Sunday, October 27, 2013

Typography videos & designers

For type class we watched this video of Neville Brody. He talked about many designers that were involved with Fuse, and here are some biographies of six of them.

BARRY DECK:
Barry is a seasoned brand experience professional who has straddled the imaginary divide between creative and account leadership. Keenly aware of recent changes in how consumers make decisions and their effect on business. Collaborates with others to understand business problems and deliver value by finding new ways to drive results from a company’s core outward, in product development, innovation, customer experience, and marketing — throughout the funnel from awareness to evangelism. He has an MFA in visual communication from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in visual communication from Northern Illinois University.
HIS WORK:


He has an MFA in visual communication from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in visual communication from Northern Illinois University. - See more at: http://banklesstimes.com/ourpeople/biography-barry-deck/#sthash.JiHWFjDM.dpuf
Barry is a seasoned brand experience professional who has straddled the imaginary divide between creative and account leadership.
Keenly aware of recent changes in how consumers make decisions, Barry is an expert is finding new ways to drive results from awareness to evangelism.
Barry is responsible for developing the BanklessTimes image, identity and branding as well as the prototype site design.
He is a principal in the Barry Deck Group in Los Angeles, a brand design and strategy group dedicated to helping brands build great customer and business relationships.
Barry led brand launches and relaunches with Coca-Cola and other major national brands.
Prior to starting his own firm, Barry was a creative director at Ogilvy & Mather in New York.
He has an MFA in visual communication from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in visual communication from Northern Illinois University.
- See more at: http://banklesstimes.com/ourpeople/biography-barry-deck/#sthash.pFlaZAeF.dpuf

PAUL ELLIMAN:
Paul is an artist and designer based in London. His work combines an interest in typography and the human voice, often referring to forms of audio signage that mediate a relationship between both. His typeface Found Fount (aka Bits) is an ongoing collection of found ‘typography’ drawn from objects and industrial debris in which no letter-form is repeated. Elliman's work has addressed the instrumentalist of the human voice as a kind of typography, engaging the voice in many of its social and technological guises, as well as imitating other languages and sounds of the city included the non-verbal messages of emergency vehicle sirens, radio transmissions and the muted acoustics of architectural space.
HIS WORK:

RICK VERMEULEN:
Rick Vermeulen was born in Schiedam, the Netherlands in 1950. He studied graphic design at the Rotterdam Academy, graduating in 1972. From 1975, he worked regularly for the publisher Bert Bakker and was a participant in Rotterdam’s Graphic Workshop, where designers and artists produced material for cultural organisations in the city and events such as the Rotterdam Film Festival. From 1978-82, Vermeulen was an editor of Hard Werken magazine, along with Willem Kars, Henk Elenga, Gerard Hadders and Tom van den Haspel. In recent years, Vermeulen has designed two typefaces for Fuse. He collaborates with Inizio and works on freelance projects for publishing and other clients.
HIS WORK:
CORNEL WINDLIN:
After graduating from Schule für Gestaltung Luzern, Cornel Windlin moved to London in 1988 to work for Neville Brody and later became art editor for THE FACE magazine. In 1993 he returned to his native Switzerland and started his own design practice in Zurich. He has lectured in the US, England, Germany, Austria, Israel and Switzerland. He currently works as a designer/art director in both Zurich and London for a number of clients in both cultural and commercial fields. Cornel Windlin started creating typefaces primarily for use in his own work while still at art school. Together with Stephan Müller, he formed the digital font foundry LINETO to distribute his fonts and those of an illustruous circle of friends. Windlin has created corporate typefaces for clients as diverse as Mitsubishi cars or the Herzefeld Memorial Trust, or custom fonts for projects at Kunsthaus Zurich, Tate museums as well as various editorial projects.
HIS WORK:




 TIBOR KALMAN:
was an American graphic designer of Hungarian origin, well known for his work as editor-in-chief of Colors magazine.
Kalman was born in Budapestand became a U.S. resident in 1956. He later attended NYU, dropping out after one year of Journalism classes. In the 1970s Kalman worked at a small New York City bookstore that eventually became Barnes & Noble. He later became the supervisor of their in-house design department. In 1979 Kalman, Carol Bokuniewicz, and Liz Trovato started the design firm M & Co., which did corporate work for such diverse clients as the Limited Corporation, the music group Talking Heads, and Restaurant Florent in New York City's Meatpacking District. Kalman also worked as creative director of Interview magazine in the early 1990s.
HIS WORK:



