Typogrpahy - Exercises

 17.04.2020 | 2020 satrting and ending date
Mohamed Hammam Chebel (0342483) / B'des. Creative media (Hons)
Typography
Exercises | Type Expression & Type Formatting

LECTURES 

Week 1 INTRODUCTION
  In the first live lecture we were briefed about this module, I met our lecturers Mr Vinod Nair and MR Shamsul Hamimi. They went through all the details about assignments and projects etc...
 It was really helpful, now I feel like I can start my journey.
 The lecturers assigned us for an exercise for this week, they explained the methods used to accomplish this task in detail.
 We were introduced to some fonts and some other students artworks, which inspired me and motivated me.
   As I did Arabic calligraphy a long time ago, I really appreciate  the value and importance of the letter, I hope I learn more about this amazing domain.
  the fonts for this semester are:

  • Bembo Std
  • Futura Std
  • Gill sans Std
  • ITC Garamond Std
  • ITC New Baskerville Std
  • Janson Text Lt Std
  • Serifa Std
  • Univers LT Std


Week 2  TYPOGRAPHY DEVELOPMENT

  Before going through Friday’s class, I reviewed the you tube video the lecturer has uploaded which is about the historical development of typing.
In this lecture I learned a lot of important information about typing which I didn’t know about before.
At the beginning writing was scratching symbols into different materials like rocks and wood etc. typing started with Phoenician and developed into Roman, Greeks changed the direction of writing from left to right, also the orientation of the letter forms.


This huge development was from 1000 B.C.E to 100 B.C.E

Fig 2.1
Week 3 LABOR DAY
For today, no class took place because it is labor day, so I dedicated this day to do some self-learning, I used the videos provided In the lecturer’s you tube channel, I went through all lectures posted there and took notes so I can I have a general idea on the coming lectures.


Our lecturer Mr. Vinod provided a zoom link on Facebook for an online session to review animation exercise despite the holiday. 



Fig 3.1

Week 4 INSTRUCTIONS AND DEMONSTRATION (Formatting text).
In today's live lecture Mr. Vinod did a demonstration on text formatting using Adobe In-design. I was familiar with most of the information in the demo because I did the formatting text exercise before the live class, after he finished with explaining and giving instructions, we were given time to practice.
After we done practicing the lecturer reviewed our work on formatting text exercise.
finally the lecturer briefed us with the coming project 1" Editorial Text Options" and we were asked to start with doing sketches for our ideas about the overall look of the project. 


INSTRUCTIONS

 


Week 1

EXERCISE 1: TYPE EXPRESSION

 In this exercise we have to type six different words given by our lecturers in a way that it expresses its own meaning, without using any graphic manipulation just words. This task should be done on Adobe Illustrator. We were briefed on how to work on this exercise step by step via You Tube videos posted and done by Mr Vinod, so the process is not difficult to do, on the other hand, we have to be creative and make our own type expressions. 

The words given :
  1. Drown 
  2. Fly
  3. Loud
  4. Hidden
  5. Push
  6. Disappear
   Sketches
 First, and before doing the work on the software, I did some pencil sketches to visualize my ideas.
These are my sketches for type expression. 


Fig 1.1 Type expression sketch



Fig 1.2 Type expression sketch
Illustrator
   After I finished with the sketches. I moved to work on Illustrator. I followed the lecturer's instructions in order to obtain this result. The image below represents the first attempt to illustrate my ideas into the software (Adobe Illustrator) .



Fig 1.3 Type expression AI

Week 2
Exercise 2 ANIMATION
  Today, the lecturers reviewed our work for exercise one (type expression) and provided feedback and comments, you can see it in the feedback section below.
Also we were assigned for a new exercise (animation ).
In this exercise we should animate one type expression of our choice using Photoshop and Illustrator. We have to express the meaning of the word using motion.
A detailed video was posted on the lecturer’s you tube channel, contains an explanation on how to make the word animation.
I followed the step by step tutorial, doing the exercise wasn’t a problem. Thus, I had to come with the idea which is the trickiest and time-consuming part.
Here is my progress of word animation



Fig 2.1
In the first step of this process I typed the word "drown" into Illustrator using serifa font. I duplicated the pages so I have frames to work on, I kept on moving letters individually and repeating these steps until I was satisfied with the amount of frames. 


