Typography II, Journal: Jan 20, Part 2
Series: A number of books that are published as a group because of a common author or theme (or for no reason at all). Books in a series are usually designed to look similar in some way as well.
Sequence: ?
Sign: The broad heading under which icon, symbol and index fall. Basically, a sign is something that indicates or leads one's thoughts to another or many other things.
Icon: An image that represents something in a very literal, straight forward way. The bell in the Taco Bell logo represents a bell.
Index: Uses a sensory pattern or signal to, by frequent correlation, indicate something else--often a cause or effect of the signal. For example, dark clouds mean rain, the sound of a bird means there is a bird. Because of the prerequisite that one must be directly experiencing the sensual signals, by the definition of "Icon Index and Symbol: Types of Signs," linked via the class blog, use of index in a book cover is impossible. One could of course use an icon to represent an index, however.
Symbol: An image or word that links to something else arbitrarily. This is the only difference between a symbol and an icon.
Showing posts with label terminology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terminology. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
VISC 314 Reading 01
Key terms:
- Message - The point or information the designer is trying to convey
- Transmission - The method of conveying the info. The medium.
- Noise - Interference due to cultural differences that might cause
the receiver to interpret the Message differently than
intended
- Addressee - The target audience.
- Receiver - Anyone who sees the product.
- Signifier/Signified - It is important to remember that there are (almost)always
many different relationships between signifiers and
signified meanings. That is to say that an object or word
may signify a number of things depending on context,
culture, personal experience, etc.
Signifiers might be abstracted and they can draw
connections along lines that can be derived from cause
and effect relationships, anthropormorphic associations,
idioms and quotations, shared abstract concepts,
synecdoche (taking a part to mean to whole or vice versa),
or it may be arbitrary.
The text then moves on to the history and evolving purpose of logos. The desire to indicate origin and ownership is at the roots of their development and remains the primary goal, but in the mid 1900s they also became a way to present to the public a guarantee. It became something that would indicate to consumers that this product was of a certain quality, represented a set of commitments, or adhered to a certain mindset. They made the companies more personable, even if it really boiled down to a form of anthropormorphication. Today, with corporations becoming larger and having a larger staff in creative positions, the logo, mark(s), and/or style manual's role has become also a way of maintaining focus internally. The logo is now not only a point of recognition for the consumer, but a masthead for the employees.
Key terms:
- Message - The point or information the designer is trying to convey
- Mark/Signature - A symbol unique to a company used to indicate ownership
- Trademark - A mark that has been legally registered
- Wordmark - A signature that consists of the company's name in proprietary letterforms
- Symbol - The iconic portion of a logo. An image that is to be
synonymous with the company's name
- Monogram - A mark containing or consisting of a few letters (usu. an
acronym for the company name). It should be noted that
use of a monogram to replace a symbol/wordmark is unwise
due to the genericness of an acronym.
- Identity - The combination of the wordmark, symbol, colors, styles
and choice of imagery to create a defining aesthetic.
- Brand - The culmination of all of the audience's perceptions of
the company. Very closely related to Identity.
- Message - The point or information the designer is trying to convey
- Transmission - The method of conveying the info. The medium.
- Noise - Interference due to cultural differences that might cause
the receiver to interpret the Message differently than
intended
- Addressee - The target audience.
- Receiver - Anyone who sees the product.
The book also mentions "Destination" and defines it as the result of the Message, but that is a terrible word choice.
- Signifier/Signified - It is important to remember that there are (almost)always
many different relationships between signifiers and
signified meanings. That is to say that an object or word
may signify a number of things depending on context,
culture, personal experience, etc.
Signifiers might be abstracted and they can draw
connections along lines that can be derived from cause
and effect relationships, anthropormorphic associations,
idioms and quotations, shared abstract concepts,
synecdoche (taking a part to mean to whole or vice versa),
or it may be arbitrary.
The text then moves on to the history and evolving purpose of logos. The desire to indicate origin and ownership is at the roots of their development and remains the primary goal, but in the mid 1900s they also became a way to present to the public a guarantee. It became something that would indicate to consumers that this product was of a certain quality, represented a set of commitments, or adhered to a certain mindset. They made the companies more personable, even if it really boiled down to a form of anthropormorphication. Today, with corporations becoming larger and having a larger staff in creative positions, the logo, mark(s), and/or style manual's role has become also a way of maintaining focus internally. The logo is now not only a point of recognition for the consumer, but a masthead for the employees.
