Typography In London

Typography in London

by Emily Wilson and Olivia Gibbs

Typography in London

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Abstract

The paragraph should give a three to five sentence abstract about your entire London HUA experience including 1) a summary of the aims of your project, 2) your prior experience with humanities and arts courses and disciplines, and 3) your major takeaways from the experience. This can and should be very similar to the paragraph you use to summarize this milestone on your Profile Page. It should contain your main Objective, so be sure to clearly state a one-sentence statement that summarizes your main objective for this milestone such as "a comparison of the text of Medieval English choral music to that of the Baroque" or it may be a question such as "to what extent did religion influence Christopher Wren's sense of design?"

Introduction

I suggest you save this section for last. Describe the essence of this project. Cover what the project is and who cares in the first two sentences. Then cover what others have done like it, how your project is different. Discuss the extent to which your strategy for completing this project was new to you, or an extension of previous HUA experiences.

As you continue to think about your project milestones, reread the "Goals" narrative on defining project milestones from the HU2900 syllabus. Remember: the idea is to have equip your milestone with a really solid background and then some sort of "thing that you do". You'll need to add in some narrative to describe why you did the "thing that you did", which you'd probably want to do anyway. You can make it easy for your advisors to give you a high grade by ensuring that your project milestone work reflects careful, considerate, and comprehensive thought and effort in terms of your background review, and insightful, cumulative, and methodical approaches toward the creative components of your project milestone deliverables.

PLEASE NOTE: this milestone template has only a few sections as examples, but your actual milestone should have many relevant sections and subsections. Please start to block out and complete those sections asking yourself "who, what, when, where, and why".

Remember, as you move toward your creative deliverable, you're going to want/need a solid background that supports your case, so you want it to paint a clear and thorough picture of what's going on, so that you can easily dissect your creative component and say "This thing I did is rooted in this aspect of my background research".

Section 1: Background

Now you're on your own! Your milestone must include a thorough and detailed background section with detailed subsections; if additional articles are required to be referenced in this background section, create those as well and link to them (the creation of all pages is tracked by the wiki site and attributed to your username). Remember to use rich multimedia whenever possible. Consult the Help page as needed! Remember, if you don't see an article on this site that is an integral part of your project, create it! Your entire page-creating/page-editing history factors into your overall grade.

Defining Typography and Calligraphy

The definition of Typography is the style, arrangement, or appearance of a type set matter. It is a word that encompasses all the types of writing and print that we see around us everyday. Calligraphy is artistic, stylized, or elegant handwriting or lettering. Each brushstroke of written text, weighs and conveys a different message. Master calligraphers not only write but they draw what they observe. Calligraphy is the reproduction of rhythms and movements of the world.

A Brief History of Typography

While there is no precise starting date when is comes to typography what we do know is that what was being taught in the 1900s was the result of publications that were seen half a century earlier. Handwriting is influenced by parent sand teachers, so in typography you will see the past continually repeat itself. In a survey by Reginald Piggot, he found that 43% of people today still write in a civil service hand which is a simplified model of the Copperplate handwriting, which is a type of cursive handwriting. This type of handwriting was introduced to Great Britain in the 1860's and was taught in schools beginning in the 1920's. The handwriting we use today can be traced bace to the letters and writing of Roman times and beyond. While typography has not changed drastically over time, it has changed to suite our current needs. Professor Julian Brown stated, “ The successive cursive scripts of western Europe have all been generated out of set scripts by the need to write quickly: pen-lifts have been eliminated, and new letter-forms have evolved more or less automatically. Once in being the cursives have been promoted from the world of day-to-day affairs and correspondence into the formal worlds of books and the solemn diploma; and when this has happened they no less than the set scripts, have been subjected to stylization, systematization and elaboration.”

Learning Typography

There are three colleges for calligraphy in Britain, the East Surrey College, Regiate, Digby Stuart College, and the City of Guilds of London Art School. In order to effectively teach lettering you have to look at the person using it, and what the purpose is. Some lettering might be great for an adult, but very difficult for a child to use. A student can sit down with a copy book in front of them and learn a model type if a teacher helps them. When a student learns in this way though it then becomes difficult for them to break the mold that they learned and create a style that works well for them. In personal writing there are many shortcuts you can take, but they will vary depending on the person. When it comes to teaching typography and handwriting there are not guidelines for good or bad handwriting as that all depends on the eyes of the reader. There are also two professional associations for Calligraphy in Britain. There is the Society of Scribes and Illuminators which was founded in 1921 for “the advancement of the crafts of writing and illuminating by the practice of them for themselves alone” and the Letter Exchange which was formed in 1988 and is a group of designers, artists, and craftspeople who are “devoted to the professional expression of fine and imaginative lettering, to all its forms, to a wider audience”.

The Effects of Changing Pens and there Holds

Typography, in a written form is greatly dependent on the writing utensil you use. As a pen changes, you might need to change the way you hold the pen. Ink flows differently in different types of pen and this is why the grip may need to change. When a quill or nib was used for the Copperplate-based writing the hand was not firmly on the writing surface with the only support coming from your pinky finger. The light pressure allows you hand to glide more freely. The way it is taught to hold pens now is to have the hand resting on the table, this slight change in support created the need to use print script and semi cursive models. Copperplate-based cursives do not work well today for a combination of reasons including the fact that they do not work well with free flowing pens, and the fact that we need to have our hand firmly supported in order to hold modern pens. When switching from pencil to pen, the change in how you hold them becomes evident. You cannot hold a pencil the same way as a pen, because of the amount of pressure needed to use them differs, resulting in two very different holds.

Recognition of Lettering in Britain

When it comes to using letters in a public place there is a lot of thought that has to go into it. The text needs to give information but also be direct, warn, divert, excite, and if badly positioned can confuse people. Letters need to function in a variety of situations, and they need to be easy to read despite everything from weather to lighting conditions. The Spirit of the Letters featured several British Letters and talked about how they try to get across the importance of lettering. Richard Kindersley is an architectural letterer, and his projects focus on lettering in public places which allows him to show people that architectural lettering should not be an afterthought. Sally bower created banners for protesting at the Chunnel routes in London. She created a design that was described as accurate and sympathetic in an intense atmosphere. Bryant Fedden uses the art of lettering as a decorative element in furniture and craft objects. He has become successful by integrating the decoration with the form of the object.

Edward Johnston

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Subsection 6

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Section 2: Deliverable

Additional Image

In this section, provide your contribution, creative element, assessment, or observation with regard to your background research. This could be a new derivative work based on previous research, or some parallel to other events. In this section, describe the relationship between your background review and your deliverable; make the connection between the two clear.

Subsection 1

...use as many subsections or main sections as you need to support the claims for why what you did related to your Background section...

Subsection 2

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Gallery

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Conclusion

In this section, provide a summary or recap of your work, as well as potential areas of further inquiry (for yourself, future students, or other researchers).

References

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Attribution of Work

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External Links

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Image Gallery

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