TOBIAS FRERE-JONES:
Tobias is an American designer who works in New York City with fellow type designer Jonathan Hoefler. Since 1989, Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones have helped some of the world's foremost publications, corporations, and institutions develop their unique voice through typography. Their body of work includes some of the world's most famous designs, typefaces marked by both high performance and high style.
HIS WORK:

 We also watched this video at the beginning of our type project. This video explores the whole history of typefaces. When watching it the first time it was interesting but hard to grasp all of the information. Watching it now, I picked up more details about this history of type. Like how most of the beginning typefaces were developed and edited to benefit the legibility of it. And how during the second industrial revolution advertising created a need for new type faces to be used in large sizes for posters and billboards. This is where Egyptian, or slab serif, came from which are usually used for titles. It's also important to realize how the creation of the computer completely changed the typography world. Now anyone has the freedom to create their own unique typeface. This video is a quick and easy way to view the history of typography in an interesting way.

While my designer, Otl Aicher, isn't included in the movie "Helvetica" it was still interesting to see just how powerful this type face has been and to hear other type designers talk about this revolutionary font. I had not seen the film before, and it gave me a new perspective on the typeface.

Barry is a seasoned brand experience professional who has straddled the imaginary divide between creative and account leadership.
Keenly aware of recent changes in how consumers make decisions, Barry is an expert is finding new ways to drive results from awareness to evangelism.
Barry is responsible for developing the BanklessTimes image, identity and branding as well as the prototype site design.
He is a principal in the Barry Deck Group in Los Angeles, a brand design and strategy group dedicated to helping brands build great customer and business relationships.
Barry led brand launches and relaunches with Coca-Cola and other major national brands.
Prior to starting his own firm, Barry was a creative director at Ogilvy & Mather in New York.
He has an MFA in visual communication from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in visual communication from Northern Illinois University.
- See more at: http://banklesstimes.com/ourpeople/biography-barry-deck/#sthash.pFlaZAeF.dpuf
Barry is a seasoned brand experience professional who has straddled the imaginary divide between creative and account leadership.
Keenly aware of recent changes in how consumers make decisions, Barry is an expert is finding new ways to drive results from awareness to evangelism.
Barry is responsible for developing the BanklessTimes image, identity and branding as well as the prototype site design.
He is a principal in the Barry Deck Group in Los Angeles, a brand design and strategy group dedicated to helping brands build great customer and business relationships.
Barry led brand launches and relaunches with Coca-Cola and other major national brands.
Prior to starting his own firm, Barry was a creative director at Ogilvy & Mather in New York.
He has an MFA in visual communication from California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in visual communication from Northern Illinois University.
- See more at: http://banklesstimes.com/ourpeople/biography-barry-deck/#sthash.pFlaZAeF.dpuf

Monday, October 21, 2013

infographics

I'm in the process of designing info graphics, and I've been exploring successful info graphics online. I wanted to share some of the ones I've found that have been inspiring to me.


This poster was well designed and well executed. My topic involves style and fashion, and I had thought about doing some sort of layout of an outfit so this was an interested info graphic to look at.

infographic from: http://www.domo.com/learn/anatomy-of-the-worlds-top-performing-ceos

I loved the typography of this info graphic, and the feel overall of the design.


I thought all of these were successful in multiple ways. For my project I will be creating a type based, image based, and one created without the computer.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

the vocab of type

TYPEFACES & EXAMPLES
- Old Style: Typeface styles derived from fifteenth to eighteenth century designs, and characterized by moderate thick-and-thin contrasts, bracketed serifs, and a handwriting influence. Examples: Garamond, Minion, Caslon, Goudy, and Centaur
- Transitional: Classification of type styles combining aspects of both Old Style and Modern typefaces; for example, Baskerville. Examples: Baskerville, Georgia, Bookman, and Mrs Eaves.
- Modern: Term used to describe typefaces designed at the end of the eighteenth century. Characteristics include vertical stress, hairlines serfs, and pronounced contrasts between thick and thin strokes. Examples: Bodoni, Century Schoolbook, Didot, and Onyx.
- Slab Serif: square or rectangular serifs that align horizontally and vertically to the baseline and are usually the same (or heavier) weight as the main strokes of the letterform. Examples: Serifa, Archer Book, Memphis, and Clarendon.
- Sans Serif: Typefaces without serifs. They first appeared in the early nineteenth century, but their use accelerated during the 1920s. Example: Rotis, Univers, Meta, and Futura.

