Another Revisit

Hello Reader,

This post is about another project revisit that I’m doing for school. This time the revisit is for a typography project instead of illustration. In just writing that previous line, an idea has sparked on the direction I would like to go with this project. My previous version of the typography project featured a large abstract image and the focus was put into that instead of the actual typography.

Take a look at a part of what I’ll be reworking:

The direction I want to go with this is to create a purely typographic poster, using elements from the typefaces to make it interesting.

I don’t have much else to say in this blog post but I’ll reiterate what I mentioned last time. Create a plan for what you need to do! It makes work so much easier when you have a path to follow as opposed to walking blindly to the solution.

Well, ’til next time!

– John

Crafting Type Event

Hello Reader, in this post I want to tell you about an opportunity I got for learning more about typography. Last week, myself and three other friends traveled to Toronto to take part in a Crafting Type Event. The event was a three day workshop taught by Octavio Pardo and Aoife Mooney.

Octavio is a graphic designer from Spain. He is a graduate of the MA Typeface Design programme from the University of Reading (UK, 2010). Aoife is a type designer from Dublin. She is also a graduate from the MA Typeface Design programme in the same year as Octavio. You can read more about Octavio and Aoife and other instructors here.

“Good typefaces are designed for a good purpose, but not even the very best types are suited to every situation” -John Boardley

The statement above is something we learned in the workshop. Many type faces are designed for a specific purpose and may not work well outside of that purpose. In the workshop we learned about two different kinds of type faces. The first kind is body type which is designed for legibility and can be applied to various font sizes. Body type is used for large pieces of text such as a newspaper, a book, a flyer, even this blog post. Even within body type there are many different kinds of type faces to be used. There are type faces designed for screens, for prints, for documents, etc. The other kind of type face we learned about is display type. Display type can be more expressive than body type as it isn’t used for large quantities. Display type is used for headlines, titles or signage and is not designed to be read in large portions of text, although this isn’t impossible! There are different type faces designed for different applications and situations.

 This is a picture of the instructors critiquing the type faces we designed during the workshop.

I definitely recommend this event. If you hear about it happening somewhere near you, TAKE IT! Even after taking two years of typography class, this workshop has taught me so much. I’ll end this blog post with a sample of the typeface I designed as well as a small something I learned from the workshop. A list about what a good typeface has: proportion, consistency, alignment, models, weight contrast, case relationships.

 Gemetri by Johnathan LeBlanc

’til next time!

– John

 

 

Summary

Hello reader,

This is my last blog post as part of the blog assignment for my class. There were a few points as to why blogging is a good thing for graphic designers, or anyone really. These reasons are: we get to practice researching a topic and providing evidence for our opinions, an improvement of writing skills, engagement with a greater community, development of an online profile, and an opportunity for self reflection on our learning.

Originally when starting this blog assignment I was thinking “Oh great, more homework. As if we won’t have enough already”. I thought this would be a nuisance. The further into the assignment though I realized how this could actually help me, and help me it did (as listed in the opening paragraph here). The idea of writing is still kind of scary for me, as it isn’t something I really like to do. To be honest though I think this blogging assignment did help with my writing skills. The most challenging part of this assignment was finding time to sit down for awhile to research and write these blog posts.

I think I will keep this blog going but posts will be less frequent. I’ll make sure that they are good posts though! Let’s just say quality over quantity.

Well reader, hopefully you got something out of this assignment as well. Perhaps you learned something useful from one of my previous posts to add to your bag of skills.

’til next time though, John