Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Study Guide

















Let me know if you have anything to add.

-Amber

Friday, November 12, 2010

Whisenhunt - Univers

Designed by Adrian Frutiger for Deberny & Peignot in 1957, Univers was created as competition for Futura. Univers is has more flexibility in it uses and even be used for body text. This font has passed between several different type foundries in the past and is currently owned by Linotype. Frutiger reworked the Univers font family in 1997 and renamed the updated version Linotpe Univers. Past uses of Univers are difficult to find, however, in the 60’s and 70’s, it was possible to get a Univers print ball for the IBM Selectric typewriter. Apple, the first company to bring fonts into the personal computer age, used Univers as the keycap font on its keyboards until 2007 when they switched to VAG Rounded. Due to the clear readability of Univers, it is used in areas of the transportation industry, including the Metro system in Montreal, the BART system in San Francisco, and in the Frankfurt Airport. A surprising place to find extensive use of the Univers font is in the Walt Disney World road system.

Transportation isn’t the only place to use this clearly legible font, it is used by CNN for on screen graphics to accompany the news stories. ESPN used Univers on screen as well until 2010.


My layouts for this project will be using a "Universe/Solar system theme" I want to show the different weights for Univers and allude to its readability at great distances .

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Albiter - Dante typeface

Dante

“The roman types that were designed in Italy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and those that have since followed their style” are referred to as the old style typefaces. Old style typefaces are “the most popular typefaces for setting text.” The main “features of old-style types are the slight contrast between the thick and thin strokes of the characters and an oblique stress (evident in the thin parts of the o, which are offset counterclockwise from the top and bottom of the letter).”


Dante is an old-style typeface that was designed by Giovanni Mardersteig and Charles Malin in 1954. Mardersteig “started working on Dante after [WWII]… at the Officina Bodoni” in Italy. “For Dante, [Mardersteig and Malin] worked closely to develop a design that was easy to read. For example, special care was taken with the design of the serifs and top curves of the lowercase to create a subtle horizontal stress, which helps the eye move smoothly across the page.” “After six years of work, [Dante] was first used in 1955 to publish Boccaccio's Trattatello in Laude di Dante hence the typeface name.”


In the mid-1950s, Dante was first created in metal type; it was originally “impressed into paper - not onto it” (Monotype Imaging). Giovanni Mardersteig and Charles Malin collaborated to design Dante. Mardersteig was born Hans Mardersteig on January 8, 1892 in Weimar, Germany. He was a printer and typographer; he created books, “exemplifying the highest standards in the art of printing,” for Officina Bodoni (Encyclopædia Britannica). He spent a year in Scotland where he designed the typeface Fontana while working for Collins Cleartype Press. When he returned to Italy, he set up Officina Bodoni again in Verona. This “press specialized in small editions, printed with meticulous care on an old-fashioned handpress that occupied a room in his house. In addition to Fontana, he also designed the typefaces Dante, Griffo, and Zeno” (Encyclopædia Britannica). Mardersteig died on December 27, 1977 in Verona, Italy.


Charles Malin was a punchcutter from France. He collaborated with Mardersteig to design the typeface Dante. They began designing it after WWII, however, Malin died in 1955 before Dante’s successful released in 1957.


My concept/theme for the type specimen book is Dante's Inferno. I will cover the different levels of hell that are covered in the book/movie; going deeper in to hell. I will make the book look creepy with the different levels of hell as its setting.

Optima History

Optima was designed between 1952 and 1955 by Hermann Zapf, a German typeface designer from Darmstadt, Germany who also designed other popular types like Palatino and Zapfino. Optima combined the features of both serif and sans serif into a humanistic design. The capitals, much like Palatino’s, directly refer to the Roman capitals. It is a legible font that lends it self to a wide range of applications.

Optima wasn’t commercially released until 1958 by Berthold, one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world. With Optima’s faux classy design a lot of designers gravitated toward it in the 60’s and 70’s for display and text lines as well as being used in brochures, catalogues and magazines. It was also used on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall and in John McCain’s presidential campagn.

In 2002 Hermann Zapf and Linotype GmbH type director Akira Kobayashia redesigned the font family into what the called Optima Nova which contained 7 new font weights. Optima is now a trademark of Linotype corp. The Optima typeface, like all of Zapf’s designs, was widely admired and imitated a few times.

For my book Im going to do something roman with it. Either go along with the whole column theme like the pantheon and stuff. OR Trojan condoms. Roman, because Optima was strongly inspired by the writings on roman columns. Another idea is to play off of the vietnam memorial.

Davis-Bodoni

History: The famous typesetter, Giabattista Bodoni, was born in February of 1740 in Saluzzo, Piedmont, Italy. Giabattista was the son of a printer; he learned from his father and utilized his skills in the Vatican for several years. During his time there, he was under the guidance of the Duke of Parma, which proved to be a fruitful. Bodoni produced several spectacular quartos and folios that surpassed others at the time. When it came to type, Giabattista astounded the art world. His fonts were said to be “pseudoclassical” looking. Bodoni’s fonts were set apart by the contrast of the thick lines versus thin lines. Another notable attribute of his font was the sloped serif accompanied by the ninety-degree angle baseline serif. At the same time, Baskerville and Didot tried to compete but Bodoni’s font rose above the rest. Later in Bodoni’s career, he published the book "Manuale Tipografico" which included 100 roman, 50 italic and 28 Greek minuscule fonts. In 1813, Bodoni died in Parma, Italy at the age of seventy three.

Type: The Bodoni font has a few variations in style: Roman, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic. The rights to Bodoni are owned by the Bauer Type Foundry, which also owns several other popular fonts. Bodoni is used in fancy, luxurious looking advertisements. Typically, it is used as a headline font and is rarely used for body copy. Over the years, Bodoni has been revived into new styles while still maintaining the signature look. Designers complain that when Bodoni gets smaller than twelve point, it begins to lose its readibility.

Concept: For my concept, I’d like to model it after a fine dining menu/wine menu. In the menu I would like to include a five-course menu, each course representing a different style of the font. I want to make it look upscale and formal.

Cole.Times New Roman

Times New Roman is one the most commonly found serif typefaces. It's readability makes it great for body copy and is often used in academic papers, business documents, books, and periodicals. It was commissioned by the British newspaper, The Times, in 1931 and was designed by Stanley Morison. Morison had written a letter of critique to The Times, expressing his opinion that the paper was badly printed and typographically out-of-date. He was subsequently hired to oversee the creation of a new typeface. It was to be based off of the serif font Plantin and was drawn by Victor Lardent. The Times used Times New Roman for forty years but was forced to change with the ramifications of new print technology. It was redrawn to utilize better economy of space as the physical size of the newspaper changed, but all of the subsequent typefaces remained fairly simple to Times New Roman.
Morison was working as a typographic consultant to the Monotype company at the time. He was a self-taught designer and worked to update and revive many old typefaces, such as Bembo and Baskerville. He is largely responsible for the great expansion that Monotype went through during the period.
I would like to show that Times New Roman is actually a strong typeface, despite the flak that it catches for being so ubiquitous through academic papers and legal documents. The fact that Microsoft owns it's licensing doesn't help its cause either. Rather than comment on how overdone it may be as a typeface, I'd like to use it for its traditional purpose and highlight the good things about it. My first reaction was to stay away from doing the booklet as an old-time newspaper, but I think with some good textures, simple illustrations, and a good layout I'll be able to revive the personality it had as a very prolific 20th century typeface.

