Research

There are 25 posts filed in Research (this is page 1 of 3).

Typography I: Readings on Grids… and the walk to improve creative thinking (Week 10)

Readings on Grids

From Grids are Good: “Constraints are the mother of design invention.”

I kinda like this quote from the PDF since it reminds me of a similar art/drawing quote which was: “Limitations breed creativity.”

After going through the reading, I felt that I got the gist of how the grids worked but I felt like I couldn’t absorb more of the content specifics. The numbers were killing me midway through the reading. Eventually, the text does, however, provide specific examples on how to create a grid and introducing specific terms (margin, padding, etc). It also gives useful insight on good and bad designs for the web – and how to reorder crowded information.

Later, it even goes into a step-by-step of rebuilding a website to a grid.

It also cuts to the chase and is very direct in explaining the effect and consequence of certain design choices such as:

I was a little baffled at first by the numbers but it eventually looked really useful as it’s a really good guide on how to make use of the modules within the grid!

From How you make a grid:  “Design Grids are Not Mathematical Grids”

PHEW!

I was a little worried since I’ve been looking into several poster grid books recently. I’ve been feeling that using poster grids became something that was increasingly stifling. I started unconsciously looking at it like an iron rule, and not a helping guide.

I really did wish I read this particular text earlier for Assignments 2 and 3.

This reading was also really helpful in providing the basic dos for picking out fonts and deciding text sizes, and eventually fitting them within the poster grids, before providing some really nice examples!

Benefits of going for a walk to enhance creative thinking

This week we started class off with a walk to enhance creative thinking! Yingying, Sam and I walked in (mostly) silence to canteen 2 to grab some food as well.

During my walking exercise in class, I’ve managed to come up with a couple of ideas for the format of project 3:

  • Archetype texture book
  • Archetypes as moving lines zine / optical movements or illusions made with type (twisted lines, speed lines, curvy lines)
  • Archetypes on holiday: a travel log with type (could be digital/social)
    (what about a survival book)
  • Fashionable type (archetypes in a fashion magazine)
  • A board game on archetypes (a game adventure) (could be a digital game as well)
  • Archetype diorama (made with typography; archetypes in their enviro)
  • Archetype tarot/lenormand cards
  • Play cards

Personally, I felt that it’s definitely effective for me as I was still at the starting point of the project and the walk gave me some quiet time to organize my thoughts.

More on Project 3 (Process): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/typography-i-assignment-3-archetypes-and-typography-part-1-2/

Typography I: Typographer of Week 9 – Tobias Frere-Jones

TYPOGRAPHER: TOBIAS FRERE-JONES

Frere-Jones is an American type designer who had designed over 500 type faces – crazy! From the readings on him, it seems like he really picked type and stuck by it.

Some of the typefaces he designed includes Gotham and Interstate.

 Gotham was popularized throughout New York City in signages, Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and other campaigns. Interstate was designed as homage to Highway Gothic, the official typeface of the American Federal Highway Administration.

Typefaces are Solutions

Frere-Jones talks in specific about typefaces for the different mediums and display (for print and for web) in this particular video. The video really highlights the problems that surfaces when a typeface is directly plucked from print and placed for web-reading, down to pixels!

The most interesting thing about this video for me is that the video provides the different methods to solve and clarify the typefaces for web, and the specific problems in specific letters down to pixels. It’s a really in-depth review of his experiences, experimentation and solutions for type problems.

I think this is really importance as a designer today where the computer screen is (almost) king.

Typography I: Archetypes and Typography

Jessica Hische
Talking Type

Jessica Hische’s article discusses the various criteria to consider when picking your type. In the beginning of the article, she also compares how similar web and type designers are (in the thought that goes behind their design and in how they are underappreciated).

In this article, typefaces are also compared to outfits and how overuse will cause the typeface to become stale and outdated. I feel that this is likely the most accurate sort of comparison – different typefaces as different articles of clothing, dressing the body that is the content.

Here’s my favorite part of the article – the Il1 test!

While it should be something obvious, this is something rather new to me as I’ve not explored and noticed enough type to be able to consciously think about the individual letter forms and the part they play within a chunk of text in our daily lives. The Il1 test really showed how important a single letter could be, as typefaces that fail the Il1 test could create misunderstandings and trouble, like the fake London 2012 twitter mentioned in the article.

The differences between Il1 was usually something I’ve never thought too much about but recently, I’ve come across a similar incident myself while reading some online text. I had to copy paste the text onto my address bar to check if it was a ‘1’ or an ‘l’, so I can see how much type makes our lives easier (and most people aren’t actually aware of that!).

It’s a very useful article to hunt for resources as well, with great suggestions at the end for web font services where you can get fonts to use for your works.

Landor.com
Archetypes in branding: How to build a consistent archetype-based brand strategy

Landor’s article focuses on aspects of branding, such as branding strategies, branding narratives and brand creation. Most importantly, it focuses on the part that archetypes play in creating a brand.

