Journal 4

This article was extremely inspiring. I have always loved beautiful lettering with decorative flourishes and calligraphic elements. I am excited to begin practicing some hand lettering of my own. I was really drawn to the very decorative script-like hand lettering examples. Jessica Hische has been someone that I have followed for about a year now because she is such an accomplished letterer. I also really love Louise Fili's work.

I was really drawn to this hand lettered logotype because it reminded me of my own lettering. It was really in my comfort zone and felt like something that I could use as inspiration when practicing my own lettering. I love that it stays true to its x-height and that it creates a curved baseline for you eye to follow. It is very uniform and elegant and definitely serves its purpose. It feels very human. This is from Typographyserved.com

It was impossible to choose just one to post! I recently learned about ligatures in class and have kind of developed an obsession. I love how simple and beautiful they are. This one especially is just so fluid. The way that the letters terminals connect is genius! This post originated from the ID blog (identity designed), which I have also recently started following.

I LOVED everything that Simon Walker had in his portfolio. Sophisticated lettering with grunge textures are my absolute favorite. This one was also. Please send cheese, haha.

Type Safari!

Journal 3

1.The responsive typography face detection experiment was interesting but didn't impress me that much. It was a very innovative idea and probably took a lot ideation and testing to resolve it but I found it really hard to read. It didn't lend to the legibility of the text (even though it was only lorem ipsum). I didn't like how I lost my place in the paragraph as I moved my face forward and backward. (For example) If someone were using this in a real life situation and had to take notes while reading on their screen, they would lose their place every time they leaned down to write in their notebook. I also thought that being able to see my face in the screen below was distracting. I could see myself moving in my peripheral vision as the type was increasing and decreasing size. It was just too distracting for me. I could see old people or people who have vision trouble and find screens hard to read off of using this and finding it helpful. Instead of moving the screen forward and backward (as my not-so-tech-savvy dad does) they could just find the adjustment that was right for them. Also, this could be used to gage your computer settings if people have trouble determining what type size is best for them.

2.  http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/02/18/this-color-pickers-unique-minimal-interface-is-     surprisingly-intuitive-and-useful/

This article was AMAZING and so SO useful! It was about an interface that intuitively picks colors for web as you scroll your mouse along the screen. Once you've found a color that you like, you simply click your mouse and it saves that color as a column and moves you on to the next color. It took me a little while to get used to moving my mouse to figure out how the colors changed along the screen. I quickly figured out that by moving my mouse up the colors got darker, moving it down they got lighter, to the left they were warmer and to the right they were cooler. I loved that the color selections included the hex code.

This is what I ended up with after expirimenting with this tool. There was really no rhyme or reason to these selections, I was trying to figure it out. 

Okay so this one was a little prettier. I could play around with this tool all day!

3. http://thenextweb.com/dd/2013/02/02/x-of-the-most-beautiful-typeface-designs-released-this-january/?fromcat=dd

The last article that I read was just about new typefaces that have been released within the last 30 days. I found this inspiring because we are in the process of designing our own typefaces for this class. I liked looking at the different interpretations of type and reading the small captions that explained where the designers got their ideas. 

After following the powerpoint instructions, my webpage turned out as it was supposed to. I was feeling pretty confused throughout the process though. The divs and margin adjustments weren't making sense to me at first.

The picture of my sketch is backwards in the photo here. It was supposed to be as I made it on my website. When I did the exercise myself It all clicked in my head and started to make sense. By the end, I was adjusting margins and divs without following the powerpoint instructions. It was pretty exciting!

Journal 2

http://machoarts.com/17-amazing-examples-of-kinetic-typography-with-video-tutorial

These kinetic typography videos were all awesome (well almost all). I really liked the aggressive ones that questioned our generation's stupidity. It is hard to pick just one!

The last one was probably my favorite, "Typography about language" by Ronnie Bruce. I thought that it was really effective because it was easy to follow with the audio. I didn't have any trouble reading the type as he talked and I loved how it reflected the infliction in his voice when he was making a point. He used different typefaces to reflect specific words like "nerd", "declarative", and "hip" He also italicized questions like "ya know?" and "like" to mock stupidity.

Oh YEAH! The one called "shop-vac" was hilarious. It really hit home for me because I can completely to relate to monotony of the suburban married life. My boyfriend has been pretty excited about setting up his "man cave" in our new house with all of his manly things while I've been spending time upstairs in my living room crying to chick flicks. Our trips to grocery store are about as romantic as our "dates" get these days. It was just funny and so so true!

There were maybe 2 that I just couldn't even get through because they annoyed me. Kinetically, they were all executed really well but visually and graphically some of them weren't very good. The designers obviously spent a lot of time making them but didn't spend a lot of time developing them to reflect the content. They just got it wrong.

