Tag: #DI2018feb2

Rethink Typography Education for Digital Content Design

Christie Shin
Assistant Professor
Communication Design
Fashion Institute of Technology

Christie Shin
Assistant Professor
Communication Design
Fashion Institute of Technology

The printed page is not obsolete, and it will probably never be “dead” as many have predicted.  As a matter of fact, a new wave of indie magazines has been thriving in recent years as a result of the streamlined process of publishing. However, as far as the overall media consumption is concerned, the war is over, and the printed media has lost. Today, screens in a variety of sizes are undoubtedly the primary platform for delivering and disseminating messages and information.

Despite the shift in media channel dominance, typography remains as the soul of visual communication design. The art of designing and using typeface as a means of communication and expression can still single-handedly elevate or destroy the aesthetics and function of a design – regardless whether it is printed on a piece of cardboard, or projected onto a silver screen.

The new possibilities in typographic design exponentially expanded following the transition to screen-based media, and the rules and principles of typography have changed in the world of digital design. As stated by Michael Worthington in the seminal book, The Education of a Graphic Designer, “ Most of graphic designers understand how printed type conveys its message to an audience, what its form signifies, but few understand how that differs in the environment of the screen. On the screen-based world of typography, what was stable in the print world becomes movable, alterable, and temporal. Some of Gerstner’s possibilities for static typography seem irrelevant, restrictive, or untranslatable in this new world. If his rules have been made anachronistic by current technology, I found myself questioning whether the written word should still be such a major part of our communication process.”

In order for the new generation of graphic designers to embrace and explore new possibilities in screen-based typography, we must begin to take concrete steps toward a true typography education reform. This presentation introduces the best typographic design projects from the newly developed courses at FIT including Kinetic Typography, Typography for Digital Content Design, Typography for Digital Product Design, and Content Centric App Design. The primary goal for the presentation is to showcase the innovative uses of pedagogy and teaching methodologies for teaching digital typography.

This research was presented at the Affiliated Society Meeting: Design Incubation Special Program on Typography on February 23, 2018.

Empathic Typography

Michele Damato McCaffrey
Assistant Professor
Department of Design
Syracuse University

Michele Damato McCaffrey
Assistant Professor
Department of Design
Syracuse University

How are students going to become empathic designers when they live and learn in a guarded design institution for four years? Can we develop courses/projects that encourage them to interact with communities outside of their own?

My work with students has shown they want to feel invested in their learning. Millennials are the most ethnically and racially diverse generation in the U.S. and are highly committed to social change. As design educators, we can use this information to tailor classes that will challenge them socially as citizens and designers so that they may have a deeper emotional connection to their work.

In my Experimental Typography Class, students are required to photograph the typographic signage/markings of an unknown neighborhood. For many, this may have been the first time visiting a neighborhood/culture significantly different from their own. Through typography only, the students designed a double-sided poster that communicates the culture and experience of that place. They come to understand how typography alone can reflect the ethnicity, culture, and socio-economic structure of a neighborhood. Though challenging and uncomfortable to some, students enjoy this project because they have the freedom to choose communities; take their own photography; spend time outside the boundaries and solitude of the classroom; and are in a new environment.

As a result, students often felt an investment and commitment to the neighborhood they chose to present. Not only did they fall in love with this new approach of discovering typography but also how they visually represented their story. Having students move outside of the classroom and interacting in new communities allowed them to (a) utilize their own strengths to develop their voice as designers and (b) raise their awareness of other communities as a first step toward becoming empathic and socially engaged citizens.

This research was presented at the Affiliated Society Meeting: Design Incubation Special Program on Typography on February 23, 2018.

Variant Letterforms

Monica Maccaux
Assistant Professor
Graphic Design
University of Nevada, Reno

When considering the multitudes of typeface choice on the market, how does one approach the challenge of designing a typeface that is different from the competition? With the abundance of typeface choices, why is there a need for yet another typeface to be designed? These are valid questions when approaching the creative process of typeface design. There is the potential for there to be as many typefaces as there are people in the world; meaning, the possibilities are endless in the personalities and function of typefaces, and have the potential to grow along with the population.

The typeface ‘Motorix’ solves the fatigue to a gluttonous font market by challenging the rules of form, beauty, and function all the while pushing the limits of what language looks like. The Latin (or Roman) alphabet, as it stands today, has undergone centuries of change and evolution which has resolved itself to current norms in letterform recognition. What will our letterforms look like in another couple of centuries? Will the letter ‘A’ still look the same? Will there be new letterforms added, or old ones removed? What can the letter ‘A’ look like? With the typeface ‘Motorix’, these questions were considered, along with how the expectation of aesthetics, and practicality drive the finished product.

Beauty and aesthetics aside, when approaching typeface design, one has to acknowledge that to design type, is to design language. As the designer of language, there are certain considerations that need to be made when formulating the letterforms: legibility, readability, beauty, form, versatility, and utility. It is no easy feat to design a typeface that is beautiful and practical, and has many applications (headlines, body copy, etc). But to design a typeface that confronts the notions of what beauty and practicality are, along with pushing the unspoken ‘rules’ of what language should look like, is something altogether different, and continues to be a modern-day challenge in typeface development.

