Graphic Design Intro · Words To Know 1. Graphic Design: The art or skill of combining text and pictures in advertisements, magazines, or books. 2. Logo: A symbol or other design

GRAPHIC DESIGN INTRO

Words To Know1. Graphic Design: The art or skill of combining text and pictures in

advertisements, magazines, or books.

2. Logo: A symbol or other design adopted by an organization to identify its products, uniform, vehicles, etc.

3. CMYK: A very common color mode used for printing, also known as “process colors”. The CMYK stands for the colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

The letter K represents black as a way to not confuse with blue.

4. San Serif: A kind of font type that is void of the strokes on the end of letters that can be found on a “serif” typeface (see “serif”).

5. Serif: A type of font that has exaggerated strokes or details at the end of it’s letters (unlike “san serif” typefaces).

6. Bleed (bleed edge): when creating a design for print, a “bleed edge” needs to be added to the document’s page size. For example, a brochure with the

dimensions 8″ x 10″ needs to be created at something like 8.5″ x 10.5″. This

leaves room for the design to extend past the cut area.

7. Font: An assortment or set of type or characters all of one style and sometimes one size.

8. Corporate Identity: image is the manner in which a corporation, firm or business enterprise presents itself to the public (such as customers and

investors as well as employees).

Why Are Fonts Important

Using fonts that are easy to read are

key to presentation. The fonts add

value to your text. It helps readers to

perceive information from the text.

The correct choice of color, font

and text size can prove to be vital

for attracting your target audience.

Mini Lesson #1

In your sketch book create

7 original fonts. Represent

that font with a single letter

one upper case and one

lower case.

Brief History of Fonts and Typography1400’s: Guttenberg invented movable typefaces, giving the world a cheaper way to

obtain the written word. Up until this point, all written materials were done by hand,

and were very costly to purchase. Guttenburg also created the first typeface,

blackletter – it was dark, fairly practical, and intense, but not very legible.

1470: Nicolas Jenson created Roman Type, inspired by the text on ancient roman

buildings. It was far more readable than blackletter, and caught on quickly.

1501: Aldus Manutius created italics – a way to fit more words onto a page, saving

the printer money. Today, we use italics as a design detail or for emphasis when

writing.

1734: William Caslon created a typeface which features straighter serifs and much

more obvious contrasts between thin and bold strokes. Today, we call this type style

‘old style’.

1757: John Baskerville created what we now call Transitional type, a Roman-style

type, with very sharp serifs and lots of drastic contrast between thick and thin lines.

1780: Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni created the first ‘modern’ Roman

typefaces (Didot, and Bodoni). The contrasts were more extreme than ever before,

and created a very cool, fresh look.

Brief History of Fonts and Typography1815: Vincent Figgins created Egyptian, or Slab Serif – the first time a typeface

had serifs that were squares or boxes.

1816 William Caslon IV created the first typeface without any serifs at all. It was

widely rebuked at the time. This was the start of what we now consider Sans Serif

typefaces. During this time, type exploded, and many, many variations were

being created to accommodate advertising.

1920’s: Frederic Goudy became the world’s first full time type designer,

developing numerous groundbreaking typefaces, such as Copperplate Gothic,

Kennerly, and Goudy Old Style.

1957: Swiss designer Max Miedinger created Helvetica, the most loved typeface

of our time. This was a return to minimalism, and many other simplistic typefaces

such as Futura surfaced around this time period.

Present: With the internet, we have such a vast variety of old and new typefaces

available for us to peruse and use. All these typefaces give us an abundance of

options and looks for our designs today, and we’re not limited by just one or two

typefaces like we would have been a few hundred years ago.

Mini Lesson #2

Your turn, I would like for you to search on

the internet for designs with fonts and

typography. Save the pics and then post

them on the assignment on Seesaw. Make

sure you answer the questions I have

added to the assignment. Find 4-5 designs

you would like to share.

How to Choose Your Font

What Is Your Goal?

The first thing you have to do in

order to choose a typeface is

form a strong impression in your

mind about how you want your

audience to react to the text.

How to Choose Your FontLEGIBILITY

It may seem at first glance that legibility and

readability are the same thing, but they are not.

Legibility refers to the design of the typeface, as in

the width of the strokes, whether or not it has serifs,

the presence of novel type design elements etc. It is

easy to tell one letterform from another in a legible

typeface. For instance, decorative typefaces have

low legibility because they are primarily meant to

be seen at a glance, rather than read at length.

Conversely, typefaces designed for novels or

newspapers have very high legibility.

How to Choose Your FontLEGIBILITY CONTINUED

Choose typefaces with conventional letterforms. Letterforms composed of

unique shapes, artistic deformations, excessive ornamentation or other novel

design elements cause the reader to have to process what they are looking at

first, instead of just taking in the message. Novelty always comes at the cost of

immediate comprehension.

Choose typefaces with generous spacing. Tight tracking causes the eye to fill in

visual gaps between the various shapes that make up different letterforms, thus

slowing down the time it takes to both recognize letterforms and word and

sentence structures. Generous spacing allows the eyes to proceed as fast as

the cognitive skills of the reader will permit.

How to Choose Your FontREADABILITY

How your typeface is set, combined with the basic

legibility of the typeface, yields a certain level of

readability. Readability is the dynamic interaction of the

type style, size, tracking, leading, color and other

properties all combined into one overall impression.

They add up to a certain typographic style which has a

quantifiable degree of readability. For instance, you

could use a style that has an intentionally low

readability that is part of the message. Or you could

focus on designing a high readability because your

message is complicated, and you don’t want your type

style to hinder the audiences’ understanding in any

way. In most cases, communication comes before style,

so resolve readability first.

Mini Lesson#3In your sketchbooks I want you to create a font set. This will

include every letter from the alphabet. I want to see a capital

and lower case of each letter. Make sure the fonts are

readable and legible. Make sure the fonts are trying to also

communicate something. If this means to make them very

stylized or add designs in them do so. Decide if your fonts will

be san-serif or serif fonts. Create an original name for your font

set.