Lectures and Events!

For my outside event, I had gone to PCAD to see Aaron Draplin. Aaron is the owner of Draplin Design Co. When we got there, we waited for about an hour for it to start so it started late which was a little irritating because I didn't think that was going to happen but oh well. Draplin talked a lot about his family and where he grew up which was in Detriot. He had also mentioned that his died had passed as well... I don't remember exactly when he did though. Later on, he used to travel around the country much more. He was pretty funny too. He said a lot of jokes. Draplin also mentioned a lot about his work ethic. He had mentioned that he does a LOT of sketches and planning out his next project. Most of all, he said that it is more important to have and make lasting connections and friendships rather than money. Money is important but it is not more important than those connections. There was also I lot of merch you could buy as well. I got one of the graph notebooks! I kinda liked this get-together with Aaron but it wasn't the most exciting but is a little upsetting but besides that, it was nice! It's pretty cool that we were able to see one great artist in the area that owns his own company so we got the experience and words from a professional.

I Am Legend Monologue Book Critique.

For our individual critiques of our typography books, I took a look at Erica's I Am Legend monologue. Overall, I believe that Erica had a great sense of space in her pages and every page worked well with each other. However, I do wish that I had the final copy because it is in grayscale since it is the in-progress copy. I had asked her what color/colors she had chosen and Erica told me that it had black and a rich, darker red. I think this works well because of the monologue from I Am Legend. Black and red are very intense colors and I feel like that fit the overall theme of it. I think that the strongest page in this is "literally cure it by injecting music and love into people's lives", the third spread. It looks like she did a great job of hierarchy on this spread, enlarging the "cure it" as its' main point and emphasizing "music" and "love" to make it slightly bigger than the normal text. It does, however, have a little bit of awkward spacing between "into people's lives" but it works in a sense. Another spread that works well is her fourth one. By making "peace rally", "gunman", and "down" bigger and bolder, it gives it an amazing movement through the spread. It makes your eyes move from right, left and to the bottom right. Erica's eighth spread really good but the only problem I can see with it is having the "he said" slanted and in the middle. I'm not exactly sure why it would need to be slanted and I feel like it may work better up in the top left corner. I found her ninth spread to be a little awkward because of the left side of the page. The way I read it was "are a not day taking off". I talked to her about it and she said that Professor Mata mentioned that most people read the bolder words first and the smaller ones second. I can understand the reasoning behind this because this is true but I saw it a little differently. I read straight down. It makes sense on why she did this and it works that way but I saw it straight down and it didn't make sense. Overall, I think Erica's book is aesthetically pleasing to the eye though I do wish I saw the final product in time for the final critique.

Monologue Book Sketches and Research.

These are the first initial sketches that I had created for the monologue book. The last one is when I was having trouble with two of the pages after I had made the better design that the book is. As for my research, I had watched some episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic that were based around the character I had picked for it, Fluttershy. I probably watched about 4 episodes just to get a better feel for her character. 

For trying to figure out what kind of typeface I wanted to use, I, honestly, went through FontBook on our Mac computers in the lab and looked through all of them. I picked out the ones I liked and started to narrow them down. Though, when I was looking for one, I wanted something that wasn't heavy and, obviously, something that was clear to read. I felt like Avenir Next Condensed was a perfect fit for Fluttershy's character in the show.

Kinetic Typography Videos

The first video like I liked is Television Is A Drug. Even though the motion and type are always in the middle, it grabs your attention. Grabbing the viewers attention is the main point of that video. We are looking through the eyes of the viewer while the TV is franticly attempting to get our attention. That's all the video and text asks for. The images in the background makes me think that I am searching through channels trying to find what to watch but the TV doesn't care, he just wants me to look at him, telling me that he has everything I would ever need and want besides my bodily functions and physical needs.

The second video I chose was The Beast File: Google. This does an amazing job telling us what Google wants from us as an individual. They want to be the ONLY thing we need in life. They want to know what we're doing, how we do it, what we need and when we need it. The type and visuals have a spot on job of that. They move around the information that is already laid out in front of us for a reason. Keeping every piece of information on the video is a great way of making sure that we do not forget about what they are telling us. They don't want us to forget that Googles' moto is "Don't Be Evil" but, in the long run, Google is making themselves into what some people think is evil due to a lot of privacy issues. They make the text into an image of Darth Vader to show that Google is turning itself into the iconic "Sith Lord" because he is evil and has no good intentions for anyone.

