Graphics 1 and Type 2: November 2008

Typographic Rules and Terms

-- Parts of the grid: what are the following: margin, column, alley, module, gutter, folio.

Margain: Margain is the white space around the outside of the grid.

Column: vertical alignment of each column of the grid.

Alley: all of the spaces between the characters of text.

Module: The spaces between the paragraphs.

-- What are the advantages of a multiple column grid.? A multiple column grid accessible and comfortable for the viewer.

-- Why is there only one space after a period? You use to have to put 2 spaces after a period to separate the sentences because all letters were monospaced on the typewriter. Yet, now characters are proportional so i only takes up 1/5 of the letter m.

-- What is a character (in typography)? A sign, symbol, or mark that does include letterforms and numbers.

-- How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line? 60

-- Why is the baseline grid used in design? Bottoms of the baseline are more appealing by designers.

-- What is a typographic river? A type river is when the spaces between the letters are noticeably lined up.

-- What does clothes lining or flow line or hang line mean? A division of the page by a horizontal line. This aligns for great placement of different visual elements.

-- How can you incorporate white space into your designs? Space is just as important as text. Adding color is always fun. You can divide text easily and color text for visual effects.

-- What is type color/texture mean? The weight of a character.

-- What is x-height, how does it affect type color? The x-height is the ascender of a letter height. Type color is affected by the thickness of the line and readability.

-- Define Tracking: letterspacing

-- Define Kerning. Why do characters need to be kerned? What are the most common characters that need to be kerned (kerning pairs)?

Kerning is the process of removing small units of space between letters in order to create visually consistent letter spacing. The larger the letters, the more critical it is to adjust their spacing.

Characters needed to be kerned because it makes the letters look so much better and not awkward. You want it to appear like there is the same amount of space between the letters.

-- In justification or H&J terms what do the numbers: minimum, optimum, maximum mean? The amount of words on the line.

-- What is the optimum space between words? En space.

-- What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph? Are there any rules?An indent or space with no text.

-- What are the rules associated with hyphenation? Do NOT hyphenate a headline!!!!!!!!!!!!

-- What is a ligurature? Something connecting two letters.

-- What does CMYK and RGB mean? RGB (red blue green) cmyk (cyan magenta yellow and black.

-- What does hanging punctuation mean? A hanging punctuation is the way some quotes and hyphens are programmed to align in a body of text.

-- What is a widow and an orphan?

When a paragraph ends and leaves fewer than seven characters on the last line. That is called a WIDOW.

When the last line of a paragraph is long and wont fit at the bottom of a column and must end itself at the top of the next column is an ORPHAN.

A designer has made it big when becoming the first American to receive the Gerrit Noordzij Award. In 2006, Tobias Frere-Jones was presented this award by the Royal Academy of The Hague in honor of his unique contributions to type design, typography, and type.

Tobias Frere-Jones was born August 28, 1970 in New York. At age 14, he started exhibiting paintings, sculptures, and photographs in New York galleries. His family had various talents from writing to printing, which allowed Tobias to know the power of written text. Letterforms became appealing to him and started his infatuation with design. Tobias went to Rhode Island School of Design and graduated in 1992 with a Graphic Design degree. His first job out of school was working for Font Bureau as a Senior Designer. In addition to his numerous contributions to the Font Bureau library, he made three fonts, Reactor, Fibonacci, and Microphone for Fuse, a journal of experimental type design. “The day we stop needing new type will be the same day that we stop needing new stories and new songs,” Tobias Frere-Jones.

In 1996, Tobias joined the Yale School of Art faculty as a critic and shortly after in 1999 left Font Bureau where he began working with Jonathan Hoefler at the Hoefler Type Foundry, Inc. Since working together, the two have worked on projects for Barack Obama, Nike, Gucci, The Walt Disney Company, Martha Stewart (in several areas) Visa, and McGraw Hill. With clients such as Wired magazine, Hoefler and Frere-Jones custom-designed the magazine with a redesign using Vitesse and Vitesse Sans font. Not to mention the thousands of organizations that have chosen Hoefler and Tobias-Jones’ typefaces makes these two an outstanding duo. Tobias has designed over five hundred typefaces for retail publication, custom clients, and experimental research. Their work together has been featured in Print, How, ID, and Page. Tobias has also lectured throughout North America, Europe, and Australia.

When Hoefler and Frere-Jones began their collaboration, it was reported by The New York Times that the two had been profiled all over and thought the design press on five continents. They made radio, television, and even motion picture appearances. Both men have earned a permanent spot for their collections in the Smithsonian and the V&A. Also, the Hoefler and Frere-Jones have earned the Prix Charles Peignot award.

“Hoefler and Frere-Jones create fonts that stand out with the clarity, elegance, and durability of a well-cut diamond.... An Hoefler and Frere-Jones typeface is always exquisitely legible without sacrificing high style.” Time Magazine.

“Their fonts lend a sense of history and place to the pages where they are displayed, which may explain why, in this age of standardization, their work is so damn popular.” Esquire.

“One of the defining factors of a typeface designed by the dup is the rigor of their reasearch and development process. Hoefler and Frere-Jones have designed very visible typrfaces that have had lasting cultural impact.” Eye Magazine.

Tobias Frere-Jones has spent two and half years gainging research and exploring New York City and their endangered art. Unique pieces of lettering have been destroyed which is erasing the literal handwriting of New York City. Through the AIGA he guides tours through Manhattan’s alphabets, uncovering hidden and rare surviors of artwork. New York has such an overall feel that is different from everyother place in the world; the streets have a definitive signature that has been captured in visual mediums. The grand inscriptions and signage are vanishing from the wrecking balls of the building boom.

