9/7/10 Notes

Typography Notes

9/7/10

· 1990s: designers continued building fonts for general purpose to comfortably accommodate bodies of text

· these fonts provide designers with flexible patterns of letterforms coordinated within larger families

· Zuzana Lico, a pioneer of the digital era, created the font Mrs. Eaves

o Mrs. Eaves was inspired by John Baskerville’s type face

o Eave was said to be Baskerville’s mistress

o Mrs. Eaves was created in 1996

· Quadraat, also called “all purpose Baroque” was created by Fred Smeijers

o It’s a Dutch font and was created in 1992

· Scala was invented by Martin Majoor and has many variations such as vertical italics

o (Scala was the type face used in the text book!)

· Gotham was introduced in 2000 by Tebias Frere-Jones

o It was inspired by Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC

o It’s geometric

· When finding a font, one should consider the different font’s history, connotation, and formal qualities

· ANATAMY OF THE LETTER

o Baseline: stable axis along a line of text

o X-height: height of lowercase letter (based on the letter “x”)

o Capheight: height between the baseline and the top of the letter

o Asender: may extend above cap height

o Counter: center of letters such as “o”

o (more letter anatomy parts on hand out)

· height: based on the point system, It also measures the distance between lines, or leading

· leading: lines between letters

· 12 points = 1 pica

· 6 picas (72 points) = 1 inch

· type can also be measured in inches, millimeters, or pixels

· TYPE CRIMES:

o Horizontal or vertical scaling

o Pseudo Italics

o Pseudo Bold

o Pseudo SMALL CAPS

· Interstate has many examples of variations

· Scala also has many variations but the sans serif offers even more

· 7 TYPE CLASSIFICATIONS

1. Sabon: Humanistic or Old Style

§ thinner

2. Baskerville: Transitional

§ A little more contrast in thickness

3. Bodoni: Modern

§ Bigger differences in line thickness

4. Clarendon: Egyptian or Slab Serif

§ Used in advertising, also known as “Monster Fonts”

5. Gill Sans: Humanist Sans Serif

§ Caligraphic

6. Helvetica: Transitional or Anonymous Sans Serif

§ Created by Max Mledinger in 1957

§ Based on futuristic Bauhaus

7. Futura: Geometric Sans Serif

§ Based even more on the Bauhaus fonts

· 16^th century: organized typefaces into matched families when printers began coordinating romans and italics