TYPE SPECIMEN-TRAVIS BARRON (see my comment)

King_clarendon


Clarendon font started off as a design exercise to create a font that could highlight text within normal type. this was almost always done by using italics, and Clarendon is nominally associated as the bold face – as in it was designed to look nice along with standard Times fonts.
Although, there were other typefaces with a similar “look” appearing at earlier dates, the Clarendon font seems to be most appropriately associated with an origin date of 1845, and by a Robert Besley of Fann St. Foundary. Although, Besley went on to gain further fame in later years as a Mayor of London
he even went on to patent the font, marking the first patant of a typeface, although this particular hold lasted for only 3 years. But during this short time frame, the Clarendon font became very popular, and once the property hold was released, many a copycat font were produced much to the chagrin of Besley himself
Clarendon font entered pop-culture history by using it in the wild western in North America (i.e. “wanted” or “reward” signs), and other, where Clarendon variants (specifically “French Clarendon“) took on a circus look (it’s even known as “Circus Letters” in some texts).
Anyway, it wasn’t until the 1920s when Clarendon, once again, experienced a resurgence of sorts, and like before, this was primarily due to pragmatic reasons. You see, at this point in history, newspaper production rocketed to new heights, and as a result, the printing technology became a lot more efficient as well as a lot faster and rigorous. However, a downside to this, was the fact that many of the type sets used were taking a physical beating resultingProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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n the plates being damaged (especially when the lines were especially thin).
Consequently, a number of companies attempted to produce new fonts that would still look good, but could also function in the wear and tear realities of the new printing demands. Here, the Clarendon font stepped in.
One of the first companies that began to experiment in this way was Mergenthaler Linotype Company. After four trials they finally issued a typeface that was based on a clarendon/ionic model from the 1850s. The name of the typeface was Ionic No. 5…. The typeface was very successful…”Within a year, the typeface had been adopted by some 3,000 newspapers all over the world.” (Miklavcic, 2006)
Finally, Clarendon-like fonts experienced another boost during the 1950’s. This, just after the World War 2, coincided with a general increase in advertisement productions (the economic boom right after the war). Typography as a whole was caught in an intensive move to design new and innovative typefaces.
Anyway, this led to a large number of fonts which many feel fit within the Clarendon look. Including the current incarnation of the font, which was revised by Herman Eidenbenz in 1953.
My Idea is to make the book into a wanted poster. Beseley will be the crime boss, the rewards will be the different weights of fonts. I am slightly stuck from there .

Price_Frutiger

The designer Adrian Frutiger created the typeface Frutiger. Born and raised in Switzerland, his early interest in sculpture was discouraged buy his father, but has influenced his typeface design overall. He primarily studied calligraphy and was recruited by Charles Peignot, of the Paris foundry Deberny Et Peignot where he crated his first commercial typefaces beginning in 1954, President, Ondine, and Meridian. In 1956, he created his first slab serifs, Egyptienne, then the popular Univers.
Due to the popularity of Univers The French public transit authority asked Adrian Frutiger to commissioned for the signage in the French, Charles de Gaulle International Airport in 1968. The Swiss designer wanted a typeface that was modern and legible at different angles, sizes and distances. He adapted a look that was clean like his own popular font Univers, but had more organic proportions like that of Gill Sans.
Frutiger designed the font and its various weights all by hand and the working title of the typeface was Roissy. Some of its features include prominent ascenders and descenders, as well as a wide aperture to easily distinguish the letters from each other. The D Stempel AG type foundry asked Frutiger to make the Roissy lettering a typeface for Linotype. He made adjustments to the stroke thickness and extended the range of weights and felt that his new sans-serif was an expression of the 1970’s and 80’s. The Roissy type was released by Linotype in 1977 as Frutiger.

My concept for the booklet, is going to be a travel guide, but not to interesting cities, but to random, boring towns, that do not have any real attractions. Or to cities that produce the most pollution. Because the type was designed for an airport signs, I thought a guide that you might find in an airport would be appropriate.

Sandoval-News Gothic;Morris Fuller Benton

HISTORY
News Gothic, a sans-serif typeface, was designed by Morris Fuller Benton. It was released by the American Type Founders in 1908. Benton not only designed the typeface with two lighter weights and a medium weight using the name "News Gothic," but also a light weight version called "Lightline Gothic." One might notice its similarity in structure to Franklin Gothic; this is likely because it was also designed by Benton.
Benton was born on November 30, 1872. His father, Linn Loyd Benton worked in typography and was the inventor of the pantographic punchcutter, which greatly simplified typesetting. After establishing a drawing office, Linn Loyd Benton entrusted Morris Fuller as his assistant.
Morris soon took over, and after the founding of the ATF, Benton became the head of the design department there from 1900 to 1937. He worked relentlessly, creating type designs every year, which, by the end of his career, totaled to 221 typefaces.
The font itself offers a more humanist tone when compared to other grotesque typefaces. It retains classic, two-story structures for the lowercase a and g. Stroke width also varies slightly throughout which creates a more organic feel than more geometric typefaces. Its uses vary from newspaper and magazine publishing to iconic pop-culture designs. ABBA used News Gothic for its logodesign. Lady Gaga used the typeface for her album cover of The Fame Monster; however, there is dispute whether it is news Gothic or Fanklin Gothic. Chances are, Benton wouldn't mind it either way. News Gothic Bold was used in the opening crawl text for Star Wars. Polaroid, from the late 50's to the 80's, adopted the typeface for its logo as well as most of its packaging and documentation.
News Gothic remains, to this day, a very versitile typeface offering a moderate tone and design in a sea of geometric and neo-grotesque forms. Its classic execution and more recently expanded family of weights and styles makes it a must-own for designers.
CONCEPTS
I like the idea that a couple of musical artists have used the font in their designs. This makes me think about the little booklets that often come with CDs. Maybe making News Gothic a band or the debut album for Morris Less or Fuller or Hell Benton. Song lists, lyrics in different weights, etc.
Another idea would be to play off of the Polaroid factoid. Basically have a Polaroid catalogue-thing. I dunno, that's a less exciting idea. Bam.

Claypool - Perpetua

History and Bio

Perpetua is classified as a Roman typeface developed for machine composition by Monotype Corporation. It's timeless design allows the Roman typeface to live up to its name - eternal. Developed by Eric Gill, the typeface was completed as a book face for the limited edition publication of the “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity” in the year 1928 and the book was printed in 1929.

