Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Behance!

I created a behance!! And I posted my first typography project. Here is the link! http://www.behance.net/gallery/Weather-with-Grid/2167803

Monday, September 5, 2011

Font Designers

Living
Erik Spiekermann- He was born in 1947 and was a graphic designer. In present time he is the directer of Fontshop, the type company he created. Meta was the first typeface that he designed. He is a fantastic speaker and writer when it comes to creating typeface.

Hermann Zapf- He was born in 1918 and has create many outstanding typefaces in his career. He is best known as a calligrapher; therefore, in his typefaces the value of handwriting is present,  in other words---the type is not perfect. The most popular of his designs is Optima.

Hans Eduard Meier- He was born in 1922 and his inspiration was Renaissance humanists. Syntax is the font that put him on the board with the great Swiss typeface designers. Syntax has its own unique impression with the harsh diagonals.

Max Miedinger- Made a modern version of Haas Grotesk and named id Neue Haas Grotesk. This name for the reborn typeface didn't stick though. The new name was Helvetica, which is the best selling typeface in san-serif.


Gunter Gerhard Lange- He works for the type foundry Berthold and he was been one of the best, most productive typographers from Germany. The typeface that he designed was Berthold Script which is usually named in the top five typefaces by graphic designers.

Dead

Morris Fuller Benton- He was born in 1872 and died 1948. His father was a typeface designer too, so it ran in the family. Morris's success was the typeface Franklin Gothic.  He is considered to one of the best type designers of all time.

Paul Renner- He was born in 1878 and died 1956. He based his typeface on geometry. In other words, means that he used only geometric figure to create the typeface Futura. There are many series that are in Futura's typeface family. This typeface put Paul Renner on the map in the type world.

Stanley Morison- He influences typographers even today with e amazing feats in design English typography. The type face that he created was Times New Roman. To make his career in short, he made modern influential versions of classic typefaces.

Frank  Hinman Pierpont- He was born in 1860 and dies in the year of 1937.  He designed the typeface Rockwell. He uses geometric construction in this typeface and has, also, improved many out of date typefaces--such as Plantin.

Eric Gill- He was born in 1882 and died in the year of 1940. This man was a Catholic and a Socialist which made him very controversial. He has worked on many popular type faces including Joanna. He has worked in many colaborations but he got all of the ownership on the Joanna typeface.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Definitions


_ define weight- the heaviness and mass of the type.
_ define width- extent from side to side.
_ define style-the form of the type.
_ define font- assortment of type of one style and size.
_ define typeface- the design and style of the font.
_ define x-height- how high the lowercase x is.
_ define cap height- how tall your capital letters are.
_ define leading-
_ define letterspacing (tracking)- the space in between letters.
in regards to measuring type...
_ How is type measured in inches, mm, points or picas- points
_ define point- the unit of measurement for type, basically a pen point.
_ define pica- equal to one sixth of an inch.
_ How many points in an inch? 72
_ If a letter is set in 36 pts about how many inches tall is it? 1 in
_ How many picas in an inch? 1
_ How many points in a pica? 12

Adrian Frutiger



Adrian Frutiger is best known a type designer. His early work was disregarded by the masses. He also, creates the type font 'Univers' which is the type we are using right now in class. 1928 is when his life began. He, of course, is from Switzerland. He has created many type fonts but he came from a humble beginning working as an apprentice for a printer. Soon after that he went to school in Zurich at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. He moved pretty quickly through out his career. Therefore, he sprinted to Paris shortly after school where he worked with traditional typefaces at a type foundry. Moving forward in his career he had started making all sorts of books; such as, Type, Sign, Symbol (1980) was his first.  He has created multiple typefaces they are found in many foundries where people are using and appreciating his work. 
Like I mentioned before his most common type used is 'Univers'. It is his type that we are studying and working with. It is unbelievable how much work his has put in this one typeface. There are many categories within ‘Univers’ and to think that he has made many more typefaces is unbelievable. The weights and variations are what make the Univers grid different when compared to others. The other variations that are in the other type families are sorted by the use of numbers rather then names. Yet, the unique Univers family uses both letter suffixes and numbers. It is these differences that make Univers unique when compared with other typefaces and type families.