It was this comment she made about her passion for these two topics that made me realize what I am passionate about and made me think how can I take that into my chosen topic? How can I expand on this? What she said made me think of my one of my favourite Terry Pratchett books Going Postal where he talks about letters and words and how people look at them, how they interpret them, so looking at the relationship between people and words is something I am very interested in doing. I have also found an article online called 'The Crystal Goblet' which talks about how type should be, what it should be.

So now I have started looking for books and journals to help me with research for my topic and will soon speak to my seminar groups tutor to discuss their thoughts on it. I feel that yesterday was extremely helpful and think I would have taken a lot more time trying to come up with an idea if the 4th years did not come along to talk to us. I think that the dissertation will be more enjoyable than I thought now.

the baseline of typography

As mentioned in a previous blog about the life of typography, we are currently working on a project to create and design a magazine layout. The topic being on words and letters throughout the city. This project as others in the class have found, has turned out to be rather more difficult than we all thought, getting the right column grid structure and a suitable relationship between the body copy, the imagery and headings is more difficult than we all thought. With that said I am still enjoying the project and actually like working on my layout and think that everyone will produce very different but strong pieces of work.

It was at the beginning of the project where our tutor Gary showed us a copy of the Baseline magazine. This was to show us how the a texts in grids, the size, spacing in between each lines, the actual font, captions, the use of white space etc, to show us how a proper typographic magazine works. here he also said for us to think about the legibility, meaning how easy for someone to read the body copy? how can we make the text an enjoyably read? as well as how the actual pages will look.

Having looked at the Baseline magazine I find it to be really good, is very different from other design magazines such as Creative Review and Eye magazine, all have very different styles and layouts and do not all use the same content are even similar articles separating each brand as you could say.

The actual magazine is completely typography based making it more unique and gives a better understanding of how we look at type, even looking at the cover makes it seem quite interesting and appealing. It is obviously a magazine of quality, not just because of the expensive price, but just because of the quality of the magazine itself, the different types of paper used and materials used, the clear and high quality photographs used and well as the detailed articles.

I would say that it is a good collectors item for designers, especially for those who work and enjoy typography. I already have had a subscription to creative review but think that I may soon start one for Baseline.