Key terms:
- Message - The point or information the designer is trying to convey
- Mark/Signature - A symbol unique to a company used to indicate ownership
- Trademark - A mark that has been legally registered
- Wordmark - A signature that consists of the company's name in proprietary letterforms
- Symbol - The iconic portion of a logo. An image that is to be
synonymous with the company's name
- Monogram - A mark containing or consisting of a few letters (usu. an
acronym for the company name). It should be noted that
use of a monogram to replace a symbol/wordmark is unwise
due to the genericness of an acronym.
- Identity - The combination of the wordmark, symbol, colors, styles
and choice of imagery to create a defining aesthetic.
- Brand - The culmination of all of the audience's perceptions of
the company. Very closely related to Identity.
At the end of the reading, 16 starter questions were listed. They are a sort of springboard for client research...
01. What is your current position relative to other companies?*
02. What is your purpose/business? What do you offer/do?
03. What is your non-financial mission?
04. What is your business's internal structure?
05. Describe the internal culture of your company.
06. Describe your style.
07. What are your goals?
08. What are the greatest opportunities for the growth of the company's image?
(Note: This one is more of a rhetorical question the designer will have to determine)
09. What are your commitments?
10 & 11. What is your current/desired audience?
12 & 13. What is your audience's current/desired perception of you?
14. How do you compare with your competition?
15. What should your audience's response to their interaction with you be?
16. What is your marketing objective?
*This question is confusing. It needs to define the term "position."
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Typography Rules and Terms
-- Parts of the grid: what are the following:
- margin: The whitespace around the edges of a spread
- column: A vertical strip in a grid
- alley: A narrow space between columns used to keep adjacent objects separated
- module: A unit of rectangular space in a grid
- gutter: A space in down the middle of a spread where space is left for the spine/fold of the book or magazine.
- folio: A leaf, which consists of two pages (front or "recto," and the back or "verso")
-- What are the advantages of a multiple column grid.? Gives needed flexibility for documents with a complex hierarchy.
-- Why is there only one space after a period? Because fonts have spaces that are not the same width as a character, so discerning a space between sentences is not an issue as it was when typewriters were used (typewriters are monospaced)
-- What is a character (in typography)? One letter, number or other symbol.
-- How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line? ~70, ~15
-- Why is the baseline grid used in design? To create a sense of coherency and order. People like to see things line up.
-- What is a typographic river? A ribbon of white space in the middle of a paragraph that is improperly justified.
-- What is a clothesline or flow line or hangline? An imaginary guideline that multiple objects hang from and that extends across a spread and often throughout an entire magazine.
-- How can you incorporate white space into your designs? Like this
-- What is type color/texture? Text can be used as an aesthetic enhancement so that it appears to give the page texture when one views the entire page. It is important to think of your text boxes as fields of textural color as well as text.
-- What is x-height, how does it effect type color? The height of lowercase letters disregarding any ascenders.
-- Define Tracking. Extra space between (many) characters.
-- Define Kerning. Why do characters need to be kerned? What are the most common characters that need to be kerned (kerning pairs)? Usu. small adjustments in the spacing between two characters to make them appear equally spaced. Some character combinations appear unevenly spaced when next to each other, most commonly the capitals 'T,' 'Y,' 'V,' and 'W' (which have negative space underneath their extremities) and lowercase letters or capitals that slant the other way (such as 'A'). Some common "kerning pairs" have recommended kerning settings embedded into fonts and are applied automatically. Examples include AV, WA, Ro, etc. Periods after letters with overhanging right-side parts also present a kerning problem.
-- In justification or H&J terms what do the numbers: minimum, optimum, maximum mean? They are referring to word spacing and represent the range of options the spacing algorithm has (min/max) and the ideal word spacing that it should try to achieve as much as possible (optimum). Values are taken in a percentage of the regular space width.
-- What is the optimum space between words?
-- What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules? First-line or hanging indent, space between paragraphs.
-- What are the rules associated with hyphenation? Avoid more than two consecutive lines being hyphenated, only hyphenate at a syllable break, avoid hyphenation in non-body text such as callouts.
-- What is a ligature? A character that combines multiple letterforms, such as an ampersand (E and T)
-- What does CMYK and RGB mean? Color spaces utilizing combinations of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black and Red, Green and Blue respectively. CMYK is an substractive color space and is used in print, RGB is additive and used in monitor and television displays. Using a CMYK space in a computer document will appear on screen as an approximation of what the picture or document will look like printed, though it is technically still displayed with red, green and blue light.
-- What does hanging punctuation mean? Moving the punctuation outside the bounding box so that the overall alignment appears more straight.
-- What is the difference between a foot mark and an apostrophe? What is the difference between an inch mark and a quote mark (smart quote)? Apostrophes and quotes curve or slant toward the characters they surround, while foot/inch marks are vertical.
-- What is a hyphen, en dash and em dashes, what are the differences and when are they used? An em dash is a dash that is the full width of the character bounding box of the M in a font (or the point size, to put it another way), an en dash is half as wide (approximately the widh of an N), and a hyphen is 1/3 the width of an em dash.
En dashes are used to separate a parenthetical thought in mid text and always is surrounded by spaces. Some style guides recommend use of an em dash, either spaced or not, for this purpose. En dashes are also used in place of a hyphen when running together multiple-word or already hyphenated compound adjectives (such as in non-San Franciscan). Furthermore, the en dash is used to mean "through" in the context of denoting lengths of time and the like. (9:00--10:00)
Hyphens are used to hyphenate words.
Em dashes are often used to separate text, as mentioned earlier.
-- What is a widow and an orphan? A single word left on the last line of a paragraph / One or two words on a new page that are continued from a paragraph earlier in the document.
- margin: The whitespace around the edges of a spread
- column: A vertical strip in a grid
- alley: A narrow space between columns used to keep adjacent objects separated
- module: A unit of rectangular space in a grid
- gutter: A space in down the middle of a spread where space is left for the spine/fold of the book or magazine.
- folio: A leaf, which consists of two pages (front or "recto," and the back or "verso")
-- What are the advantages of a multiple column grid.? Gives needed flexibility for documents with a complex hierarchy.
-- Why is there only one space after a period? Because fonts have spaces that are not the same width as a character, so discerning a space between sentences is not an issue as it was when typewriters were used (typewriters are monospaced)
-- What is a character (in typography)? One letter, number or other symbol.
-- How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line? ~70, ~15
-- Why is the baseline grid used in design? To create a sense of coherency and order. People like to see things line up.
-- What is a typographic river? A ribbon of white space in the middle of a paragraph that is improperly justified.
-- What is a clothesline or flow line or hangline? An imaginary guideline that multiple objects hang from and that extends across a spread and often throughout an entire magazine.
-- How can you incorporate white space into your designs? Like this
-- What is type color/texture? Text can be used as an aesthetic enhancement so that it appears to give the page texture when one views the entire page. It is important to think of your text boxes as fields of textural color as well as text.
-- What is x-height, how does it effect type color? The height of lowercase letters disregarding any ascenders.
-- Define Tracking. Extra space between (many) characters.
-- Define Kerning. Why do characters need to be kerned? What are the most common characters that need to be kerned (kerning pairs)? Usu. small adjustments in the spacing between two characters to make them appear equally spaced. Some character combinations appear unevenly spaced when next to each other, most commonly the capitals 'T,' 'Y,' 'V,' and 'W' (which have negative space underneath their extremities) and lowercase letters or capitals that slant the other way (such as 'A'). Some common "kerning pairs" have recommended kerning settings embedded into fonts and are applied automatically. Examples include AV, WA, Ro, etc. Periods after letters with overhanging right-side parts also present a kerning problem.
-- In justification or H&J terms what do the numbers: minimum, optimum, maximum mean? They are referring to word spacing and represent the range of options the spacing algorithm has (min/max) and the ideal word spacing that it should try to achieve as much as possible (optimum). Values are taken in a percentage of the regular space width.
-- What is the optimum space between words?
-- What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules? First-line or hanging indent, space between paragraphs.
-- What are the rules associated with hyphenation? Avoid more than two consecutive lines being hyphenated, only hyphenate at a syllable break, avoid hyphenation in non-body text such as callouts.
-- What is a ligature? A character that combines multiple letterforms, such as an ampersand (E and T)
-- What does CMYK and RGB mean? Color spaces utilizing combinations of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black and Red, Green and Blue respectively. CMYK is an substractive color space and is used in print, RGB is additive and used in monitor and television displays. Using a CMYK space in a computer document will appear on screen as an approximation of what the picture or document will look like printed, though it is technically still displayed with red, green and blue light.
-- What does hanging punctuation mean? Moving the punctuation outside the bounding box so that the overall alignment appears more straight.