In 1923, Stanley Morison was appointed Typographic Advisor to Monotype Corporation. Morison's plan was to redesign historical typefaces with a modern interpretation. Morison approached Eric Gill to design a new typeface in 1925. As a result, Perpetua was designed. Though it is now recognized as one of the most-used typeface families for fine book typography, Perpetua was not instantaneously accepted by Monotype management when initially developed. The first punched letters of the typeface were rejected by Monotype due to many factors including the corporation was not yet adjusted to Morison's new ideals in steering the company in a new direction from it's conservative roots. Afterwards, Eric Gill was soon commissioned to develop a sans serif typeface consequently, the finalization of Perpetua was put on hold until an italic counterpart could be completed. In 1931, Gill finished the Perpetua family by designing an italic type with roman serifs while still maintaining fluidity. In regards to Perpetua, Stanley Morrison said the following quote, “The design... may be judged in the small sizes to have achieved the object of providing a distinguished form for a distinguished text; and, in the large sizes, a noble, monumental, appearance.”

Gill designed Perpetua with the intent of making it a modern classic. He did so by basing it's design on engravings in the classic Roman lettering of the Trajan column. The formal impression and classic notion tied with Perpetua is due to it's small diagonal serifs and it's medial numbers. Perpetua has withstood the test of time and remained one of the most used typefaces for fine book typography.

Not only was Eric Gill a typographer but he was also a sculptor and woodcutter and illustrator. Gill was born in Brighton, Sussex in 1882. He attended college in Chichester. After college he studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London under Edward Johnston. Eric Gill designed book layouts and typeface designs. He also produced a number of book illustrations, woodcuts, watercolors and graphic that are mainly evangelical content. Unfortunately, Gill eventually died of lung cancer in Uxbridge Middlesex in 1940.

Concept

Because Perpetua was originally designed for the publication of "The Passion Perpetua and Felicity," My concept will be a chapter book in a style similarly to a fine book.

Morgan - Rockwell

HISTORY

The Inland Type Foundry created the Rockwell typeface in 1910. The company later merged with 22 other type foundries to form the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1912.

ATF represented about 85 percent of all type manufactured in the United States at that time. ATF revised Rockwell in the 1920’s under the direction of Morris Fuller Benton.

Benton was the chief type designer at ATF from 1900 to 1937 and is known today as one of the most prolific type designers in history. Benton completed 221 typefaces, including: Franklin Gothic, Bank Gothic, Broadway, ATF Bodoni, most of the Century Type Family and many more. Benton’s strong aesthetic design sense and success in technology was probably influenced by his father, Linn Boyd Benton, who invented the pantographic engraving machine, which was considered advanced for its time in typeface design. Morris worked on many of these machines with his father at ATF, where the machines were revised to impressive levels of precision.

The Monotype Corporation, a company specializing in typesetting and typeface design, produced a new version of Rockwell in 1934. Under the supervision of Frank Hinman Pierpont, some errors occurred during this revision where Rockwell was referred to as Stymie Bold, which created some confusion about Rockwell’s identity that still exists today.

Despite this speculation, Rockwell is known today as a popular slab serif. The Rockwell font family includes: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic and Extra Bold. Rockwell is mono-weighted, characterized by its geometric feel with thick, block-like serifs. Because of this nature, it is not best for lengthy bodies of text, but great for advertisements, headlines, posters, logos or album covers.



CONCEPT

Rockwell was passed around to a lot of different designers, including one who misnamed him and created some uncertainty of his true identity. I get this feeling that Rockwell is this orphan baby that doesn't know his real parents. He is in an identity crisis after being circulated to multiple foster homes and has yet to receive closure because many people speculate that he is not Rockwell, but rather Stymie Bold. In order to cope and move on, Rockwell grows up and creates his own family. I think it would be cool to display his family in picture frames or old silhouette photos.

Univers history and concept

Univers

Univers is a Neo-Grotesque, sans-serif typeface that was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957 for Deberny and Peignot Typefoundry. Neo-Grotesque is a style of sans-serif typeface from the 19th century, also associated with Helvetica, Arial, Aksindez Grotesque, and Franklin Gothic. Adrian also created fonts like Egyptienne, Frutiger, and Avenir. Univers is mostly associated with a Swiss style of design. In 1960’s and the 1970’s IBM would use this font on their type writers. This font was also used on the Apple 2003 PowerBook G4 Keycaps. In some ways this font looks like Helvetica but has a more modern look to it. Today, the Univers type family consists of 44 faces, including oblique, extended, black, and condensed styles and weights.

My concept

I plan to go with the idea of making my book look like safety hand out or to make it have an air port feel with the signs you might see in an airport.

Boothby, Concept and history of Palatino

Palatino history-
Out of many of the old style typefaces, Palatino has become one of the most common fonts used to this day, having five other versions of it within the palatino family. Palatino is a classic serif typeface designed by German typeface designer Hermann Zapf. Named after the 16th century Italian master of calligraphy Giambattista Palatino, it was released by the Linotype Foundry in 1948 for public use. Palatino was one of the most famous and widely used fonts of the time because of its new look and legibility and since has increased in popularity. It was based on the hummanist fonts of the Italian Renaissance, and unlike most renaissance typefaces that used smaller letters with longer vertical lines (ascenders and descenders) and lighter strokes, Palatino has larger proportions and is much easier to read. In 1999 Zapf soon added more versions of the typeface to its family, including Palatino Sans, Palatino Informal, Palatino NOva, and Palatino Arabic. Palatino typeface has influenced many other new fonts and will still be commonly used for graphic designers, ads, packaging, and more.

My concept for the type specimen book.
The concept i'm shooting for on the type specimen book deals with the DreamWorks movies. The DreamWorks logo was designed using the palatino typeface, and it's the most popular use of this typeface. I plan on recreating some of the DreamWorks movie posters for the pages of this book. To list the versions/categories of the Font's family (italic, bold, etc..) I will place them as if they were credits for a movie and of course the producer and Director will be the founder of the palatino typeface. I also plan to incorporate movie film strips for the borders on some of the pages for a cinema look.

Hogan-Perpetua

Classified as a transitional typeface, Perpetua was designed by a British designer named Eric Gill. Born in Brighton, Sussex February 22, 1882, Eric Gill was the jack of many trades. He was not only a type designer; he was also a sculptor, a printmaker, and successful as an illustrator, engraver, and essayist. Gill started his studies as an architect with the practice of W.D Caroe in London. Frustrated with his training, Gill decided to take evening classes at Westminster Technical Institute and calligraphy at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. In his Calligraphy class, he studied under Edward Johnson, a heavy influence throughout his life and a large impact in directing his future because it wasn’t until these evening classes that he discovered his love for designing. In 1903, he gave up his architectural training to become a calligrapher, letter-cutter, and a wood engraver.