Images from Landor Milan

From what I’ve gathered from the article, a brand is important as it would justify its role in an individual’s life. Every consumer is a central figure and I feel that brands play different archetypes to not just be able to appeal to certain people but also to fulfill the many different needs of a single person. As mentioned in the article, it is to allow the consumer to align themselves with set of attributes and values that they believe in so that they can shape themselves in a desired direction.

It’s amazing how the archetype works in helping businesses to save time. Once aligning themselves and defining their brand, the ‘yes’ and ‘no’s of advertising the brand immediately becomes clear and straightforward as it determines the sort of content that has to be pushed out. In turn, the consistency of content leads to value and trust from the consumers, and raises the value of their content and products.

The 12 Brand Archetype, image from Hive Creative Group

Overall

To apply what I have read from these articles, I decided to take some of the brands I’ve come to love over the years to try to discover what sort of role they try to play in a consumer’s life.

Square Enix

There’s Square Enix who made some of my all-time favourite games like the Final Fantasy, Nier and Kingdom Hearts games. I would think that they play the role of the Outlaw, as they are always striving to always looking to one-up other games in graphics and make a revolutionary game. They offer a completely different world in each of their games as well as strive create new wondrous lands and lores constantly for their consumers to explore, travel and learn.

Oreo

There is also Oreo, who takes on the Innocent archetype. I absolutely loved their Wonderfilled advertisement, where they had a beautiful animation and a catchy song/jingle. It’s nostalgic and gentle, reaching out to people with fantastical ideas. It’s probably still one of my all-time favorite advertisements and songs because of how absolutely adorably idealistic it is.

Sennelier

Then there is also Sennelier, a brand who provides art supplies. I would think that Sennelier takes on the role of the Magician. They are always providing high quality art supplies and strive for the best quality of watercolor paints. There are many artists who swear by their watercolors, especially a certain shade of red that they offer (I think it was the Alizarin Crimson). They take pride in the works that their consumers can produce from their products (the magic!).

It’s amazing how we have all been unknowingly pulled around by brands and I really do feel that the more I learn, the less I realized I actually know.

Typography I: Typographer of Week 8 – Herb Lubalin

TYPOGRAPHER: HERB LUBALIN

I feel Lubalin – I would like to devote my life to painting after I retire too!

I find it really sad that Lubalin neither got the chance retire nor to devote his life to painting after retirement like he wanted to, passing on at the age of 63.

He is an American graphic designer and considered political for his lack of fear to declare his allegiances, creating works intended for positive societal and political changes.

Lubalin’s Typefaces

Lubalin was also a type designer and some of his typefaces include the ITC Avant Garde Gothic, Ronda and Lubalin Graph.

It can be noted that Lubalin Graph is a typeface family on its own but was derived from Avant Garde Gothic. The Avant Garde Gothic typeface was originally designed for the Avant Garde magazine.

The original Avant Garde logo by Lubalin

Despite the overuse and misuse of Avant Garde Gothic in 1970s, it’s still extremely influential and remains as one of Lubalin’s most iconic fonts.

Between the two, Lubalin Graph consists of more geometric letter forms, making it unsuitable for chunks of text but more suitable as logos and shorter, non-continuous texts.

U&lc (Upper and lower case)

U&lc is also known as Lubalin’s typographic journal, intended for him to promote his designs as well as provide a space for his experimentation to see how far he could push lettering. The journal is enviable as it was a space where Lubalin is his own client. Every designer (and artist) would find it hard to be able to pursue their own endeavors when they had to struggle with churning out designs to put food on their plate.

Overall

Lubalin is definitely in a class from his own. While I have not come across alot of his works until now, his works have a unique flow and look to them. It’s almost like a signature! His typefaces and works are elegant, gorgeous and even to some degree, painterly. Even his studio logo screams a unique personality.

He does seem to draw heavy influences from the Art Deco movement. His works are idealistic, exclusive and luxurious. As someone who is extremely inclined towards visual arts and towards the similarly luxurious Art Noveau myself, most of his works are visually engaging, satisfying and most definitely a big treat for my eyes.

Typography I: “Wake up and smell the fonts” by Sarah Hyndman

FONTS TURN WORDS INTO A STORY

Hyndman talks about fonts on a more intimate manner – how typefaces can give words personality, backstory and influence. In the video, she also gives insight to how being a professional designer requires you to understand what the client means and not what they say.

After going through this week’s reading (or video), I have definitely begun to see the multitude of roles that typography can play in our lives.

Typefaces make the words anything you want them to be and the actual meaning of the word diminishes the more the word is dressed – with different tones of voice, body language and more. Typefaces alter a person’s physical impression and experiences easily, like from the example Hyndman gives about the two different jelly beans that were represented by different fonts.

It’s surprising to know how much our physical experiences can be easily changed by our first impressions and how unreliable our senses are.

Personally, I also think that a person’s prior experiences contributes to how we approach an experience. For example, what sort of fonts do we expect to be associated with something spicy or something sour? Like in the video, I believe as well that most people would associate that with a sharp-edged font.

