Tag: typography

Reading Color: Type in and on Color

A synthesized, inductive approach using Itten’s contrast of extension and Albers’s experimental color studies in application to the visual gestalt of typography.

Jeanne Criscola
Assistant Professor
Central Connecticut State University

Much has been theorized about the transformation of communication from cave paintings to written language and how humans employing materials and technologies impacted their evolution. In 1493, Johannes Gutenberg’s technologies marked a milestone for communication and its distribution with the mechanization of movable type printing. The transition from hot type that went obsolete in the 1950s, to cold type that met its demise around 1985 with desktop publishing, was short-lived. Now, digital typesetting technologies offering myriad configurations of size, font, and layout—in seemingly infinite spectrums of color—present limitless opportunities for the practice of communication design.

This fusion of type and color presents challenges for pedagogy and discourse in the fields of typography and color where they have historically been considered separately in books and in coursework. In typography books, examples typically use letterforms in varying degrees of sizes and contrast to demonstrate colors’ influence on legibility. In books on color theory, the properties of color are often demonstrated with pie-shaped diagrams, color wheels, grids, and in continuous bands. Each pedagogy falls short of modeling today’s communication technologies where typography and color are intrinsic, inseparable, and synergistic.

Methodologies that facilitate the study of typography and color in context and in situ would be welcome by educators and professionals alike. For educators, infusing color theory into the study of typography has advantages for curriculum and course development. For the design student, learning color theory with letterforms integrates their study and practice.

This paper sets out to initiate a synthesized, inductive approach using Johannes Itten’s contrast of extension and Joseph Albers’s experimental color studies in application to the visual gestalt of typography.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 6.1: Quinnipiac University on October 5, 2019.

Type Drives Culture Conference

Love Type More Than Ever!
Save on the Type Drives Culture Conference!
Tickets Now Reduced 20%

The theme of this year’s Type Drives Culture Conference is
Type: More ______ Than Ever. Our interactive theme prompts presenters and conference attendees to fill in the blank about the present and future of type.

Type is more global than ever, more accessible than ever, and more exciting than ever. This one-day conference brings together designers and thinkers to share their diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and opinions through provocative talks and panel discussions.

Rich Tu, the vice president of design for MTV, will serve as the master of ceremonies for an exciting day, featuring our keynote speaker type designer/educator and TDC Medalist Fiona Ross.

Other award-winning designers presenting during the day include
E Roon Kang, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, Wael Morcos, Natasha Jen, design reporter Anne Quito of Quartz, Yotam Hadar, and Ksenya Samarskaya.

Among the day’s highlights will be a live-taping of Debbie Millman’s influential podcast Design Matters, where she will interview Kris Holmes of Bigelow & Holmes.

We will also have a panel discussion with Dan Rhatigan of Adobe Fonts, Irin Kim of Google Fonts, and Charles Nix of Monotype moderated by Juliette Cezzar, and two other panels that you won’t want to miss, moderated by Jason Pamentel and Gloria Kondrup of the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography in Pasadena.

Tickets include a two-hour reception with the speakers.

Come help us fill in the blank on March 1st.

Group rates available via director@tdc.org

SVA Theater
333 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011
+Google Map

Arabic Lettering Workshop at the Type Directors Club

An exciting series of workshops about Arabic lettering is being offered at the Type Directors Club. This latest episode, participants will select important public signs from New York and will proceed to create the Arabic counterpart.

Kristyan Sarkis and Wael Morcos will be sharing their skills as type designers and graphic designers, teaching the main parameters that define the Arabic script and letterforms.

Body Type

Samantha Flora
Co-Founder and Designer
JAM Studios and Fat Kid Type Foundry

Centered around issues of identity, the body, womanhood, and how they interconnect with design in the context of body image and the body positivity movement, Body Type: An Analysis of Fat Identity and Fat Bias in Graphic Design, is an extensive body of research which connects type, design, and the body through humanistic tradition.

In addition to a brief overview of the research, presenter will discuss Body Type—a typeface based on her own bodily proportions, which seeks to interject the fat female form into an industry where fat bodies have been marginalized by practice. It is a story of radical self-acceptance that seeks to redefine what self-love means to the modern woman and how that change can be—and should be, shaped by design.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 5.1: DePaul University on October 27, 2018.

Breakfast and Letterpress Typography Workshop @HMCT

Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography at ArtCenter College of Design is hosting a workshop to welcome Design Incubation and typography design researchers to the West Coast.

We are excited to announce the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography at ArtCenter College of Design is generously hosting a workshop to welcome Design Incubation and typography design researchers to the West Coast during the 106th Annual CAA Conference in Los Angeles.

Saturday, February 24, 2018
10:30AM–1:30PM
Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography / Archetype Press 
South Raymond Avenue
Pasadena, California 91105

The Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography [HMCT] at ArtCenter College of Design was founded in 2015 in memory of Professor Leah Hoffmitz Milken, a well-known typographer, letterform designer and esteemed faculty member at ArtCenter. Archetype Press houses more than 2,500 cases of rare American and European foundry type, wood type, and ornaments.

Gloria Kondrup, Executive Director of Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography and Director of Archetype Press, will also be moderating a special program of typography research presentations during Affiliated Society Meeting: Design Incubation Special Program on Typography. For details visit the website announcement. All are welcome to attend these events. Please register in advance.

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.