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Type Workshop (2)


Typeface Personalities


In today's workshop, we started by looking further into the typefaces that we had been working with. We was asked to come up with three words to describe the personality of the typeface. As I was working with Bell MT, I went for Informative, Inoffensive and Formal. 



We was then asked to come up with a brand or line of business which relates to the words I had chosen and see if that fit with the typeface. I chose a Solicitors as they are a formal business who are informative and also inoffensive (sometimes)




We then had to think of a business that is the complete opposite to the three words. I chose 'Bouncy Castles' because this is obviously informal and not very informative. It is aimed more at children so obvioulsy looks wrong when written in this typeface. 

It is interesting during the workshop that there was laughter when people seen some of the businesses written in a certain typeface. This proves that by the choice of typeface you can provoke laughter in people which is a really powerful thing and also shows in general how much a typeface can determine a design and how the whole world recognises certain styles of typeface. 



culterally trained to read left to right


Kerning




The next task was to kern our own name correctly. When Kerning we have to keep the spacing between the letters exactly the same. It is normally not needed for body copy. but when you start to look at branding where there is one word being used, kerning becomes really important. 

When kerning letters together such as the A and the N. The N is easy because it is a straight vertical but the A is a diagonal which is more difficult to work out. The general rule of thumb is to measure half way down the diagonal stroke and measure from this point to the edge of the 'N'. You can then keep the same distance with the other letters resulting in a perfect kern.

It was particularly hard to kern my surname because I had the worst two letters together in the 'L' and the 'A'. This means that it will look wrong even when it's right because these two letters sit horribly together but its just a case of using the same measurement system and judging it by eye to get the best possible looking kern 

A good tip if your struggling to kern is turning the type upside down, this way you don’t read the word, you merely look at the shapes the characters make and the space that’s created between them, making it easier to judge the spacing of the characters. 

Another good tip is to look at somebody else's work and get feedback on your own because a fresh pair of eyes is better to spot a well kerned word. 


Hierarchy 


The next task was to do with the hierarchy of words. We was give the three words, ONE, TWO and THREE and was asked to type these words into a document making the viewer still read it as 'one, two three' but making sure that the three is at the top of the page, the two next then the one. 

This was a pretty simple task to start with but is important to learn. I simply made the one larger in pt size going smaller to three which makes it more visible to the viewer to read first. I also placed the one further to the left and moved the words across the page because we culturally read left to right, which again makes it easier for us to read the words in this order. 


We was then asked to do the same, but without changing anything on the words. They had to be exactly the same. I tried to do this by doing the diagonal again from left to right but apparently this does not work. We can se how this does not work by looking away from the page then quickly turning to look at it and seeing which one we read first. In this case our eyes are drawn to the centre of the page and the word is easy to read so we read the 'two' first. 






The way to do it, is by turning the two upside down. Now it is turned upside down, we do not see it as a word, so we read the three first because we naturally look above the centre when we can't read the word. So the order in this case would be read as 'three, one, two'. 


By turning the three on it's side, this makes in more difficult to read so now we read the easiest word which is the 'one' first. The order is read as 'one, three' two'. 


Using this as a basis, We then was asked to use the four words, 'one, two, three and four' and was made to keep the order of reading as 'one, two, three, four' but the vertical order in placement had to be 'two, four, three, one'. After the first task, I got this quite easily. I turned the four upside down making it the last word read and kept the one upright so that that was the first one read. I rotated the 'two' 90 degrees to the left to be read upwards next and similarly with the 'three' rotated it to the right and moved it further over to the right of the page making sure it was read after the 'two'. 



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