Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

1. Livingston, Alan & Livingston, Isabella, The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003.

This book gave provided me with a lot of useful information about The Industrial Revolution, however I would have liked to read more on Type and its significance during the time period in this book. This book made me think about what it would feel like to be working under such hard conditions for long hours in hot, sweaty factories. It however, did provide essential background information that we needed for our research.

2. Horn,Jeff, Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2010.

This book is a collection of essays that offers many different perspectives on the Industrial Revolution and how is happened on a global scale. The information in this book is particularly useful for Tatianna and I for Project 1 on the history of type because this book compared significant industrial developments in countries ranging from China to Brazil. Although we did not really use information from many countries, it was useful to know and helped me to better understand the time period of our project. Understanding the innovations of the time period helped me to further understand why advertisements and fonts were the way they were.

3. Tholenaar, Jan, Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, Vol.I. London : Taschen, 2009.

This book was great, it has an array of fonts and graphic styles that have evolved over time. It offers an overview of typeface design, while also exploring some of the most beautiful fonts that have been used throughout the history of publishing. This book was useful for the wonderful images and their great quality as well as information about the evolution of type and when font categories were at their peaks.

4. Lupton, Ellen, Thinking with Type: A critical guide for designers,writers,editors, and students. New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.

Although this book was used periodically throughout the semester, I really utilized it for Project 1. The typeface images were of great quality and description. I also really liked this book, because it is easy to read and comprehend due to its simplistic vocabulary and structure. It also served as a study guide for studying the anatomy of a letter for the Typography final.

5. Garfield, Simon, Just my type: a book about fonts. New York, Gotham Books, 2011.

I used this book for project 2 . It is about how font is shaped by the world we live in, and how we are surrounded by fonts everyday, whether that be on street signs, building, movie posters, books, and just about every product we buy. This book changed the way I now look at a printed word. When creating the four layouts needed for this project, I thought in dept about the placement and font of each word, since they are all so unique. Prior to taking Typography and reading this book, I would have not thought much about where and why I place my type, however now that I have read it, it makes me think more critically about type in my projects, work, and things that I see in everyday life, and their significance.

6. "Early Typographers : Design Is History." Early Typographers : Design Is History. N.p., n.d. Web.

 This online design journal discusses the years between the mid-15^th century and the early 18^th century, and how within that time came to be many changes and developments in the world of typography. For Project 1, Tati and I chose to discuss the time period of the Industrial Revolution, so this journal was perfect for that. It discussed the development of the printing press and how it influenced the development of full typefaces and their production rather the job-specific approach that most typography was created for. This journal discusses many type founders and significant developments that attributed to the Industrial Revolution.

7. "Typefoundry." Typefoundry. Typefounder, n.d. Web. 2012.

This blog called Typefoundry served as a great reference to me for Project 1 and 3! It is very detailed in regards to the historic time period as well as the type founder. I used this blog to read about type founders such as Baskerville, Garamond, and Didot. It was written in blog stlye, so it was less formal that books and research based websites.

8. Poynor, Rick. No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2003. Print.

I looked into this book for Project two. It inspired me to work with text on a path and to not let my words and sentences be so structured. A spread of an artist books that was found in this book, titled, The Terminator line provided me with some creative ideas for beginning my layouts for Project 2.

9. Triggs, Teal. Type Design: Radical Innovations and Experimentation. New York: Harper Design International, 2003. Print.

This book helped me in learning how to work with negative space and appreciate it. I usually feel the need to fill every space with something, but this book had many simple, yet interesting examples of typographic posters that were not cluttered. This book helped me with project 2, because it served as inspiration to not create a cluttered layout.

10. White, Alex. Type in Use: Effective Typography for Electronic Publishing. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. Print.

Type in Use explains the principles of designing pages with type and gives many examples from a plethora of current publications. This book served as more inspiration and helped me to brainstorm ideas for my projects in Typography.

Fonts & Feelings

After seeing all the final project from Project 3, I felt inspired to further my experimentation with type. I noticed how each type poster made me feel a certain way...not the content, but the font itself. There are so many small details that go into type. These posters could be aesthetically pleasing or not at all based on kearning,leading, font size, the strokes, brackets, the list goes on. Some posters that would normally seem cluttered to my eyes, were today seen from a new lense. I think over the course of this semester, I have truly come to appreciate small details and the look at the overall picture, rather than judging a "book by its cover". I now appreciate things that may be outside my normal clean cut look. Although I chose Didot as my typeface for my poster, I would have also liked to experiment with fonts that may not be so modern and clean cut. I really enjoyed this semester and am so grateful to have such a patient, kind, down to earth,and intelligent professor like Professor Asher. You go girl!!! If you arent inspirational..I dont know who is. But thank you for being you and serving as a positive light for many of us.

Water Color

I really, really want to learn on photoshop how to make watercolor splatters and letters. These words to come to spell Typography. I love that photoshop and Indesign have so many capabilities, the possibilities are endless. These letters really look like they were just watercolored with an old school paintbrush, watercolor, and water. The possibilities are endless on computer design programs, its great but also time consuming.

Serif & San- Serif

Since we just had the Typography Final, and we needed to know the anatomy of letters, I figured knowing the origin and significance of sans serif would be useful. Although the exact origin of serif is still debated, most theories seem to point back to the days of stone carvings.Some people suggest that serifs are a result of carvers chiseling over painted outlines of letters on stone, where the brush strokes would create the flares at the edge of letters. Serifs fonts are helpful in body paragraph text, and the individual serifs serve as a guide to help guide the eyes of readers to each character.

Sans-Serif is just the opposite, based on the french word sans, which means without.

Why learn Typography?

Typography knowledge can be applied to many things in life. If someone is working in a field of anything pertaining to Art it will come in handy. However, even if your furutre endvors do not include anything artsy, typography is useful in appreciating everyday things like billboard fonts. Learning to create your own typeface can truly change the message that you are trying to convey. Some letters flow with fluidity because the font is smooth, some fonts may be jagged and provide an edgy look and feel. In other words, Typography is simple enough to gibe us information, or even to stir our emotion. Typography simply has the power to change people's mindset, belief, and perception.

Didot is probably one of my favorite typefaces. Unfortunately, it isn't even offered on blogger :(. For project 3, I have chose Didot as my font to be the topic of my poster! I am extremely excited. So far, I have constructed the Eiffel Tower comprised of many different sizes and letters using the Didot font. I chose to make the Eiffel Tower, mainly because the creator, Firmin Didot originally cut the letters of Didot and cast them as type in Paris in 1784. The Eiffel Tower represents the origination of this beautiful font. Didot font takes inspiration from John Baskerville's experimentation with increasing stroke contrast and more condensed curvature. This font is also similar to faces developed by Giambattista Bodoni--- the various Bodoni variations. Didot is classified as serif due to its serifs at the end of its strokes. The strokes are almost my favorite detail of this font(these end serifs allow me to combine letters very nicely). I am excited to see where many, many hours in XARTS gets me in terms of the final project. I love that we finally  get to experiment with colors! YAY!

I really like this quote and the typeface used. The letters are very block and because there is hardly any leading in between the words..it makes the sentence seemed a little crammed. However, I think that because the font it so clean cut, it is visually appealing to the eye, even if the words are close together. The sentence definitely has fluidity, as a result of the clean cut typeface.