This week which incidentally was a week and a half ago, our task was to take one sheet of paper…
which had the same information typed in 3 type sizes and 2 weights, which effectively gave us 6 choices of type to play with and 6 choices of ‘line feed’ (which is the distance between the acender on the caps height and the decender on the low swinging characters of a typeface.
we had 3 exercises… and we had to give 4 examples of each of the following:
1: one type size / one type weight
2: one type size / two type weights
3: two type sizes two type weights
restrictions:
1:no centre-axis or ranged right text alignments were permitted
2:the base lines of all text MUST be parallel to the top and bottom of the format NO type on an angle.
3:cannot enlarge/ nor inverse type
4: only using scissors, glue, photocopier, cutting knife, metal rule, pencils, set square.
i only managed to do 5/ 12 examples in the 6 hours we had, which had to include lunch.
unfortunately i had been on the start of a hellish 2 week flu/virus deterioration process, and thus couldnt concentrate all day. but HAD to go to this couldnt miss it. 5 isnt too bad but my examples were shocking…ly bad..
im going to try do some more to improve it.
What was most apparent and was suggested by hamish, was the use of small type often makes things look professional and makes it look like you know what you are doing. Using large type is possible but you must be extremely good at weighting and composing type to get away with it.
hierarchy in itself seems relatively basic, but within the context we had it, the idea of listing an address twice for the opening of the gallery and the definition of the sculpture gallery would have been a waste of space and over done… so doubling up information whilst trying to be objective as to the relevance of importance of gallery is VERY VERY hard to achieve. the idea that A word or sentence has several functions and you must denote that by using one typeface and one weight… is very much a challenge indeed..
By using you hands you get an idea of scale and importance more so than if you did it straight on indesign without seeing the traces of where you came from last. I would highly reccomend working to scale with full paste ups, its what our tutors preach, but for very good reasoning.. its the O N L Y way to find out if something REALLY works. without inducing rediculous printing costs on your self through printing out every step of indesign infull colour on the stock you are going to be working with… its just ludicrous.
REAL typography is extremely hard, and IS as important to be sympathetic to the layout of information as THIS is how one READS something, order is how we communicate effectivly. If abused/ignored or rejected, this can often misconstrue ones ideas of a piece of information and thus making information arbitrary. Which is done ALL TOO OFTEN……..
informative information should be clear as in legible and ideologically clear within its message. Function, form and usability are indeed kings of communication and should not be abused nor ignored.
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