OUGD404 - Design Principles - What is Visual Literacy?

What is visual literacy? - the language of graphic design...

The Anatomy of Type - Part 1 - An Introduction to Type

Whats the difference between rules and principles? 

In order for the visual communication agreement to work, the rules cannot be broken. However, the principles can be explored.

What IS Typography? 

Methods of production affect the shape, structure and appearance of the type.
For example:

• Carved out of Stone: Hand carved type out of stone is usually serif because one cannot cut directly into the stone, for it will chip.

• Using Sable / brush: Of oriental origin, wispy oriental script and structure of the letterform was formed because of the tools used.

• Using bone: calligraphic Arabic and Hebraic letterforms developed from angled edge of bone.

• Using woodblock type: Hard, straight edges of type using wood formed the style of letterforms in the Western world.

• Using lead type: An expansion and development for woodblock type enabled a large range of fonts to be designed.

• Using silicone: digital type made possible with precision of silicone type. Enabling a whole range of possibilities for type development.

The industrial revolution drove the development for printed type, with the advances in technology at the time and the demand for communication with the general public, typography rapidly developed into much more than just a marketing tool.

While the Bauhaus was revolutionary, it's idea that form follows function is now outdated, and now there is the exploration of function can follow form. 

As typographical technology becomes more affordable and accessible to everyone during the mid 1990's, the demand for professional digital typography becomes less desirable. We see a shift in demand for more traditional techniques such as letterpress and screenprints, which are no longer the primary use of type (as of 2000's). The emergence of brush-style scripts and hand-written styles of fonts become more common for this reason also.

There is also a recognized demand for globalized communication through type. With facilities such as the internet and with the general public having access to vernacular type, a bigger market can now be considered when making a typeface. Now international symbols, glyphs and accents are being incorporated into typographical designs.

Studio task

Each of us in our group of 5 gathered together 5 fonts, in upper and lower case, available to us on Fontbook for Mac. We then agreed on 5 categories in which to sort these typefaces into:

• Sans serif
• Serif
• Decorative
• Western/ Circus
• Calligraphy/ script

We then discussed our categories as a class. This is what we came up with collectively (minus repeated categories):

• Sans serif
• Serif
• Handwritten
• Type-written
• Modern
• Traditional
• Western/ Circus
• Contemporary
• Digital
• Bold
• Light
• Script

We then, in groups sorted our fonts into what method of production we thought had inspired the design:

We found that usually, the method of production has affected the appearance/ characteristic of the letterform and that we were each using the same sort of terminology to describe letterforms that were categorized in the same method of production:

Stone , Sable/ Brush, Bone (pre-industrial techniques)

"Calligraphic, Script, Roman, Classical, Rigid, Basic"

Wood, Lead, Silicone (post-industrial techniques)

"Modern, Cropped, Rounded, Playful, Expressive, Free, Bold, Retro Futuristic"

Dissecting type: