Typography In London

Typography in London

by Emily Wilson and Olivia Gibbs

Typography in London

Your Project Page Picture Caption

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.

Anatomy of Typography

As mentioned earlier there are a lot of different factors that go into making a good font, or a good form of typology. This section will explain this further.
Legibility is extremely important when designing a font. Mentioned earlier was readability, but legibility is different, its the ability of the letters to be distinguished from one another. One example of this is Edward Johnston's Underground font. It is important that all the letters are clearly legible in the fast paced environment, and that people are able to read the stations signs with names that they might not be familiar with. When you are looking for a legible typeface the characteristics include larger open or closed spaces, which means a larger x-hieght. You have to be careful with a lager x-height however because that means you will have shorter ascenders and descenders, and this can cause confusion between certain letters such as i and l. Large counters are also very important when it comes to being able to tell the difference between letters such as e, a, s, c, and o. The size of the font also plays into legibility. Many people cannot read small text, so if your font is 6pt or less most of your audience will not be able to read it. One last aspect that plays into legibility is the contrast between the background and the color of your font. If the tone of the two is close, then the text will be less legible. Something to keep note of is that when printing black ink on a glossy white, it will actually become less legible than printing it on matte paper, because of the reflection of light. Something which is very similar to legibility but slightly different is readbility.

When we learn how to read, we learn different skills which is necessary to read all the different categories of information. As talked about earlier the ability to read, and read quickly depends on the arrangement of letters. When there is a "surprise" in what font is used, it actually slows us down as it takes longer to process because we are not used to reading it. This is why there is a small range of fonts that is commonly used from school to the office today. As talked about earlier, every font is legible, and you can make it readable with practice, but it some fonts will always be less efficient to read than others. The best type of font you can have is a predictable font, as it always the reader to easily skim through the text. Not only how is something written important, but also the letters that make up the reading.

The alphabet we use is the latin alphabet, made up of 26 characters. Unfortunately it is not a great match for modern spoken English, we need more characters. Because of this fact only 75% of English spelling is predictable. The other 25% of words is made up of some of the most commonly used words in both written and spoken English. Spelling can with the emotion that needs to come with it. There are also many dictionaries for the same language, and they do not all agree on the spelling of words. For example in the English alphabet the u is still used in, colour and honour, which in the North American dictionary would be color and honor. When a typographer is working for an author they have to pay very careful attention to the spelling as they are responsible for the presentation of the text. Proofreading is a skill that while separate from typography is very important. Besides proofreading, there is another component to typography that can change the entire meaning of a sentence.

Most type fonts will include about 24 different signs of punctuation. The punctuation that we use today comes from what was used in classical rhetoric. At first punctuation was used when where there would be breaks or pauses in the spoken language. Now however it is used when there are spaces needed, or when it is the end of the statement. This change is what makes writing and speech different. Not only is what ends the sentence important, but so is the spacing between the characters.

Spaces in between letters, words, paragraphs, and statements can change the inflection of what is being written. The careful introduction of a space will cause a pause, and can be used to add effect. In academic writing you will see more space, as the spacing allows the writing to be thoroughly examined, which is necessary when people are using text for search. In novels you will notice there is less spacing, as the goal of the typographer is to continue the flow of the story. The spacing also influences the effect of punctuation, such as using exclamation points and question marks. When an exclamation point is used immediately after the last word ( last word!) it does not apply the same emphasis as if you were to use a space ( last word !). The same thing goes for a question mark, by adding in the space the punctuation now applies to the whole statement, rather than just the last word.

There is a lot more that goes into the anatomy of typography but these are some of the most important factors, that look at the different aspects of typography. As a typographer there is a lot that needs to be taken into account, even in just one sentence.

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

For milestones completed collaboratively, add a section here detailing the division of labor and work completed as part of this milestone. All collaborators may link to this single milestone article instead of creating duplicate pages. This section is not necessary for milestones completed by a single individual.

External Links

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Image Gallery

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