This research was presented at the Affiliated Society Meeting: Design Incubation Special Program on Typography on February 23, 2018.

Design Incubation Colloquium 4.2: Special Program on Typography

This is a special program during the College Art Association Annual 2018 Conference in Los Angeles.

This is a special program during the College Art Association Annual 2018 Conference in Los Angeles.

Affiliated Society: Design Incubation
Friday, 2/23/18: 12:30–1:30 PM
LA Convention Center: 406B

ModeratorS

Gloria Kondrup
Executive Director
Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography
Graphic Design Faculty, ArtCenter College of Design

Liz DeLuna
Associate Professor
Graphic Design
St. John’s University

Presentations

A Modular Approach to Type Design – The Identification and Design of Particular Elements and Patterns
Leon Butler
Research Fellow
National University of Ireland, Galway

Rethink Typography Education for Digital Content Design
Christie Shin
Assistant Professor
Fashion Institute of Technology

Empathic Typography
Michele Damato McCaffrey
Assistant Professor
Department of Design
Syracuse University

Variant Letterforms
Monica Maccaux
Assistant Professor
University of Nevada, Reno

Typographic Landscape Ecologies
Joshua Singer
Associate Professor
San Francisco State University

Typographic Landscape Ecologies

Joshua Singer
Associate Professor
San Francisco State University

Typographic Landscape Ecologies is an ongoing design research project that documents, maps, and visualizes typographic artifacts in the urban landscape as a way to explore cultural forces in the constructed world. The project presuppose a model of a semiotic landscape; a complex multi‐dimensional text or collection of texts in geographic space; the landscape as a collection of symbolically mediated phenomena understood only through representation. The typographic elements of the urban landscape form, through their invisible connections to the greater world of meaning, an ecology of meaning that constructs geographic space as real as its material forms.

Typographic Landscape Ecologies uses conventional research as a means to authoritatively document the landscape in an attempt to reveal patterns and relationships. The project uses experimental methods as a foil to the authority of conventional research as a way to generate speculative conclusions. Imprecise and questionable associations generate new semantic connections and new forms of thinking and knowledge. The illumination of new knowledge is the ultimate goal of research giving subjective and illegitimate conclusions value by revealing something not yet known. The work of the radical architecture groups Superstudio and Archigram, the design fictions of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, the iconoclastic maps of Denis Woods, and the imaginary science of ‘Pataphysics offer examples of the ability of working data into new syntaxes, into alternative and speculative narratives, that can offer glimpses of other potentialities. In Typographic Landscape Ecologies this is demonstrated by the visual cross-referencing of aesthetic ecologies and cultural vectors, their overlay onto three dimensional virtual environments comprised of layers of historical maps that encourage us to read between the lines or layers of a cultural-semiotic space. This does not offer concrete answers, but rather poses new and unexpected questions.

This research was presented at the Affiliated Society Meeting: Design Incubation Special Program on Typography on February 23, 2018.

A Modular Approach to Type Design: The Identification and Design of Particular Elements and Patterns

Leon Butler
Research Fellow
National University of Ireland, Galway

Leon Butler
Research Fellow
National University of Ireland, Galway

All lettering uses modularity as the basis of form can be seen across different cultures such as the Roman order systems for construction numerical and Chinese types always adhering to a square grid structure. Johann Neudörffer the Elder the author of Fundament, [Becker, 2005], and credited with the development of a blackletter type ‘Fraktur’ which he released in copybooks for people to develop the calligraphic style. He also constructed full type systems using a square which provided the basis for each letter and was divided into ten equal parts allowing for a grid to be placed in his copybooks. While researching historical modular type systems a little know typeface ‘Fregio Mecano’ was identified, a modular typeface of Italian origin that dates to the 1920s. The designer of ‘Fregio Mecano’ is unknown but it features in The Encyclopedia of Type Faces by W. Turner Berry [Berry, 1990], alongside the typeface, Fregio Razional attributed to Giulio da Milano for Nebiolo, so it can be assumed that da Milano designed Fregio Mecano also. Using the original grid form of ‘Fregio Mecano’ as a basis, the twenty elements were created in various orientations and positions to construct the letterform. By investigating visual forms in upper and lowercase characters, it is hope to be able to draw insights around the use of vertical sections, curved joins, negative counters, and other comparative elements common across the forms. The system of typographic modularity was developed through simple graphical techniques, such as layering. Comparative insights were generated relating to various themes and visual characteristics that were common across each of the glyphs.  A completed typeface – including numerals and punctuation, has now been constructed. This has allowed an exploration of how these modular elements combine to demonstrate how this practice-based method can help designers, students or educators build a modulator typeface from a fixed palette of visual elements. The arrangement of these elements can create various styles of type for use in different contexts or visual approaches.

This research was presented at the Affiliated Society Meeting: Design Incubation Special Program on Typography on February 23, 2018.