In 1925, at the request of Stanley Morison (Designer of Times New Roman), Gill began working on the typeface Perpetua for the Monotype Corporation. Its typeface is recognized as transitional due to its high stroke contrast and bracketed serifs and the letters of the face were designed around Trajan influenced forms. Gills design for the typeface was accompanied with two italic faces called Perpetua Italic and Felicity. His first Italic typeface, Felicity, was met with a great deal of criticism from Monotype management and actually stalled his development of the Perpetua typeface until his second Italic was created. In 1929, Perpetua Roman was issued as a Monotype Series. While waiting for the final revision of Perpetua, Gill was commissioned to draw Gill Sans, another block to the development of Perpetua. The interesting idea about the typeface Perpetua is that its’ completed family wasn’t made available to the public until 1932; over 7 years after Morison first approached Gill with the idea of creating the typeface Perpetua. For all its’ struggles in the developmental stages, Perpetua is still used widely today. In fact, in November 2007, Perpetua became the word mark of the Barack Obama presidential campaign.

Most of Gills earlier designs were done in collaboration with Monotype Corporation. Eric Gill used type as and outlet almost as his main source of artistic expression was former through stonecutting as well as printmaking. In later developments of his start to typeface design, he produced Golden Cockerell Roman, Solus, Joanna, Aries, Gill Floriated Capitals, Bunyan, Pilgrim, and Jubilee.

Due to it's recent use in the Barack Obama campaign I was considering using that presidential campaign as my concept. It is relevant to today with the fairly recent campaign and has become a typeface we are all familiar with seeing whether we realize it or not.

Adobe Jenson- Austin Beavers

Adobe Jenson

Adobe Jenson typeface created by Robert Slimbach. Robert Slimbach first began his designing career as a screen-printer running his own shop printing mostly greeting cards and business cards. After some training in Calligraphy, he began to work for the International Typeface Corporation in New York. Here he created two typefaces ITC Slimbach and ITC Giovanni, but he would become more known for his work with Adobe. Slimbach has created many typefaces while working with adobe like Garamond, Myrid, Minion and Utopia, but one of his most famous typefaces is Adobe Jenson. It took Robert Slimbach about five years to create Adobe Jenson. Jenson’s uppercase letters is based on inscriptions found on Roman ruins, and its lowercase letters came from Italian scholars as a way of copying books. When Robert Slimbach created this typeface in 1995 he was looking at an earlier ancient moveable print type that was created by Nichols Jenson during the mid-15th century. He would take Hundreds of photos of Nichols Jenson’s Books and enlarge the type and compare the different letters. Nichols Jenson’s books where pressed so each letter would come out somewhat different because ink would bleed differently around each letter. Robert Slimbach would then compile his sketches, and create a digital copy.

James- Times New Roman

Times New Roman was introduced in the 1930’s. The specific creator of this type remains a controversial issue but Stanley Morison is responsible for the introduction of Times New Roman. At the time, Morison wanted to update The Times newspaper, which was using a typeface called Times Old Roman. They appropriately named the new and updated version, Times New Roman. The Times continued to use Times New Roman as their primary typeface for forty years.

When personal computers came about, Times New Roman was the standard font for documents, which still can be seen today. Times New Roman is a serif typeface that has a very clean appearance, which make it a practical typeface. The substantial lines and weight of the typeface give Times New Roman a quiet confidence. Originally it was designed with newspaper printing in mind, but now it is a common font that is easy to read and can be used in many different aspects of type.


My concept for the book is based on newspaper layouts. I thought this was appropriate since Times New Roman was created specifially for a newspaper. I want to make columns and that give it a newspaper feel. I also want to pay attention to the placement of the date, page/issue number, etc. in newspapers.

Sosa - Helvetica

During the mid-1950s a man by the name Edouard Hoffman, who was part of the HAAS type foundry, strived to create a more modern type based off the Akzidenz Grotesk fonts. He felt they needed to be updated and refined, so Hoffman worked with Max Miedinger, who crafted the designs of their Grotesque sans serif typeface. When it first came out it was introduced as ‘Neue Haas Grotesk’. In Germany during 1961 a company named D. Stempel AG produced the type under the name ‘Helvetica’, which was the Latin word for Switzerland. Helvetica became widely popular due to its well defined-forms and neutrality. It has been considered the Swiss International Style. During the 1960’s through the 1980s, Helvetica has been refined and given more weights by the company Linotype. Due to its popularity it has spawned many imitators, one being Arial created by Monotype for IBM. They both use the same character widths, which has caused them to be widely used for Mac’s and PC’s. Helvetica is still popular, and loved today by many designers.

Max Miedinger designed the Helvetica typeface. He was born in Zurich in 1910. Around the late 1920’s he started to train as a typesetter and eventually went to go work for Edouard Hoffmann. Hoffman was the director of the HAAS Typefoundry. When Max first started working there he was a salesman, but the designer in him pushed him to create a sans serif typeface during his free time. He created the Typeface Haas Grotesk, which we now know as Helvetica. HAAS partners, D. Stempel AG and Linotype expanded this design and really took it to the next level. Miedinger was paid a stipend for his contribution to their success, which was a very uncommon practice at the time. He later died in 1980.

My Concept:

When I think of Helvetica I think about how much we see it in our corporate world and everyday lives. I always associate it with a very modern lifestyle. So for my book, I was thinking about focusing on a company that uses it and is widely recognizable, Apple Inc. I was picturing making it the style of iPhone Apps or an iPod play list. For example if it was the iPod idea, I would have the “Artists” be the Designers, the “Songs” be the different weights and styles, and so on. It still is a rough concept but I feel like it could work. Maybe if I lay out the pages the way you would see if you were listening to your Ipod, with the Album artwork being a particular weight or style (boxed in), and all the other info is there for it to the right of it. Let me know what you think, I hope I am not missing the idea of the book here.

Mendoza, Groteaque

Grotesque is an early sans-serif font that was developed in the 19th century. It was widely used and influenced many other typefaces that developed such as Helvetica and Univers. It is thought to be derived from Didot because of similar shapes and sizes after the serifs are removed. It was originally used as a term for sans-serif fonts in Britain and was commonly called “gothic” in the United States. They were named for their ugly appearance and many people felt as if the font itself was primitive especially coming from the classical era. Capital only faces of this style were first available from 1818 by William Caslon IV until 1832 when William Thorowgood produced the first sans-serif type with lowercase. It first emerged in the machine age and was used in display type, sign writing, and architectural handwriting. They were functional commercial faces designed for high impact. Other versions of grotsque were added in the late 1050’s to enlarge the typeface family. More sans-serif fonts developed through the 19th century, but were only seen as display type until improvements in mechanized punch cutting were made, then more sans-serif fonts were designed specifically for text setting toward the end of the century.

The official designer of the typeface Grotesque is William Thorowgood, but I couldn’t find any history on him. So I decided to do the history on the company that it is associated with which is Berthold. Berthold was one of the largest and most successful type foundries in the world and has long been associated with type design. It was established in 1858 by Herman Berthold and was based in Berlin. The company introduced many new typefaces and was one of the main companies who developed typesetting machines. In 1993, Berthold ceased operations due to financial troubles, however Berthold Types Ltd. which is based in Chicago, now takes over the distribution of the Berthold digital type library.

