Caroline Heller

Monday, December 15, 2014

Thinking With Type

1. What are the advantages of a multiple column grid?

      Flexible formats for publications.

2. How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line?

     60 characters per line, 12 words per line

3. Why is the baseline grid used in design?

   So everything lines up evenly across the whole page or spread.

4. What are reasons to set type justified? ragged (unjustified)?

   Justified makes the page flow smoothly, ragged can be used depending on where you place
     the text.

5. What is a typographic river?

Gaps in your type setting that appear to run through the whole paragraph of text.

6. What does clothesline, hangline or flow line mean?

     An area across the top of the page that is reserved for images and captions, and body text can
     "hang" form a common line.

7. What is type color/texture mean?

   How dense or heavy the text appears on the page.

8. How does x-height effect type color?

   X Height is the difference between the lines. This can make the type color look less dense or
     more dense if the X Height is large. Or vice versa.

9. What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules?

   Indent - use 3 spaces or the tab key
     Double Space between paragraphs - indent the first paragraph

Monday, November 10, 2014

Marilyn Minter

Marylin Minter

Bio: Marylin Minter was born in 1948 and is an American artist currently living in New York. She has had many solo exhibitions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, the Center for Contemporary Art in 2009, La Conserva, Centra de Arte Contemporaneo, Ceuti/Murica, Spain in 2009, the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2010, and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany in 2011. Her work has been exhibited in the lobby of MoMA, shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in LA, and the Creative Time MTV billboard in Time Square, NY. She has has also been included in many group exhinitions in museums all over the world. She was most recently featured in "Riotous Baroque," an exhibition that originated at Kunsthaus Zurich and traveled to the Guggenheim Bilabo. Minter is represented by Salon 94, New york and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Photography:

Video work: Green and Pink Caviar, 2009
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj5nygOPW9Q

Sources:
http://www.marilynminter.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Minter

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Identifying Fonts

Know Your Fonts

Old Style:

A style of serif font developed by Renaissance typographers to replace the Blackletter style of type. Based on ancient Roman inscriptions, Old Style fonts are generally characterized

Examples:

Transitional:

The Antiqua or Old Style of type of the 16th and 17th centuries evolved into a serif typestyle known as trasitional

Examples:

Modern:

A style of typeface developed in the late 18th century that continued through much of the 19th century. Characterized by high contrast between thick and thin strokes and flat, hairline serifs, Modern fonts are harder to read than previous and later typestyles developed for text.

Examples:

Slab Serif:

A type of serif font that evolved from the Modern style. The serifs are square and larger, bolder than serifs of previous typestyles. Considered a sub-classification of Modern in some type classification systems and its own class in other systems, Slab Serif is further divided into: Clarendon, Typewriter, Slab Serif or Geometrics (a separate sub-category of Slab Serif), Fat Face (a fattened Didone/Modern style).

Examples:

Sans Serif:

In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, san serif or simply sans typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without".

Examples:

Dissecting a Font:

Stroke Weight:

The thickness of lines in a font character. The HP LaserJet defines stroke weights from Ultra Thin (-7) to Ultra Black (+7), with Medium, or Text, as normal (0)

Stress:

The diagonal, vertical, or horizontal thick-to-thin transition in the stroke of a letter

Small Caps:

Small capitals (usually abbreviated small caps) are uppercase (capital) characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase (small) letters or text figures.

Lining Figures:

A modern style of numerals where all figures are of the same height (and typically larger than Old Style Figures in the same font) and rest on the baseline. Some fonts come with both Old Style and Lining Figures.

Non-Aligning Figures:

Also called Old Style figures, are Arabic numerals varying in height and position. Some sit on the baseline while others descend beneath the baseline.

Ligatures:

Two or more letters combined into one character make a ligature. In typography some ligatures represent specific sounds or words such as the AE or æ diphthong ligature. Other ligatures are primarily to make type more attractive on the page such as the fl and fi ligatures.

Type Measurement:

A common unit of measurement in typography. Em is traditionally defined as the width of the uppercase M in the current face and point size. It is more properly defined as simply the current point size. For example, in 12-point type, em is a distance of 12 points. em dash.