Geometry of Type

Type Terminology.

• Ascender is the upward vertical stem on lower case letters. Extends above the x height of it, which is characteristic of many typefaces
• Aperture it the opening of a counter to the exterior of a glyph
• Bowl is the curved part of the character that encloses the circular parts
• Baseline is the imaginary line where letters sit on
• Cap Height is height from baseline to top of the uppercase letters
• Counter is enclosed negative space
• Crossbar is the horizontal stroke across the middle of the uppercase, such as A and H
• Descender is the only part of the lowercase letter that extends below the baseline
• Ear is typically on lowercase 'g' on the upper right side of the bowl
• Tail is the height of the lowercase letters disregarding ascenders and discarders, a typeface with a large x height looks much bigger than a typeface with a small x height at same size
• Spine is the middle of the S

Recommended books on type and the anatomy. 

Studio Brief 1, Alphabet Soup, Research

TIMES ROMAN

The foundry it was created in was Monotype, which now use Times New Roman. It does this because Linotype applied for registration of trademark because the newspaper, The Times used most of it's equipment for production.
       It was first designed by Victor Lardent under Stanley Morison's instruction, Lardent was a designer in The Times art department. 

Monotype- Times New Roman
Linotype- Times Roman

Because of the which company owns which font, the font varied into Times Roman and Times New Roman, New Roman is the main type for The Times newspaper.

CAPTURE

Government capture is when the governing body work in favour of themselves rather than the good of the people, which can be very relatable.
Stream capturing is when a river or stream's drainage system is diverted from its own bed and in the end chances directions.
Chess capturing is when you capture your opponents piece.
Motion capture is when you record the movements of a human to give an animation real life characteristics.

With all these different meanings I can generate ideas and concepts that I will work with to create my letterforms.

Studio Brief 1, Alphabet Soup

We all got given a random word and a font to work with for this brief. We have to create 10 letterforms that work as a sequence that are inspired with the given word and used with the given font.




I was given the word 'Capture' and got the font Times Roman. I like the word capture, I can see some ideas with that, but normally I don't like Times Roman, so it will interesting to work with it and hopefully I will begin to like it more. 

I started with writing what i thought about the word capture, and also the other meanings for capture, such as when a river bed changes the water flow. We then did an exercise where we gave each person a different word at the table and passed them on, we had to write what popped into our head on the back, and did the same with the font. 
This helped to generate more ideas for each other as well as myself


Capture.                                                             
motion
action                                                             
schematic
chess
government
stream
video
steal
hold something against its will
net
cage
sad
photography // colour

Times Roman.
Commissioned by The Times
Designed by Victor Lardent
Serif
Designed in 1931
Foundry - monotype
formal
school
news paper
classic
essay writing

How to, Final product

This is the final product that we designed. We took on board what was said at the crit and as a group thought what ways we could change it to move it away from the 'clinical' connotations.

At first I wasn't too keen on the pink because it was quite bright, but after playing around with the opacity I think it works quite well. 

I think the new colours really help the product relate to all audiences.

How to Brief, Crit

Before Crit

• White lines
• Very light blue back ground
• Light greys

It was seen a bit clinical and reminded one person of the NHS so we thought we should change the colours around a bit to try and move away from that connotation. 

After Crit

• We played around with a few different colours, ones from the Waitrose designs too.
• We settled that making it a darker blue and putting it with pink makes the white type more legible
• The pink and blue work nicely together because it makes it attractive to both girls and boys, rather than having an all blue quite masculine design.

This is the others group we looked at, I think was a very good piece of work, it looks professional and suits the audience. The critiques we gave were to play around with the shapes a bit more, so there isn't as much negative space and also to brighten it up a bit, the grey colour dulls the whole piece a bit and didn't flow that well with the other colours.

Introduction Brief, creating design

These are the first designs me and Elliot created, we have a similar style and ideas so it was quite easy designing with him. We designed together then came back to the group for critique and further ideas, we made sure that everyone was happy with the way we were going.

• I really like the blue and the grid because that reminds me of the map style, which will be on the inside of the foldable product.
• The black text doesn't work that well because its quite heavy, whereas white works better because it's brighter and more appealing.
• The text and placement needs playing around with.

These designs were created when we regrouped and carried the style and colour palette through, I think it looks quite professional and simple for a fresher to understand. There's not a lot of text on it so there is more chance a fresher will use it. The step by step guide works well with the photos which I personally think is really useful to see where exactly you're meant to be going.

Introduction Brief. How to find your way around Leeds

Our group problem to solve was 'How do you find your way around Leeds as a fresher', so with dicsussion we thought of answers to 'Where?', where abouts in Leeds should we concentrate on, 'Why?', why do we need to solve this problem, 'How?' will we solve this and show this and finally what 'Reasearch' should we do.

We decided a small map showing the quickest route to just the College and some near by shops would be the best format to answer this question. This is a five day brief so we thought making the map very specifc to just the route from Liberty Park to the College would allow us to create a good piece of work rather than many average pieces.

Roles in group

We split into 3 pairs and delegated the roles. 

• Elliot and I chose to design the initial style and look of the map
• Ryan and Taylor walked to route and took photos for the step by step guide
• Ashley and Joe designed the initial design of the map 

After putting our first ideas together we regrouped and voted on the things we liked and disliked and worked on them together.