One of the concepts for my booklet is American Red Cross. I read that the grotesque and georgia typefaces are the official typefaces of the american red cross and anything published by them must be made using either of the two typefaces. I was thinking of showing the different ways that the red cross helps people and the different ways that people can help and donate to them. Like providing shelter i could show cots w/ blankets and pillows or blood donations in bags or something. My other idea was doing different well known signs since it was used at first as display type and sign writing. i'm not sure layout wise how i'd accomplish this since with the big paragraphs like the history, but i'm thinking everything else could come from signs inspired by Vegas and NY or something.

McClain - History of Clarendon

History and Bio


Clarendon is a slab-serif typeface created in 1845 by typographer and Lord Mayor of London, Robert Besley. The typeface was originally created for use by the Fann Street Foundry, a type foundry that specialized in display fonts. The name "Clarendon" comes from the Clarendon Press, a branch of the Oxford University Press. Because of Besley's foresight and business acumen, Clarendon holds the distinction of being the first patented typeface in history. However, because of the popularity of the typeface, the patent didn't stop imitators from duplicating the typeface and flooding the market with bootleg versions of Clarendon.


Robert Besley was born on October 14th, 1974. He learned how to print in his father’s shop when he was a young man. When the print workshop was inherited by his older brother, Robert was employed helping his brother manage and print the Devenshire Chronicle, a modestly circulated liberal newspaper. It was here Besley gained his appreciation for type setting and liberal politics. In 1820, Besley joined the Messrs. Thoregood (Fann Street) type-foundry, the firm that he would later become head of. After an illustrious career as a type designer, Besley began his career in politics around 1855. Between 1855 and his death in 1876, Besley would hold many political offices including Sheriff, Lord Mayor of London and Governor of the Stone lunatic asylum.


Up until recently, the US National Parks Service used Clarendon in map legends and directional signs used in national parks. The parks service now uses a font called NPS Rawlinson Roadway, a typeface designed specifically to replace Clarendon. Rawlinson Roadway takes up 15% less space and is 11% more legible at long distances.


Concept

I thought I make use of Clarendon's association with signage in State Parks. I plan on using road signs to highlight the different aspects of Clarendon like government signs guide visitors through a park.

Talley- Optima

History and Bio
German typeface designer Hermann Zapf, who also created Palatino, designed Optima between 1952-1955. His intentions were to create a classic roman without serifs. The typeface was commercially released in 1958 and became an instant success. Over the years many foundries released look-alike fonts. In 2002 Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashia redesigned the font family. This new version is called Optima Nova.
Hermann Zapf was born in Nuremberg Germany in 1918. Between 1934 and 1938, Hermann Zapf served an apprenticeship as a retoucher at Nuremberg printers Karl Ulrich & Co. In 1938 Hermann Zapf worked in the Paul Koch printing workshop in Frankfurt am Main. From 1947 until 1956 Hermann Zapf was employed in the typographical division of the Stempel type foundry. There Hermann Zapf designed the Optima (from 1958), Palatino (from 1948), and Sistina (1951) typefaces. Between 1957 and 1974. Hermann Zapf served as an adviser to the Linotype Company in New York. From 1972 until 1981 Hermann Zapf taught typography at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt. Between 1977 and 1987, Hermann Zapf was also a professor at the School of Printing in Rochester, New York. While there, Hermann Zapf did pioneering work in digitalizing a great many fonts for the new computer software. He invented more than 200 typefaces, of which some are today among the most widely used standard fonts. From 1977 Hermann Zapf designed the ITC Zapf typeface and, from 1999, Zapfino.
Optima has been used many times over the years, including John McCain’s presidential campaign, the Vietnam Memorial, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Concept
I am having a hard time coming up with concepts, but one of the uses was for John McCain’s presidential campaign so maybe I could go that route. Like sort of an “Optima for President” kind of theme. Another idea was to go with a Vietnam Memorial theme but that seems depressing… Any suggestions?

martinez-didot font

History Of The Didot Font Typeface
The history of the Didot font type began in Paris in 1783 by a man named Firmin Didot (1765-1836). Firmin was a 3rd generation printer of the popular and multi-talented Didot family who were active designers for about 100 years during the 18th and 19th centuries. They were printers, publishers, typeface designers, inventors, authors and intellectuals. In 1800, the Didot family owned the most important print shop and font foundry in France it was located at Essonnes, a town c. 30 km southeast of Paris near Corbeil, which had notable paper factories and their printing company still exists today under the name Firmin Didot. France is indebted to the Didot family for the publication of the Biographie Nationale, and Belgium is also indebted for the establishment of her Royal Press.
In 1783, Firmin designed the Didot typeface for his brother to publish in his next book while ushering in the “Modern Style” typeface. A style/period that is characterized by extreme vertical stress and fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes. Didot is described as neoclassical, and is evocative of the Age of Enlightenment. He invented the word "stereotype", which in printing refers to the metal printing plate created for the actual printing of pages (as opposed to printing pages directly with movable type), and used the process extensively, revolutionizing the book trade by his cheap editions. His manufactory was a place of pilgrimage for the printers of the world. Didot abandoned the hand penned style for cleaner more precise vertical strokes, with high contrasts between thin and thick strokes, and almost no brackets on the serifs. Because of their very fine hairline strokes that are characteristic of Modern Romans their use was restricted in metal types, but suitable for elegant book and magazines. Today you can find Didot font type on Harper’s Bazzar, and the Ally McBeal show.

Concept: I think I’m going to go with a French restaurant menu design for my theme since the didot font type was invented and is well known in France. It will include an illustration of the Eiffel Tower and a cartoon of a typical French chef with the catfish mustache and hint in the background of a façade of a nice restaurant and a wine bottle with grapes and other French iconic symbols in the menu.

Melton-Rockwell

My research portion of my project is on my dead computer and its new battery will be coming in by UPS ground at 3:15 approx. I'm UPS tracking it. So I will gladly repost around that time.

As far as my concept is concerned I was thinking about two. I either want to do egyptian style type thing involving crypts and pyramids because slab serif fonts came from an era when western culture became obsessed with Egyptian style things. This obsession started with furniture and fashion and finally made it all the way into their type faces. The slab serif was meant to look similar to the heirogliphics they found in tombs and other structures.

The other concept I was looking at was the early 1900 "newsie' looking theme. Using newpaper layout type design on the pages. This concept is relevent because slab serif fonts and rockwell in particular were used as a headline font. The bold, heavy fonts were meant to capture the attention of the passerby. This of course was a very big deal in its time because newspapers were still the publics main source of news.

Price-Frutiger

The designer Adrian Frutiger created the typeface Frutiger. Born and raised in Switzerland, his early interest in sculpture was discouraged buy his father, but has influenced his typeface design overall. He primarily studied calligraphy and was recruited by Charles Peignot, of the Paris foundry Deberny Et Peignot where he crated his first commercial typefaces beginning in 1954, President, Ondine, and Meridian. In 1956, he created his first slab serifs, Egyptienne, then the popular Univers.
Due to the popularity of Univers The French public transit authority asked Adrian Frutiger to commissioned for the signage in the French, Charles de Gaulle International Airport in 1968. The Swiss designer wanted a typeface that was modern and legible at different angles, sizes and distances. He adapted a look that was clean like his own popular font Univers, but had more organic proportions like that of Gill Sans.
Frutiger designed the font and its various weights all by hand and the working title of the typeface was Roissy. Some of its features include prominent ascenders and descenders, as well as a wide aperture to easily distinguish the letters from each other. The D Stempel AG type foundry asked Frutiger to make the Roissy lettering a typeface for Linotype. He made adjustments to the stroke thickness and extended the range of weights and felt that his new sans-serif was an expression of the 1970’s and 80’s. The Roissy type was released by Linotype in 1977 as Frutiger.

