Typographic Design: Form and Communication

Table of Contents:
Foreword, Rob Carter viii Introduction ix 1 The Evolution of Typography 1 From the origins of writing to Gutenberg’s invention of movable type 2 Typography from Gutenberg to the nineteenth century 7 The nineteenth century and the Industrial Revolution 12 Typography in the twentieth century 18 A new century and millennium begin 27 2 The Anatomy of Typography 31 Letterforms analyzed 32 The typographic font 35 Historical classification of typefaces 38 Typographic measurement 42 The type family 45 3 Legibility 49 Basic principles of legibility 50 Legibility and digital typography 60 Typographic details 62 4 The Typographic Grid 65 Background 66 Structure and space 67 Proportion 68 The square 69 Single column grids 71 Multicolumn grids 74 Modular grids 78 Improvisational structures 84 5 Syntax and Communication 85 Typographic syntax 86 Typographic space 96 Visual hierarchy 100 ABA form 106 6 The Typographic Message 111 A multidimensional language 112 Verbal/visual equations 114 Function and expression 118 7 The Evolution of Typographic Technology 121 Hand composition 122 Machine composition 123 Phototypesetting 125 Digital typesetting 128 Screen-based typography 131 8 Typography on Screen 133 Rendering type on screen 134 Reading on screen 137 Selecting typefaces 138 Legibility factors for on-screen typography 141 Web design technology 145 Structuring web pages 146 Case studies 148 9 Typography in Time and Motion 155 Background 156 Using type in time-based media 159 How type changes and moves 163 Legibility factors 167 Expression 169 10 Case Studies in Typographic Design 171 Integrating type and image in poster design 172 The U.S. National Park Service Unigrid system 176 Book design: VAS: An Opera in Flatland 179 Typographic film titles 183 Buenos Aires Underground (Subte) 186 Information design: Metropolitan World Atlas 190 A typographic program for the 17th Street Farmers’ Market 194 11 Typographic Design Education 197 Letter/digit configurations 198 Urban letterform studies 198 Flowering typography 199 Inventing sign systems 199 Comparative relationships: type and image 200 Sequential typographic forms in space 201 Typography and image transformations 201 Unity of form and communication 202 Syntactic explorations using onomatopoeic terms 203 Visual structure motion studies 204 Type chronology booklet 205 Typographic hierarchy 206 Calendar deconstruction 207 Experimental compositions with found typography 208 Directional poster: from your house to the university 209 Visual organization and grid structures 209 New York Times grid analysis 210 Environmental grids 211 Banknote design 212 Observing systems in our surroundings 213 Typographic cubes 214 Blending Latin and non-Latin typographic forms 214 Type and image in the third dimension 215 Typezine: my favorite typeface 216 Typeface design: mind/machine 217 Experimental typographic system 218 Expressive typography: form amplifies message 219 Type as metaphor 219 Form and counterform, scale and proportion: “Ne var, ne yok?” 220 12 Typographic Design Process 221 A traditional model 222 Exploring typographic permutations 229 Exploring typographic transformation 234 Ludd: a typographic expedition 241 Composites 249 13 Type Specimens 255 Old Style 256 Garamond 258 Additional Old Style fonts 264 Sans serif 266 Franklin Gothic 268 Univers 274 Meta 280 Futura 286 Additional sans serif fonts 292 Transitional 294 Baskerville 296 Additional transitional fonts 302 Modern 304 Bauer Bodoni 306 Additional Modern fonts 312 Egyptian 314 Serifa 316 Additional Egyptian fonts 322 Selected Decorative fonts 324 Glossary 326 Bibliography 332 Credits 334 Index 338

About the Author :
Rob Carter is Professor Emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University, and has served as a visiting professor at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. He is the author of American Typography Today, Typographic Design: The Great Typefaces, the five-volume Working with Type series, and Digital Color and Type. He is also coauthor of Meggs: Making Graphic Design History. The late Philip B. Meggs was School of the Arts Research Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University; visiting faculty at Syracuse University and the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland; and contributing editor to Print magazine. He authored more than a dozen books and 150 articles and papers on design and typography, including a section on graphic design in Encyclopedia Britannica. The late Ben Day was Professor Emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University. He also taught at Boston University and had been a Visiting Designer at the University of Connecticut. Sandra Maxa is Director of the Graphic Design Post Baccalaureate Program at the Maryland Institute College of Art, has served as visiting faculty at the Pratt Institute, and has taught at Parsons The New School for Design and at Rutgers University–Newark Mark Sanders is full-time faculty in the Graphic Design department at Maryland Institute College of Art, has served as visiting faculty at the Pratt Institute, and has taught at Parsons The New School for Design and at Rutgers University–Newark. Both Sandra and Mark are Partners at Q Collective, a visual communication and branding studio in New York and Baltimore.