PROPORTION: four major variables control letter form proportion-- the ratio of letter form height to stroke widgth, the variation between the thickest and thinnest strokes of the letter form, the width of the letters, and the relationship of the x-height to the height of capitals, ascenders, and descenders.
 

STROKE WEIGHT: the lightness or heaviness of a typeface, which is determined by ratio of the stroke thickness to character height
AXIS/STRESS: the gradual variation in the thickness of a curved character part or stroke; often used for any variation in the thickness of a character part or stroke.

SMALL CAPS: a set of capital letters having the same height as the lowercase x-height, frequently used for cross-reference and abbreviations.
LINING FIGURES: numerals identical in size to the capitals and aligned on the baseline.
NON-ALIGNING FIGURES: numerals that jut above and below the baseline.
LIGATURES: two or more characters linked together as one unit, such as ff. The ampersand is a ligature originating as a letter combination for the French for et ("and") in medieval manuscripts.
DASHES: Em dash: a dash one em long. Also called a long dash / en dash: a dash one en long. Also called a short dash.
APOSTROPHES:
a punctuation mark ( ’ ) used to indicate either possession
(smart quotes: quotation marks that, although all keyed the same, are automatically interpreted and set as opening or closing marks rather than vertical lines.) 
OPTICAL RELATIONSHIPS: mathematics of letter form construction can result in spacial problems, because diverse forms appear optically incorrect. For example, pointed and curved letters have little weight at the top and/or bottom guidelines and the apexes of pointed letters extend beyond the baseline to make them appear the same height.
TYPE MEASUREMENT: the contemporary American measurment system has two basic units: points and picas. There are 72 points in an inch and 12 points in a pica.
-baseline: an imaginary line upon which the base of each capital rests


PARTS OF A LETTER:
x-height: the distance from the baseline to the mean line. Typically, this is the height of lowercase letters and is most easily measured on the lowercase x.
cap height- an imaginary line that runs along the tops of capital letters
ascender- a stroke on a lowercase letter that rises above the meanline
descender- a stroke on a lowercase letterform that falls below the baseline
arm- a projecting horizontal stroke that is unattached on one or both ends, as in the letters T and E.
leg- the lower diagonal stroke on the letter k.
tail- a diagonal stroke or loop at the end of a letter, as in R or j.
eye- the enclosed part of the lowercase e
apex- the peak of the triangle of an uppercase A.
crossbar- the horizontal stroke connecting two sides of the letterform (as in e, A, and H) or bisecting the main stroke (as in f and t).
counter- the negative space that is fully or partially enclosed by a letter form
bowl- a curved stroke enclosing the counter form of a letter. An exception is the bottom form of the lowercase roman g, which is called a loop
link- the stroke that connects the bowl and the loop of a lowercase roman g. 
ear- a small stroke that projects from the upper right side of the bowl of the lowercase roman g.
loop- the bottom form of the lowercase roman g
TYPE HOUSE/ FONT HOUSE: businesses that design and sell fonts. Examples: House Industries, Emigre Fonts, The Font Bureau, Inc., Abode Fonts, ITC, and Type Foundry.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

// Sneak Peak

Today I turned in the first part of my branding project. I haven't finished taking high quality photos of all of my designs, but here's a sneak peak Insta video into my world of elephants, donuts, and design. I branded a donut food truck called "Junk in the Trunk". Can't wait to share more later. But for now, enjoy.


Sunday, October 6, 2013

#ASOSoncampus

Starting this fall semester I have been a KU campus rep for ASOS, an online fashion brand that sells mens and womens clothing, accessories, shoes, etc. of their own brand as well as many of my favorite brands like Free People, Wildfox, Mink Pink, and many others. I'm so excited to have this opportunity as it's been so much fun so far as well as a great experience working with ASOS as well as the people at Youth Marketing Connection.

This last Saturday I had my first big event on campus, "Game Day/Big Event Fashion Spotter" where I went around tailgates before the KU vs. Texas Tech homecoming game and handed out free ASOS goodies to college students. I handed out an assortment of free things such as cups, bottle opener key chains, sunglasses, and even some $50 gift cards to the most fashionably dressed students! I wanted to share a few photos from the event, but you can see the whole album here.

The students loved getting the freebies as much as I loved handing them out!


Loved this gift card winner's sunflower leggings. Perfect for a Kansas game day!





Another gift card winner - looking cute in her red game day maxi!


My ASOS denim shirt was perfect for game day!


The best part was handing out the $50 gift cards, cause some of the recipients were SO excited!
Check out ASOS on facebook (linked above), as well as Twitter, and Instagram: @ASOS.