My concept for the booklet, is going to be a travel guide, but not to interesting cities, but to random, boring towns, that do not have any real attractions. Or to cities that produce the most pollution. Because the type was designed for an airport signs, I thought a guide that you might find in an airport would be appropriate.

Kopecki - Bodoni

History & Bio
When you think of simple elegance, you think of Bodoni. In the early 20th century Italy’s Giambattista Bodoni’s elegant, hairlined typefaces were favored by many. He created 140 roman fonts and more than 115 titling and script fonts. Bodoni’s fonts were meant to be appreciated as works of art, rather than mere pieces of communication. While Bodoni’s fonts were often copied, revived and interpreted, not all were done with success.
The first revival his work was created by Morris Fuller Benton 1908- 1915 for the American Type Founders Company. It was Benton’s first design as the company’s director of typographic development. After much research, the revival Bodoni typeface became a relatively stout interpretation of Bodoni’s letters. Benton tried to choose the best qualities of letter forms from examples of books printed by Bodoni. His design was a success that has been carried out in the tradition of typeface-design emulation and served as the foundation for virtually every new Bodoni for years to come.
Bodoni, the typeface, is one of the first of the Didone genre. The fonts were thought to be the first of the modern fonts. This genre is also primarily associated with Didot, but has been applied to both contemporary and revival typefaces. The Didone genre is characterized by pronounced contrast in weight between vertical strokes and horizontal hairlines that emphasize the vertical stress of the letters. I find it modern because it includes both bracketed and unbracketed serifs within the same font. These qualities allow for extended typeface families. When used, text takes on a sophisticated demeanor. Reinterpretations of Bodoni by type foundries in both Europe and the United States have led to a wide range of variants of its original form. Bodoni itself has seven forms. These forms incorporate a wide range of widths and weights, including ultra bold and thin faces.

Concept
My main idea is to go off the fact that the Bodoni font began in Italy. I'd like to theme the booklet as an Italian restaurant. My first idea is to do a pizzaria, but call it "Bodoniria." The history would be labled "About Bodoni" like it is a family that began the restaurant. Other titles in the booklet would be Pizza for the styles, sizes/ toppings for the uses, ingrdients for the bibliography. I would use the checkered tablecloth through out the book and put "Bon Appetit" on the back. My second idea is to go with a more formal look by using elegant swirls to outline and underline different sectoins of the book. The history would again be labled as about Bodoni, styles- entrees, uses- wines, bibliography- desserts. In the entree section I would put the styles on a server to take on the look of a sophisticated restaurant.
I am not yet sure which idea I like most.

Boothby, InDesign Tip

How to create a new Swatch color.
To create a new Swatch color just follow these simple instructions:
1. Go to window and make sure your swatch catagory is open, if not open it up on your screen.
2. once its open on your screen click on the swatch selection tool.
3. at the top right corner, click on the button with the arrow pointing downwards with the lines next to it.
4. From here click new color swatch at the top of the list.
5. From here you can play with the CMYK colors and create a swatch you are wanting.
6. Once you have created your swatch click okay and your swatch is now available in your swatch tool list ready for you to select!

Garza - Didot

History and Bio
The Didot typeface draws inspiration from John Baskerville's efforts to increase stroke contrast, while adding a more condensed armature. Unlike other modern typefaces such as Bodoni and Baskerville, Firmin Didot, the creator of the typeface, produced this linotype with unbracketed, purely horizontal serifs rather than with gentle, sloped serifs. The typeface's strong and clear forms display both the objective and rational characteristics that are representative of their time, as well as the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, offering both a classic and elegant look and feel in its aesthetic.

The linotype, Didot, typeface was first created in 1784 by the French printer, Firmin Didot, who had belonged to a family of highly well-known French designers and type producers. The Didot Family were active as designers for around 100 years in the 18th and 19th centuries, containing the likes of printers, publishers, typeface designers, inventors and intellectuals. The Didot typeface was the first modern roman typeface and was designed by Firmin Didot 1784. Pierre Didot, Firmin’s brother and typeface printer, published a document containing Firmin’s various typefaces. Along with Giambattista Bodoni, Firmin Didot is credited with designing and establishing the "modern" classification of typefaces. Throughout his life, he was a punch cutter, type founder, printer, publisher and author. By 1783, at age nineteen, Didot had cut his first typefaces and reworked his father’s roman alphabets. In 1797, Didot was granted a patent for his developments within the field of stereotype printing and his typefaces were published in his brother Pierre Didot’s “Editions du Louvre” series. Firmin Didot was born in 1764 in Paris, France and died in 1836 in Mesnil-sur-I’Estree, France.

The Didot typeface remained the standard typeface in France for an entire century and is still widely used in France today. It is described as "neoclassical," and is evocative of the Age of Enlightenment. "Didot" remains to be France's greatest contribution to the world of type design.

Concept:

I’m thinking my concept will be an attempt to execute a TV Guide listing/information about a French television series/sitcom on CBS called “Didot,” similar to Seinfeld. [Firmin] Didot is the main character and the characteristics of the font will be reflected in the characteristics and personality of the character. Maybe something like the supporting cast of characters will be the various styles within Didot (i.e. bold, italic, regular) , unless I can come up with another idea for this. This relates to my typeface because, for many years, Didot was the official typeface of the CBS logo and from what I’ve researched, this has been its most significant use in popular media of recent time.

Boothby, InDesign Tip

How to create a new Swatch color.
To create a new Swatch color just follow these simple instructions:
1. Go to window and make sure your swatch catagory is open, if not open it up on your screen.
2. once its open on your screen click on the swatch selection tool.
3. at the top right corner, click on the button with the arrow pointing downwards with the lines next to it.
4. From here click new color swatch at the top of the list.
5. From here you can play with the CMYK colors and create a swatch you are wanting.
6. Once you have created your swatch click okay and your swatch is now available in your swatch tool list ready for you to select!