An interview with Tobias Frere-Jones was done in August of 2002 by Dmitri Siegel and was featured on The Morning News. Below is a section from the interview with Tobias Frere-Jones.

What piece of music most closely resembles the process of type design?
Yow. Hm. While I’m not sure I could pick out a single piece, I think most anything by Autechre would come pretty close, as those guys seem to work on very large and very small scales simultaneously. And even their most startling and disorienting pieces sound deliberate and carefully planned. I could also have an unfair bias, as I listen to them quite often while drawing.
How would you approach creating a typeface based on typography and graphic design of the recent past – say the mid-1990’s?
Given how quickly Interstate gained currency with designers, I’m really not sure how I’d handle that. My first thought is that it would be like trying to call myself on the telephone: ‘What? How come I always get a busy signal? Who could I possibly be talking to?’
What sort of creative or research projects do you work on outside of type design?
Music (or sound, generally) is definitely the largest activity aside from design. It gets sidelined by work now and then, but I like to stay close to that way of thinking.
How does designing a typeface that is self-initiated differ from designing one that is commissioned?  Two of the designs that I’m most pleased with – Whitney and Gotham – wouldn’t have happened if somebody hadn’t asked for them. Those parts of the spectrum – the humanist and the geometric – had already been thoroughly staked out and developed by past designers. I didn’t think that anything new could have been found there, but luckily for me (and the client), I was mistaken. The best custom jobs will push me to take on a problem that I hadn’t considered before, or to reexamine what I had regarded as the final word for a given motif.   How would you approach creating a typeface based on typography and graphic design of the recent past – say the mid-1990’s?   Given how quickly Interstate gained currency with designers, I’m really not sure how I’d handle that. My first thought is that it would be like trying to call myself on the telephone: ‘What? How come I always get a busy signal? Who could I possibly be talking to?’

Fonts that Tobias has designed

Armada 1987-94

Dolores 1990

Hightower 1990-94

Nobel 1991-93

Garage Gothic 1992

Archipelago 1992-98

Cafeteria 193

Epitaph 1993

Reactor 1993

Reiner Script 1993

Stereo 1993

Interstate 1993-99

Fibonacci 1994

Niagrar 1994

Asphalt 1995

MSL Gothic (Benton Sans) 1995

Citadel 1995

Microphone 1995

Plsner 1995

Poynter Oldstyle 1996-97

Griffith Gothic 1997

Whitney 1996-2004

Phemister 1997

Grand Central 1998

Welo Script 1998

Retina 2000

Nitro 2001

Idlewild 2002

Exchange 2002

Monarch 2003

Dulcet 2003

Tungsten 2004

Argosy 2004

Fonts created with partner Jonathan Hoefler

Numbers 1997-2006

Mercury Text 1999

Vitesse 2000

Lever Sans 2000

Evolution 2000

Survevor 2001

Archer 2001

Gontham 2001 (Jesse Ragan included)

Interstate is a sans serif typeface with industrial roots. It was released in 1994 and was based loosely on the font family Highway Gothic, used by the United States Federal Highway Administration for road signs. Interstate was embraced universally by graphic designers and has been used on most everything, despite the specificity of its origins. Here is an example of this bold modern type.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

1234567890

Facts about Interstate font

Interstate is Bold Modern

Serif Sans

This font family has 40 fonts in three widths and seven weights.

The ascending and descending strokes are cut at an angle to see the stroke.

Ex. t and l

Curved strokes

Ex. e and s

Counters are open

Even condensed weights and style allow legibility

Simple and AMAZING

Helvetica, which is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design, and global visual culture looks at the typeface Helvetica in 2007. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a has a fluid discussion with reowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthitcs behind their use of type. Interviews in Helvetica inluded some of the most illustrious and innovative names in the design world inlcuding both Tobias Frere-Jones and Jonathan Hoefler.

Other happenings in 1994 (aside from Interstate)

March 4^th marked the day when four terrorists were convicted for their roles in the World Trade Center bombing. The bombing killed six people and injured over a 1,000.

March 14^th was when Apple Computer, INC. releases their first Macintosh computers to use the new PowerPC Microprocessors. This is considered to be a major leap in the personal computer, as well as Macintosh history.

June 12^th is the date when Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are murdered outside the Simpson home in Los Angeles, California. O.J. Simpson is later acquitted of the killings, but is held liable in a civil suit.

Tobias Frere-Jones is a fantastic designer that has been blessed with amazing talent. Not only is he a driven designer but he has made something out of himself by getting out and doing what he loves and that is designing. How incredible is it that he designed Interstate font? By looking at his website, he has tons of questions from various students around the world writing papers and doing presentations on his workd. I hope someday I can say those words.

Sources:

Use and abuse of fonts in signage, Berry, John D. Eye, vol. 17, no 67, Spring 2008 pp.25

Space and rhythm, Middendorp, Jan. Eye, vol. 15, no. 59, Spring 2006, pp. 42-47

http://www.typography.com/about/index.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_(typeface)

http://www.typography.com/about/index.php

http://www.aigany.org/events/details/08AC/

http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2007/05/postopolis_tobi.html

http://www.myfonts.com/person/frere-jones/tobias/

Inspiration for Tobias and design not only came from his family but everyday experiences like seeinga row of shopping cars have made his design style wider.

Fun Fact: Sasha Frere-Jones is Tobias brother and a music critic. (talented family)