Earlier this week in class (17/10), I have also gotten to learn about archetypes and I believe that the media we are exposed to also slowly conditions us to expect things to taste or turn out in a certain predicted manner that would place us at ease. Due to this, storytelling with type would go well when fonts are chosen aptly.

It’s very interesting to relate Hyndman’s talk to what we’ve learnt in class so far and something that I personally definitely would want to experiment with through my assignments and posters if I have the opportunity to. Overall, it was really cool to know through Hyndman’s talk on how typographers and designers are able to use how our minds against us – how they are able to trick and condition people to make decisions in a certain projected manner and we are actually alot less in control of our own decisions than we would like to think.

 

 

Typography I: Typographer of Week 7 – Erik Spiekermann

TYPOGRAPHER: ERIK SPIEKERMANN

Erik Spiekermann is a German designer and typographer who aims to adapt and represent content appropriately. He also sees typography as a connection in communication design – linking products such as books, editorials, corporate items and more.

On a more random note, it’s cool to see a mention of Neville Brody while reading about Spiekermann and to know that Spiekermann partnered with Brody on FUSE and FontShop as well.

“A font should fuzz abit” – Can you see from a font where it comes from?

The article also mentions how Spiekermann discusses that fonts from the same type designers do indeed look like they came from the same designer, since designers are influenced by the traditions that they stands by.

I can’t help but to agree that it’s difficult for a designer and artist to break away from their designs – it would have to take alot of time to shift away from what they’ve made due to their unique experiences with different teachings and environments.

Designers tend to return to the same tools they have been taught to use as well and no one designer would be able to always use the same techniques in the same order due to the differences in their technical experiences as well (e.g. angles of strokes/choice of pen sizes).

On Typomaniac

In the video Typomaniac, Spiekermann speaks about information design for phone/web applications. He branded Nokia for 2001 and also talks about how “the function has to be the brand”, meaning how the product would have to function well to reflect the brand well (and how they are interlinked).

He also brought up several useful resources for creating dummy interfaces, such as Antetype, and mentioned a couple of cool tips in the video such as taking note of the screen that you are designing for. This is most definitely an important reminder to a designer – since it would not do to get too absorbed in designing an interface that looks amazing on its own but would fit on the interface it is intended for. It would end up in a terribly butchered design.

Overall

I enjoyed reading about Spiekermann’s processes and most definitely can relate to his fast-paced mode of going about design. I enjoy churning out drafts and assets early, so that they could be refined quickly.

A fast-paced process is definitely more suitable as well for a corporate environment where one has to work with many companies and clients. It’s not effective to repeatedly produce complicated work for brands that requires new assets quickly. Fast and simple is frequently more effective – just like how Spiekermann showed that people can identify Volkswagen by their blue and type.

Typography I: Typographer of Week 6 – Jonathan Barnbrook

TYPOGRAPHER: JONATHAN BARNBROOK

On Barnbrook’s Typography: A Collection of Curiosities

Barnbrook mentions that he bases his works on typography and he views it close to language; speak in language that has never been spoken before. He also mentions one thing that I find interesting and relatable despite not having much experience as a designer yet:

The Curse of the Designer

-also known as: noticing details that the average untrained eye neither notices nor cares about. It’s an extremely relatable feeling whilst going through this course, working on my own posters and other graphics. However, I do realise that people are growing increasingly sensitive to design and information around them. People are increasingly less easy to manipulate and more ready to suspend disbelief, likely because of the amount of information they take in from the Internet.

Barnbrook also mentions design as being important in a very political and social age – to which I completely agree. I do think this is increasingly so as well because we’ve moved on to a more digital age – where there are alot more wars waged online than off. Good designs conveys culture, and in turn conveys reliability.

Finally, another point I found interesting about what Barnbrook said was an interesting point about clients. He roughly mentions designs being associated to their designer, and about how after you work for Company A, it may not be very suitable for you to immediately jump to Company B. Following that, he also discusses the lack of experience as a very good thing – because of how the designer is able to experiment and shape themselves with brilliant works.

On Barnbrook’s different fonts

I can’t believe he’s the man behind Exocet! Diablo II was one of the first games I played and it was a big part in my life – I even bought the official copy of the game again a couple of years later because I first played with a pirated disc (oh man).

The O of Exocet face is definitely one of the things that sets it apart from many other fonts. It was also used for a Dungeons & Dragons setting Planetscape but it’s (personally) incredibly hard now not to associate Exocet with Diablo especially since Blizzard is a high profile game company that’s known for lots of triple A titles. Blizzard games were a big part of my life while growing up. I especially enjoyed playing Warcraft as a kid too. I don’t think anyone can use Exocet anymore without someone going “Oh! Isn’t that the Diablo font?”. I personally definitely can’t dissociate from that.

Other than Exocet, I find Barnbrook’s designs really peculiar (down to how they are named).

I love this guy.