Rice- Helvetica

History:

One can find the Helvetica typeface anywhere: on the internet, in print, in movies (Helvetica), and news. It has been known as a “grotesque sans serif”. Helvetica was first created in 1954 by Max Miedinger, released by Linotype and has stayed and successfully remained one of the most common typefaces used. The most important record of Helvetica’s creation is a simple notebook, into which Eduard Hoffmann put all the proofs that were related for the beginning of the Neue Haas Grotesk and later Helvetica. Hoffmann documented every single developmental step for each and every letter, numeral, and special character in all point sizes of the Medium, Regular, Bold, Regular Italic and Bold Italic. As in a diary, he dated each entry of typefaces, noted the opinion’s of third parties, drew desired changes, and regularly compared the results he recieved to the Akzidenz Grotesk typeface. The entries in this fifty-eight page chronicle began on November 16, 1956 and end on July 21, 1965. It serves as a priceless testimony, unprecedented in typeface history. In 1983 there was a second version of Helvetica made called Neue Helvetica by D. Stempel AG. This was a modification of the 1957 original. The 1983 version was redesigned due to the fact it gave the weights, widths and spacing inconsistency. This version simply compromised the two. This new design allowed for total liberty in design. Likewise, in 2004 the Neue Helvetica Pro was released as a more Opentype version of the two fonts. The outcome carefully redrawn lead to the production of aesthetics and all of the improvements and modifications resulting in the best form, legibility and effectiveness possible. Helvetica captured the modernist liking for using clarity and simplicity to suggest greater ideas. The fact that the typeface is clean-cut and simple means that it can be used as a neutral platform in a wide variety of settings and it is the particular context and substance of the messages that convey their meaning.

Bio:

Max Meidinger was born in 1910 in Zurich he died in 1980 still residing in Zurich. He is known a type designer, most famous for the Helvetica type family. In the late 1920's Miedinger trained as a typesetter, and eventually went to work for Edouard Hoffmann who was the director of the Haas Typefoundry. At the foundry, Miedinger worked primarily as a salesman. But in his spare time, under Hoffmann's command, he designed a sans serif typeface, Haas Grotesk. Haas partners D. Stempel AG and Linotype expanded the design into the complete Helvetica family from 1957 onward. Helvetica's success was enormous, and it was the type to put him on the map as a type designer. Linotype paid him an income for his contribution to their corporate success until his death in 1980, which was a very uncommon practice at the time.

Concept:

Since Helvetica is seen widely around the world in ads, signs and icons; I see Helvetica as typeface that has taken over the world. Therefore, my idea for the type specimen on Helvetica, is to title it “Taking Over Zee World” and make all of the cuts and weights different cinereous and different cartoon villains.


(Posted this blog in Arial for kicks and giggles)

Quiroga - Franklin Gothic

Morris Fuller Benton, an engineer, became head of type design at the American Type Foundry (ATF) in 1900. During Benton’s lifetime, he eventually came to design over 220 typefaces. Between 1902 and 1905 Benton released the first series of Franklin Gothic typefaces. He continued to release variations of the font, such as extra condensed, oblique and condensed shaded through the year 1914. During this time, there were already various Gothic typefaces. What makes Franklin Gothic stand out is the slight thinning of the bowls where they connect to stems. Another feature that makes Franklin Gothic different from other Gothic or Grotesque typefaces is the double-bowled lowercase g and the curled a. Most gothic fonts had lost these features by this time, but Benton kept them. The typeface has not only survived, but still remains popular to this day. Victor Caruso added book and medium weights in 1980. In the 1990s, David Berlow created condensed, compressed, and extra compressed. When compared to most sans-serif typefaces, Franklin Gothic has a larger x-height, making even the smallest fonts readable. Though it is legible when it’s small, Franklin Gothic is often a chosen display font for advertisements and newspapers.

Theme: Big Newspaper Story (I’m thinking “Oil Spill in the Gulf: One of the Biggest Environmental Disasters of All Time”)

Creator: Morris Fuller Benton (bio) (“Tony Hayward (Morris Fuller Benton), CEO, BP”)

Character set: “Key Players in Spill”

I really want to go with a big story from this year, but all I could think of is BP, which is not exactly a positive tale. I don’t know if I should make the creator of the font the CEO of BP. Thoughts? Suggestions? Anyone?

Suniga - News Gothic

Essay & Bio: News Gothic
News Gothic is a realist sans-serif typefaces designed by Morris Fuller Benton, and released by the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1908. The typeface was originally drawn in two lighter weights, a medium text weight using the title News Gothic, and a closely related light weight marketed under the name Lightline Gothic. The typeface family was enlarged in 1958 with the addition of two bold weights. News Gothic is similar in proportion and structure to Franklin Gothic also designed by Benton.
News Gothic, like other Benton sans serif typefaces, follows the grotesque model. Shapes which distinguish it from the neo-grotesque are the two-story lowercase a and the two-story lowercase g. Also distinctive are the blunt terminus at the apex of the lowercase t, and the location of the tail of the uppercase Q completely outside the bowl. The letter forms are compact, and descenders are shallow. The typeface differs from other realist sans-serifs in its organic shapes and subtle transitions of stroke width, all contributing to a less severe, humanist tone of voice. For much of the twentieth century News Gothic was used in newspaper and magazine publishing.
News Gothic is available in standard, condensed, and extra condensed widths, each with a matching bold and italic. The standard width typeface is available in light, standard, demi, and bold weights, each with a matching italic. The condensed and extra condensed widths are ideal for use in tables and parts lists.
Because there is no active descendant of the American Type Founders Corporation making digital typefaces, News Gothic has been revived in digital form in many different versions from different sources. Adobe, Monotype, Linotype, Bitstream and The Font Bureau all have their own versions.

Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an influential American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937. Benton was America's most prolific type designer, having completed 221 typefaces, ranging from revivals of historical models like ATF Bodoni, to adding new weights to existing faces such as Goudy Old Style and Cheltenham, and to designing original designs such as Hobo, Bank Gothic and Broadway. Benton's large family of related neogrotesque sans-serif typefaces, known as "gothics" as was the norm at the time, includes Alternate Gothic, Frankilin Gothic, and News Gothic. All were more similar to, and better anticipated, later realist sans-serif typefaces such as Helvetica than did the other early grotesque types of his contemporaries.

Concept:
Not really sure where to go with this. News Gothic was mainly used in magazine and news paper publishing so I was thinking I could go in that direction but again, not too sure on how to approach this. I was thinking of redesigning or reinventing an already existing publication, or just coming up with one all together. Suggestions anyone??

Sandoval—Converting Master Page objects


So, you're making a sweet polygon book. Got your first master page set up and everything. See that spread? All your pages are gonna have those objects on them. Just like...

This. Bam. As you can see, even the first page is adhering to the spread design. "OH NO!" you might yell, "I DON'T WANT THAT AS MY COVER!" Dude, first, calm down, next don't worry. Check it out.

See page 1? Yeah, kinda cool, but you wanna move this stuff, right? Well, click all you like, but so long as the shapes have a dotted outline as, opposed to a solid line, they will remain static. Dang, but here's the fix.



While holding down "command" and "shift" simultaneously, you unlock some serious power. Go ahead and try highlighting the group of shapes while holding these keys. Once you release all those pressed buttons, you should see some conversion magic. As shown in this example, all the shapes are now selected.

So now, you can make a pretty amazing cover! It was a neat trick I learned a bit back and I thought it was useful sometimes.

Tyler - Virtual Class

Trade Gothic is a lineale type with short ascenders and descenders. This sans serif is classified as Grotesque and is 19th century in style, with the exception of the ‘g’. It is unique because of its variation of underlying structure across the entire family. For instance, the bold condensed form is significantly more square-sided and mechanistic than its lighter weight counterparts. Because of this variation, Trade Gothic fits a wide range of uses. Its bold condensed fonts have become quite popular in newspaper headlines.

