Typography - Project 1

week 5 | week 6
Mohamed Hammam Chebel (0342483) / B'des. Creative media (Hons)
Typography

Project 1 | Text Formatting & Expression

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Lectures 
Week 5 Briefing and instructions 
In this live lecture Mr. Vinod explained this project, provided the texts that we have to chose from and explained how to do it.
the method used to do this project is the same as formatting text exercise from week 4, so I was familiar with the basics of typing and using the software needed for this kind of job.
 Also, I reviewed the lecture in you tube so I can have better understanding of the process.

lecture link: https://youtu.be/0BLK2xX2E_s?list=PLZk01iRkmnlWiFq7epH05A-lMt_bHmGQk&t=1532

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Instructions 

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Project 1 Text formatting and expression 

In this project we were asked to express an editorial text that was given by the lecturer in a 2 page editorial spread. We were allowed to use miner graphical elements. In this project we were allowed to use adobe software (Illustrator and In-design) as we are familiar with this software.
Before starting to work on the software I did some rough sketches on how my project will look like, I tried to express the word code and make it more obvious then the other words in the headline " A designer's C O D E of ethics".
Below are my sketches of ideas of the project layout.

Fig 1.1

Layout sketch 1

Fig 1.2

Layout sketch 2

 I typed and designed the headline in Adobe Illustrator as the lecturer explained in the you tube tutorial.

I arranged the word "code" in a matrix layout to make it look like a QR code which was my inspiration.

Fig 1.3

Designing the headline

attempt 1

Fig 1.4

Designing headline 

chosen design

As I mentioned in the sketches description above, my inspiration was QR codes, they are common and recognizable, as you can see the overall shape is a square, I added a box at the right lower corner containing the letter "E" as in QR codes I noticed that there is always small boxes inside the boxy shape.

I put the letter "E" in a box with a stroke of 0.5 mm.
I typed the words " a designer's" above the letter "C" using 12 pt and black filling color. For the words "of Ethics" I placed them in the bottom of the letter "E", using 15 pt and white stroke.
For the headline I used Futura std bold along with Futura std book.
For the body text I used Fututa std book with 10 pt size.

I used In-design to do the whole spread sheet.
I tried to balance the white and black areas by rising the headline to the top left corner of the first page and beginning the body text in the right lower part of the page.
Below is a preview of my layout in In-design.

Fig 1.5 
adding text and formatting

Fig 1.6

Layout In-design

Fig 1.7
Layout In-design normal view

Fig 1.9

layout project 1 In-design

PDF

Feedback was given for the layout above, refer to the last section of this post.

I will improve the final layout according to the feedback given. 

I started editing my work after Mr.Vinod gave me feedback, here is my progress.

Progress after feedback

Fig1.10

starting to improve my work

Fig 1.11

Reducing the text size by 1 pt 

text size is 9 pt

Fig 1.12

Aligning the body text with the letter "E" from the headline

I aligned the headline of the body text with the middle line of the letter "E", if I aligned it with the top of the letter "E" I will mess up the empty areas in the first page, I wanted it to be balanced.

Here is and explanation of what I've done.

 Fig 1.13

Empty spaces balance

Fig 1.14

Alignment of the letter "C" and the phrase "A designer's" 

I always zoom in more than 1000* so I can make my work as clean as possible. (attention for detail)

Fig 1.15

project 1 final JPEG

Fig 1.16
Project 1 final PDF

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Feedback

Week 6 

Project one: specific feedback 
Interesting layout and design of the headline! 

• Align the first paragraph with the letter "E".
• Bring the word "IT" to the bottom of the text box to get rid of the word "rigt"
• work on kerning for some phrases and ragging 
• make the body text one point smaller 

General feedback : update blog

Reflections

Experience 

the instructions and briefing were pretty clear and well explained, questions were answered. Personally I faced some miner problems using the software and trying to design my Ideas into it.

I always ask the lecturers whenever I have issues understanding anything.

after going through this project I became more obsessed with details because now I understand the importance of details in Typography. 

Also I learned to take notes thanks to Mr. vinod's advice and organize my workspace at home, that helped me save ton of time and effort and cleared my mind, I always feel fresh and willing to do more.

Observation

I always wondered why the lecturers care so much about details! I was thinking "hey! it's just typing". later on I understood the importance of details in this module, the more we focus on details in typography the better our artwork turns out.

Findings

Going through this project I found out that we can do typing artwork using different software, and the more suitable software for typing large amounts of text is In-design. However, we can use Illustrator to do some graphics to add on our text or to edit it and rotate it etc...

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Further reading 

Fig 1.1

Novel

I,m currently reading this novel, It helped me with the headline design, as you can see the difference of the word size and contrast between them. 

also I noticed the alignment in the book cover  

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