Monologue!

Monologue starts at 0:20.

Fluttershy: Oh, goodness! Are you okay? [to the Mane-iac] Are you kidding me? I mean, I know you're evil and everything, but [getting frustrated] you hurt a teensy, little, harmless firefly?!Really?! Well you're just a great, big, meanie! [voice getting deeper] There! I said it! What makes you think you're so special?! Like the rules of common courtesy don't apply to you?! [voice getting even deeper] Why don't you pick on somepony your own size?! [roars]

Type Presentations and New Projects! (This week and last week)

This is a combination of last weeks' and this weeks' blog post.

Last week, we had worked on a project based on hierarchy and turned the original and the improved version in on Thursday. Also, on Thursday, I had presented my Tshirt design and my presentation on Claude Garamond.

I based my Tshirt design on silly little facts that I found about Claude's font. I found out that the Garamond font can save you about 25% of ink and that his font was also used in the Dr. Seuss books. So I changed the quote of "I speak for the trees" to "I speak for the ink". For my presentation, I just went off the information I used for my initial research and made my presentation out of pictures I had found on the internet for visual references.

This week, we finished up the rest of the Typographer/Tshirt presentations. After we had finished them, we took a class photo together with all of our tshirts on. Then we did individual photos of them. When we came back into the classroom, Professor Mata had introduced us to our new project, a type monologue. We are making a book out of them with six spreads and then making a video with it as well. My monologue is from the show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. It is from the episode "Power Ponies" and I am using the character Fluttershy who is turned into the super hero, Saddle Rager, a ponified version of The Hulk.

The scene I am using is when she freaks out on the villain, Mane-iac, for hurting a harmless, little firefly. It's filled with a lot of anger and I feel like it will be a great monologue to work on.

For homework, we are to make 3x3 thumbnails of our 6 spread type book. This is just to show composition and size of the text, nothing more than that.

Claude Garamond!

Claude Garamond was a Parisian publisher and punch cutter from the 16th century. Born in Paris, France circa 1490 from 1561, Garamond was a true wonder to his century. He was quite an innovative man for the type world. Garamond was truly a loyal man to his mentors and to his king.

Claude started his days off as an apprentice under Simon de Colines, a French printer, and then later under Geoffrey Tory who was a typographer who put his interests into the humanistic genre of typography. After gaining such promise from being under his mentors and blooming into a true artisan into the craft, King Francis I asked a special request of Garamond. The king wanted him to reproduce a Greek font originally made by Angelos Vergetios. So, of course, Garamond remade the font and it was known as “Grecs du Roi”. “Grecs du Roi” later became the kings’ own personal font.

After this great feat, Garamond then went on to use his font in another way. He finally was able to publish a book known as "Pio et Religiosa Meditatio" by David Chambellan in 1545. But, before he was able to do this, Garamond had developed his own roman and italic font, based off the older typefaces of Aldus Manutius, known as “Garamond”.

Sadly, sixteen years later Claude past away in France. This is where things start to get confusing. Garamonds’ type punches were sold to Christophe Plantin, another book publisher. Christophe had used Garamonds’ type for his publishing company for many years to come. Now, jump to 1621. A typographer named Jean Jannon had produced a type that was very similar to Garamond. However, the font was more asymmetrical and had uneven slopes and axises. Jannons’ type had disappeared for a good bit until French National Printing Office had found it again. Jannons’ type was mistaken for Garamond though because it was almost like it but a true typographer would know the difference. Beatrice Warde was the one to determine who the winner of the war of the original font was in 1927. Through all of the years of confusion, this brought on the revivals of Garamond such as: Adobe Garamond, ITC Garamond, Stempel Garamond, Linotype Grajon, Sabon, and many more.

Source Links

http://www.pointlessart.com/education/loyalist/typeTalk/garamond/biography.html

http://typophile.com/node/12481

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KubB0PQAK5g

http://www.identifont.com/show?2VJ

http://www.linotype.com/en/3474/garamondfontfeature.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Garamond

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Garamond.html