Designed by Jackson Burke, Trade Gothic is very similar to News Gothic. In 1948, when American gothics returned to popularity after European sans serifs has replaced them for a while, the small sizes were recut to match the larger ones and Linotype changed the name to Trade Gothic Condensed and Extra Condensed. The light and regular weights are virtually the same as News Gothic, but the bold weight has flat sides on its round letters, making it a wider version of Alternate Gothic, and unlike News Gothic Bold. Trade Gothic Extended and Bold Extended were introduced in 1959 with round sides, and Trade Gothic Light and Italic were released in 1962.

Jackson Burke was born in San Francisco, CA in 1908 and attended the University of California – Berkeley. After serving in World War II he spent a short period as a private printer. In 1949 he took over as the Director of Type Development for Mergenthaler Linotype, where he stayed until 1963. During this time, Burke oversaw the production of typefaces in which the vast majority of American newspapers were set for nearly half a century. He is responsible for the development of the TeleTypesetting System (TTS) used in magazine production. In addition to Trade Gothic, he also designed Majestic (1953-56) and Aurora (1960), as well as fonts for Native American languages. He died in 1975.

Since it was nearly impossible to find anything related to this typeface, I couldn't find many options regarding concept. My concept deals with newspapers since the typeface was commonly used in newspaper headlines. I'm not really sure what direction I want to go with it, but I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions you might have. I'm thinking I could set up my typesetting examples like newspaper articles with the font name as the headline. Other than that, I'm kind of lost. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Childress - Palatino

HISTORY: A man named Hermann Zapf created Palatino in 1948. He named the typeface after a 16th century Italian master of calligraphy Giambattista Palatino. This typeface is based on the humanist fonts of the Italian Renaissance, which mirror the letters formed by a broad nub pen. Palatino differs from these Renaissance fonts by having larger proportions where the others use smaller letters with longer vertical lines. It carries a since of elegance that a lot of typefaces do not especially in larger fonts. Palatino is considered much easier to read than the other fonts too. Palatino’s classical proportions have named it among the most universally popular of all roman typefaces. Palatino has many uses from “continuous text to display sizes”, within the Palatino family a wide variety of weights and variations are available. Palatino is also a trademark to the Linotype Corp. Zapf created an updated version in 1999 of Palatino for Linotype and Microsoft using Latin, Greek and Cyrillic character sets.

CONCEPT: I was thinking about choosing a cotillion theme for my typeface. From the research I did, I have found that palatino is known for is elegance and readability. I think a good way to show off its elegance would be to demonstrate it through the use of cotillion terminology such as the names of dances, table manners, and mature behavior characteristics. Palatino looks most elegant in larger fonts, so I would definitely make sure to make use of headings and sub titles. I would also have the pages be very organized and orderly to illustrate my theme as well.

Wilson - Trade Gothic

Trade Gothic was first cut by Jackson Burke in 1948. Jackson Burke continued working on creating more weights and styles up until 1960. Jackson Burke designed the Trade Gothic font for Mergenthaler Linotype, which was the company that Jackson Burke was the Director of Typographic Development at from 1949 to 1963. Trade Gothic is a trademark of the Linotype Corporation because of this reason. Trade Gothic is one of Linotype’s best selling fonts. Like other fonts that use the nineteenth century grotesque style, Trade Gothic has a large x-height. The x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the median, often times the height of the letter x. Also, because of Trade Gothic’s condensed faces, it is often a classic font used for designs on headlines and sub-heading for newspapers, magazines, and classified advertisements. Many designers consider Trade Gothic a great no-nonsense typeface making is perfect for headers. Trade Gothic is often matched up with antiqua and/or roman text fonts to contrast Trade Gothic’s almost serious personality. Trade Gothic does not display much unifying form structure within it’s family of fonts, like other popular sans serif font families (like Futura, Helvetica, Univers, and many others), but this difference adds to its multiple uses and contributes towards today’s trend of types which are, or at least seem to be, hand worked or naturalistic. Trade Gothic is often used in many multimedia and advertisements needs because of Trade Gothic’s versatility and appeal. Trade Gothic has become one of my personal favorite typefaces. Because of Trade Gothic being such a versatile family of fonts it is quite easy to use with advertisements and headlines for newspapers and magazines. One of the most important aspects of Trade Gothic is how various the different fonts within the family are from each other.

Jackson Burke was an American typeface and book designer. He studied design at the University of California, Berkeley. After school, he became the Director of Typographic Development at Mergenthaler Linotype. He had this position from 1949 to 1963. While working at Mergenthaler Linotype, Burke was responsible for development of fonts for use with Native American languages, and the TeleTypesetting System for magazine uses. Along with creating the Trade Gothic typeface, Burke worked on the Majestic and Aurora typefaces.

Concept: I have had some problems with coming up with a good concept to use with this typeface, but I think I will go with trying to make the booklet appear like a newspaper. Be using the bold condensed fonts for the titles like in a newspaper and a light standard font for the body copy, I believe I will be able to give a front page of a newspaper look to my type book. Any help I can get with my concept I would greatly appreciate though.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

PARSONS - FRANKLIN GOTHIC

Franklin Gothic is a font originally developed by a man named Morris Fuller Benton in 1904. Benton was the chief type designer for the American Type Founders (ATF) from 1900 to 1937 and in that time produced approximately 221 type designs including Franklin Gothic. Franklin Gothic was inspired by the sans serif fonts being created in the late 1800s by foundries like Berthold Types(1958) who created Akzidenz Grotesk in 1896 and mimicked by other foundries.

Primarily a newspaper and advertisement font, Franklin Gothic was very popular in the early 1900s but toward the middle of the 1920s it began to fall out of favor and out of mind. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the font began to resurface among information communicators. Notably, in 1980 International Typeface Corporation (ITC) commissioned Victor Caruso to reinvent the classic Franklin Gothic. Out of this renovation Franklin Gothic gained four new weights in roman and italic: book, medium, demi and heavy. Later, in 1991 a suite of 12 condensed/compressed versions were designed by David Berlow.

Demand for Franklin Gothic fonts was steady through the late 1900s but the sporadic variety of fonts left modern designers wanting more. It was David Berlow who rose to the challenge and teamed up with ITC to rework the ITC Franklin Gothic font family into what is and will be known as ITC Franklin. ITC Franklin font family increased to 48 fonts in its first phase known as ITC Franklin Type, which was released in 2008. The next phase, ITC Franklin Text is currently under development but should see release in the near future.

For over 100 years the Franklin Gothic font family and its descendants have captured the hearts, imaginations, and attention of thousands of readers and with the newest designs coming on the horizon it appears that it will continue to impact and mold the society we live in for many years to come.


CONCEPT; Well this is where it gets hard I suppose, I think since this font and the person the font is named for have strong ties to the newspaper business I would try to model this to be a type of special edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette? Drawing on existing copies for inspiration...Comments?