-- What is the difference between a foot mark and an apostrophe? What is the difference between an inch mark and a quote mark (smart quote)? Apostrophes and quotes curve or slant toward the characters they surround, while foot/inch marks are vertical.
-- What is a hyphen, en dash and em dashes, what are the differences and when are they used? An em dash is a dash that is the full width of the character bounding box of the M in a font (or the point size, to put it another way), an en dash is half as wide (approximately the widh of an N), and a hyphen is 1/3 the width of an em dash.
En dashes are used to separate a parenthetical thought in mid text and always is surrounded by spaces. Some style guides recommend use of an em dash, either spaced or not, for this purpose. En dashes are also used in place of a hyphen when running together multiple-word or already hyphenated compound adjectives (such as in non-San Franciscan). Furthermore, the en dash is used to mean "through" in the context of denoting lengths of time and the like. (9:00--10:00)
Hyphens are used to hyphenate words.
Em dashes are often used to separate text, as mentioned earlier.
-- What is a widow and an orphan? A single word left on the last line of a paragraph / One or two words on a new page that are continued from a paragraph earlier in the document.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Typographic Terms
Absolute Measurements - Measuring scales which never change such as points, picas, inches, etc.
Relative Measurements - Measurements which vary depending on factors such as the font used. For example an 'em' or 'en' dash or space.
Kearning - Space between two characters. A--usually small--adjustment to the tracking. Often capitals with a lot of space on the under-righthand side will make adjacent lower-case characters appear too far away. This is an example of a time when a kearning adjustment is necessary.
Leading - The space between lines of text. Pronounced with a short 'e' sound.
Points/Picas - Units of measurement used in the printmaking business because they are easily divisible (12pt in a Pica; 12 is a multiple of 3 and 2). There are 6 picas in an inch.
x-height - The height of the 'x' character of a font (and most lowercase letters minus their ascenders and descenders). A relative measurement.
The em - A relative measurement equal to the point-size of the font. Used for spacing, indentation, etc.
The en - Half an em
Dashes (hyphen, en, em) - Horizontal lines of various lengths. The hyphen is 1/3 of an em in length.
Alignments: Justifcation, Flush Left, Flush Right - How a body of text meets it's boundries. Justified text is spaced so that the words on both sides of the paragraph touch the edges of it's container. A body of text that is either left or right aligned will only have words touching the boundries on one side, leaving the other side ragged.
Letterspacing - The spacing between letters...
Tracking - The spacing between lines of text measured from baseline to baseline.
Word Spacing - Spacing between words. Could be thought of as the width of a space.
Widow - A solitary word on the last line of a paragraph.
Orphan(s) - One or two words that were continued from a previous spread.
Indent, Fist Line Indent, Hanging Indent - A space that moves type away from the left edge (or right edge, if right aligned). First line indentation only occurs on the first line of a paragraph; a Hanging indent occurs on all lines except the first.
Relative Measurements - Measurements which vary depending on factors such as the font used. For example an 'em' or 'en' dash or space.
Kearning - Space between two characters. A--usually small--adjustment to the tracking. Often capitals with a lot of space on the under-righthand side will make adjacent lower-case characters appear too far away. This is an example of a time when a kearning adjustment is necessary.
Leading - The space between lines of text. Pronounced with a short 'e' sound.
Points/Picas - Units of measurement used in the printmaking business because they are easily divisible (12pt in a Pica; 12 is a multiple of 3 and 2). There are 6 picas in an inch.
x-height - The height of the 'x' character of a font (and most lowercase letters minus their ascenders and descenders). A relative measurement.
The em - A relative measurement equal to the point-size of the font. Used for spacing, indentation, etc.
The en - Half an em
Dashes (hyphen, en, em) - Horizontal lines of various lengths. The hyphen is 1/3 of an em in length.
Alignments: Justifcation, Flush Left, Flush Right - How a body of text meets it's boundries. Justified text is spaced so that the words on both sides of the paragraph touch the edges of it's container. A body of text that is either left or right aligned will only have words touching the boundries on one side, leaving the other side ragged.
Letterspacing - The spacing between letters...
Tracking - The spacing between lines of text measured from baseline to baseline.
Word Spacing - Spacing between words. Could be thought of as the width of a space.
Widow - A solitary word on the last line of a paragraph.
Orphan(s) - One or two words that were continued from a previous spread.
Indent, Fist Line Indent, Hanging Indent - A space that moves type away from the left edge (or right edge, if right aligned). First line indentation only occurs on the first line of a paragraph; a Hanging indent occurs on all lines except the first.
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