OUGD404 - Visual Literacy

Session 1 - 6.11.12

Visual Literacy - The language of Graphic Design

• Construct meaning from type & image
• Interpreting images of the present, past and a range of cultures
• Producing images that effectively communicate a message to an audience

Visual Communication - Process of sending & receiving messages using type and image

All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people.

• Rules - can not be broken - an agreement of everyone

Principles - how the rules came about - there to be investigated

• Type is illustration - shapes & lines used to create letterforms

STONE - Chipping

SABLE - Brush (Ancient China etc)

BONE - Quill to generate writing & letterforms

WOOD - Carvings - soft material that could have hard edges when printed

LEAD - Letterpress - Combines typefaces - casted & moulded - a huge range

SILICONE - Digital - a lot of possibilities

Stone

Sable (Brush)

Bone (Quill)

Wood

Lead (Letter Press)

Silicone (Digital)

Digital type now has references to the older styles (brush strokes etc)

Bauhaus - brought together traditions & mass productions.

               - form & function in typography - form followed function

Bauhaus Typefaces:

Herbert Bayer

Typeface I created for OUGD405 based on Bayer:

Function can drive form.

Johann Gutenberg - 1455 - The 'Gutenberg press' - first mass production - the bible

• Global typefaces - typefaces forming in the middle east etc
• Nokia created a global typeface - taking other cultures alphabets into consideration.
• Typographers taking other cultures language into consideration.

My chosen 5 typefaces from task - Choose 5 typefaces from the LCA Font Book:

Arcadia

Bauhaus Standard

Latha

Monoline Script

Monotype Modern Standard

In groups we laid out all our typefaces and categorised them into six different categories depending on their characteristics.

• Serif
• Sans Serif
• Hand written
• Type writer
• Modern/contemporary
• Traditional

As we had such a range of 30 typefaces, all which were completely different, we found this task quite hard to begin with. We started by splitting them into two main categories: Serif & Sans Serif. From here we went through the piles and split them further into the other four categories: Hand written, Type writer, Modern & Traditional.

As a class we complied a list of all the different categories we made.

• Serif
• Sans Serif
• Hand Written
• Type Writer
• Modern
• Traditional
• Western
• Contemporary
• Digital
• Script
• Decorative
• Bold
• Light

We were then given the six headings to categories our typefaces into:

• Stone
• Sable
• Bone
• Wood
• Lead
• Silicone

Once they were in the categories we then had to think of one word that described the top typeface. Ours were:

• Roman
• Calligraphy
• Script
• Block
• Modern
• Basic