Fig 2.2

Fig 2.3
After I was done with creating frames in Illustrator, I exported the files as jpeg to Photoshop so I can work on animation. I followed the instructions on the you tube video provided by the lecturer to achieve the result below. 

     

Fig 2.4
GIF animation 
for the word "drown"

Week 3
Exercise 3 FORMATTING TEXT

Progress 
Fig 3.1
Formatting text exercise

For this task I used In-design software for the first time, It looked complicated at the beginning, but after watching the lecturer tutorials I began to understand its functions. I followed the instructions in the you tube tutorials to do business card and the letter task.





Fig 3.2
Formatting text exercise 

Fig 3.3
Text formatting PDF

After the feedback I worked on improving my work 


Fig 3.4
Formatting text final


FEEDBACK

Week 1
  On the 25th of April 2020, during the live meeting on zoom with the lecturers. Mr Vinod and Shamsul had reviewed my work on the first exercise ( type expressions ) which I've posted in the section above.
  Well, Mr Vinod provided me with comments and advice regarding my work.
   First he suggested to create an 0.5 mm outline for the word "DISAPPEAR" and to color it with a light grey color to make it look like it's fading or disappearing .
   Second, Mr Vinod advised me to work more on the letter "O" in the word " DROWN", by that he means to work on it's position and rotation.
   Third, he told me to redo the word "LOUD", because it's lacking the meaning or the expression itself,  in other words it doesn't really represent the meaning of the word.
   Finally, he gave me a general advice, which is changing the fonts for each word because I used the default font in the editing software, the lecturer has provided us with 9 different typefaces so I have a wide range of styles to chose from.
  The lecturer's feedback was helpful and precise. Now I can improve my work.
Week 4
today Mr. Vinod reviewed my work on formatting text and here is his feedback.  
work on cross alignment between the headlines and the body text. Fit the text boxes perfectly into the columns. delete awkward paragraph spacing.
copy some of the text above and paste it in the lower section of the text box to fill up the empty space.
update blog and add further reading, make the PDF files public on google drive.


REFLECTION

Experience 
After going through typography classes with Mr. Vinod, I have better understanding of typography basics, its history and development, different fonts, typing styles and type faces, and the software used for typing. I'm satisfied and thankful for the lecturers, the live lectures are detailed and clear, so I had no problem following instruction at all.
My questions were answered immediately by the lecturer and feedback was given after reviewing my homework.
I can go back and watch lectures again on Facebook or you tube which is really helpful.   

Observation 

I always wondered how books and news papers are made, In such a pleasing manner, readable and organized with precised margins and perfect alignment.
Thanks to this class I become aware of how the process is made, I like the details and the hard work behind typing. Before taking this class, I was thinking that typography is just typing, but now I know its importance and understand its beauty. Now, I am more interested In typography, and willing to learn more.

Findings 
I found that the best software to use for typography design work is Adobe In-design, it is a detailed software that is dedicated only for typing.
Also I learned how to do basic animation in Photoshop which was very useful for me. now I can make frame by frame animations and export it into a GIF.
I found that expressing meanings through words can be challenging and time consuming, but it is a powerful way of expression.

FURTHER READING

Relativity by Albert Einstein.
this week I started reading a book I bought before MCO, It's about general and special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein.
As I went through this book I noticed a lot of detail which I wasn't aware of before taking typography class. I become more sensitive to details, I like how the text looks in this book, it is readable and pleasing to see, it has a lot of mathematical equations and numbers, three fonts are used in this book, I can differentiate between headlines, examples and equations.


Fig 1.1
Relativity 
the special and the general theory
Albert Einstein







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