My Major Plan for my Major Project
Edit (22/04/12) My original plan for my major project. Left here in case the references are useful to anyone looking into type & typography.
I suspect this will get updated as I start to delve in. Things will get crossed off, written in proper English, removing the word “stuff” etc.
My Major Idea
Essentially, I’m looking at the importance of words – not only what they say, but what the way they’re designed says. What happens if you take words out of the picture? What if you don’t know what the word means? Does it still have meaning? Why is the way they’re designed so important? Can you communicate effectively without words – or without words you understand? What makes a happy, sad, etc typeface?
Random Thoughts on the Above
- How we make sense of signs and symbols
- How words describe. How they have meaning on their own.
- Do all lowercase ‘e’s look happy?
- The fact that I chose a question mark for my blog logo – it has meaning on it’s own? It said more than a word could? It’s just a symbol.
- Why do (some) serifs look “dated”?
Things I need to find out
- Some history of typography – why we have 26 letters etc, where they came from.
- Some cross cultural stuff – other alphabets
- What is semiotics? I know what it is, but… more.
- Other peoples’ experiments with typography
Important People
- Jonathan Barnbrook | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Barnbrook | http://www.barnbrook.net/ | http://www.virusfonts.com/
- Erik Spiekermann | http://spiekermann.com/en/
- Herbert Bayer
Books
Books I have/have started looking at
- Stop Stealing Sheep
- Ways of Seeing
- Thinking with Type
To Look At
- Visible Signs – David Crow
- A Theory of Semiotics – Umberto Eco
- http://www.amazon.com/The-Greatest-Books-in-Semiotics/lm/3UJ67W9NKND2Z
- The Elements of Typographic Style – Robin Bringhurst
- http://www.thedesigncubicle.com/2009/06/15-typography-books-to-help-you-learn-and-love-typography/
- Getting it Right with Type
- 1000 type treatments
- Designing with Type
- Grid systems: Principles of Organizing Type
- Layout
- Made with FontFont
- Making and Breaking the Grid
- New Vintage Type
- 28th Type Directors Club Annual
- 29th Type Directors Club Annual
- Typology
- Uppercase & Lowercase
- Barnbrook Bible
Web
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/17/type-letters-typefaces-simon-garfield
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus_(typeface)
- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/21/creative-print-typography-layouts/
- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/27/css-typographic-tools-and-techniques/
- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/05/12/sexy-bold-and-experimental-typography/
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11582548
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10689931
- http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/search?topicAlias=typography
- http://www.typeculture.com/academic_resource/ (esp the “hearing type” one, goes with one of proposed experiments)
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki6rcXvUWP0 Video about typography
- http://www.rsub.com/typographic/
- http://planetoftheweb.com/components/promos.php?id=174 Bit of a timeline
- http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/fonts.html
Other
- Some study/podcast Ed mentioned about how babies form thoughts before they learn how to speak
- One of the broadest definitions is that of Umberto Eco, who states that ‘semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign’ http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem01.html
- Reactions to BBC changing typeface
Themes/Words
- Semiotics
- Typography
- Meaning
- Communication
- Purely visual
- Kinetic typography
- Signs
- Symbols
- Language
Experiments/Tests
- Photographing a scene, room, poster, magazine page, website etc and removing all the words. What do they mean now?
- Removing the words being sung in a song, and trying to recreate them with type
- Writing something angry with “happy type” (Comic Sans? Ha.) vice versa.
- Concept – website with no words, only posting pictures, no words allowed. Comments have to be pictures.
- Blocking out letters – are words still recognisable?
- Changing recognised typefaces in logos