abcdefg

Hey, I really like to thank you, Jennifer(my classmate in CSULA). As I read your blog and follow the link that you posted, I found this interesting video of kids doing calligraphy with his uncle. Though his uncle doing really good calligraphy, my eyes just keep looking at what the kids had draw out instead. And each time he drew one alphabet just amazed me that I will think how kids can do so unexpected yet adorable things. Especially, when he drew first heavy stroke, then he will look over what his uncle had drawn and add some line or curve of his own creativity. Just very integrity and nature, but very beautiful!!
PS: the URL for this video is http://drawn.ca/category/typography/ , and is under the abcdefg category.

story time

Couples days ago, I read our text book A type Primer, it mentioned about the golden section exists in the nature. And he points out an example—a spiral and a set of keys in the keyboard or piano that inspires me to think deeply that isn’t that this whole universal has its own mythic law that we more or less have to follow in order to make our journey successfully and smoothly. So as to typography design has its rules to follow. Today my professor Jimmy had this “story time” about typography design, and he introduced a book about the 10 rules for typographic design and 10 rules to break the original ones. They are all in one book and opposite side. I think that’s quite interesting concept and display.
As a beginner in graphic design, I need a lot of good information and knowledge to guide my road, build my foundation firmly. I’m a slow learner and I need more time than others to fund my basis. Anyway, I like the “story time”. Jimmy, please introduce
more good books to the class.

text

After reading A type primer from page 76 to 113, I have a clear picture of what the kerning and letterspacing is. Kerning refers to remove space from letters while letterspacing means to add space between letters. There are four kinds of text arrangement (flush left ragged right, centered, flush right ragged left, and justified) which Jimmy just reviewed this afternoon in the class. A successful layout should create a middle gray value, in order to achieve that, considering of leading and line length and choosing the typeface is the key. As author suggested that own a type specimen books is quite useful, even though we have typeface samples in the monitor.
A printed one can always show more clearly than in the monitor, especially in small size. As to ways of indicating paragraphs, I prefer add a line space between paragraph, cause that will less the chance of having widows or orphans in the text. There is always necessity to highlight text for emphasis requirement. And in this text book again author demonstrate clear samples. Further, he and Jimmy also point out the misusing on primes to apostrophes that I really don’t know until I take this class. Finally, the arrangement of headlines within text, which is also called hierarchy, shows the sequence and subordination between headlines. After reading this section, I have a clear idea of how to design the text in the book or maybe in the posters that have information text needs to be arranged in hierarchy way.

How meaning is formed

How meaning is formed.
After reading chapter 2 “How meaning is formed” in the book Visible Sign, I’m kind of confused by the paradigms and text, especially p.35, 37, 42 and 47.
The author tries to use Both Saussure and Peirce’s theory of categorizing sign to understand how we extract meaning from a sign. So the categories of signs which Peirce defined are icon, index and symbol, while Saussure defined are iconic and arbitrary. They are the same thing just in different words.
In the 2nd chapter, I do agree with Peirce’s semiosis “it is not a one-way process with a fixed meaning. It is a part of an active process between the sign and the reader of the sign.” In Saussure’s theory, he thinks “value” determine the meaning of a sign. And the value is composed of 2 things, a dissimilar and a similar thing. Isn’t this redundant?
Fortunately, in the page 48 and 49, I can understand the whole demonstration, and think that we have to crop imagines carefully so that they will convey the meaning that we want to display.
Overall, I think this book is quite sophisticated than we can understand, and honestly speaking, I really don’t enjoy most imagines in the book.

A type primer by John Kane

In response to the reading assignment of the textbook A type primer by John Kane, p.V-13, 52-73, I got a chance to review what I have learned from Introduction to Typography two quarters ago. And to use the right termiology as well. In addition, the author gives more detail demonstrations and other aspect as well. He displays 10 typefaces Bembo, Garamond, Janson, Caslon, Baskerville, Bodoni, Serifa, Futura, Gill Sans, and Univers. The demonstrations of understanding letterforms show us a clear and close up look at the letterform. As to the maintaining x-height section, I do remember that when I designed my own letterform two quarters ago, I had two characters “e” and “a” that needed to exceed the baseline and median in order to look optically same size as other characters “n” and “r”. As to form and counter form and reinforcing meaning sections, I did these exercises too. I like the demonstration of the word “train” which creates an illusion of perspective. As to the author demonstrate the word “dance”, he put the word in different corner of the square or split it or repeat it and occupy the whole square and or different arrangement, that give me a very clear idea and make me realize what he try to show the idea of placement of the word “dance” in the square suggesting different activities in a place. I especially like the section of making sentence, finding sense, it also give me a good idea of making my first project of advanced lettering and typography, that I need to make some of text really BIG to achieve viewer’s attention. Also, make the background color complementary color to the focus point which is a circle with the final destination in it.