"Cali Swag District" was probably my least favorite. The typefaces they used were just stupid in my opinion. They looked like a little kid picked them out. The colors were very vibrant and obnoxious. I also hated that song.


I found this example and thought it was very relevant for this class. I also like how the type looks 3 dimnesional. Enjoy!

Lesson 3 Bibliography

Professor: Nancy Mata

Art 244 Type II

Millersville University

Project #3: Bibliography

Part 1

At first glance, Verdana is much more legible on screen than Georgia. As I zoom out and the type gets smaller the same observation stands. Verdana has a larger lowercase x-height and counters than Georgia. Georgia's counter tend to get lost. The italicized version of Georgia looks almost like a script font when it is small. The serifs on Georgia also do not lend to its legibility. Verdana seems larger, and is just as legible in italics. The numbers in Verdana do no descent below the baseline like they do in Georgia. Verdana is also a sans-serif typeface which makes it easier to read. They both seem to be kerned pretty tightly. The capital letters of both typefaces are legible. Georgia's caps seem to have more contrast in the strokes than Verdana. 

We figured it out! I brought my failed attempt at this assignment into class and Emily helped me figure it out. It took A LOT of editing and tedious observation before we realized that the ONLY typos that I had were the quotations marks. The quotes on my css link were curly quotations instead of straight quotations because I had copied and pasted it from the powerpoint.  

Project 2: Word Connotations

Professor: Nancy Mata
Art 244 Type II
Millersville University
Project #2: Communicating
Different Meanings of a Word

This is my CSS file. It will not link to my HTML file.

Does anyone see where I went wrong?!

I have been having trouble getting my word connotations site to work. Once I started trying to stylize my elements my browser stopped reading my code! It is driving me crazy. I swear that I did everything right. I have double checked my code about 5 times now and even re-did it all in Komodo and Text Wrangler!!!

This is how my code is translating into my browser. It wont apply the css styles.

Assignment 1

Georgia vs. Courier New

The first thing that I notice when comparing these 2 fonts is the difference in the stroke weight. Courier new has thinner strokes than Georgia and they are consistent throughout the entire typeface. where as Georgia's strokes vary in thickness within each letter. Courier New seems to have more space in between each letter and very straight serifs with no bracketing. They both seem to have about the same lowercase x-height. The Terminals on Georgia make it more legible than Courier New. Both have large bowls.

Georgia vs. Times New Roman

Georgia is much more legible for screen than Times New Roman. Georgia has more space in between the letters whereas Times New Roman's letters nearly touch in some place. The descenders on Times New Roman do not extend very far from the baseline of the text. Also the counters and bowls are much smaller in Times New Roman than in Georgia. The lowercase x-height is also shorter in comparison. Times New Roman's letters also have smaller apertures than Georgia's making them harder to read in smaller sizes.

Impact vs. Arial

Impact is a very bold, condensed typeface. For screen, this would only be legible at large sizes and in short phrases such as a title. It has a large lowercase x-height as does Arial. Arial is much more legible for body copy than impact. both are san-serif typefaces. Arial's stroke thickness stays consistent throughout the letterforms. It also has large bowls and counters which lends to its legibility. 

Arial vs. Verdana

Arial and Verdana are very similar looking typefaces. Arial seems to be a bit more elegant and legible than verdana. Verdana's letters are spaces further apart than Arial and also has a thicker stroke than Arial. The descenders do not descent as far from the baseline in Verdana as they do in Arial. The counters and bowls in both typefaces are very large as are the x-heights. 

Optima vs. Verdana

Optima has much thinner stroke widths than Verdana. Its strokes also vary within each letterform whereas Verdana's stay consistent. There is not as much space in between the letters of Optima as there is in Verdana. Optima has a large lowercase x-height thought not as large as Verdana still. Optima seems to have larger bowls and counters than Verdana, or possible they are just more elegant because the stroke width varies. Both are sans-serif fonts. Optima's descenders extend further than Verdana's. 

Baskerville vs. Georgia

Baskerville has a much shorter x-height than Georgia. The letters in Baskerville are also much more condensed than they are in Georgia. Baskerville's terminals are more subtle than Georgia's. Both are serif typefaces. Baskervilles descenders extend further than Georgia's. Both have large bowls and apertures. Georgia has thicker strokes and larger serifs than Baskerville. Georgia is definitely more legible for screen than Baskerville.

Journal 1

Writing For Visual Thinkers

I guess I missed the memo about only reading the "writer's toolbox" portion of our first reading for this week's journal entry. So about 100 pages later I am blogging about what I've learned. I actually dont regret wasting the extra hour studying and taking notes on this text because it was all really helpful. My biggest problem that I have when designing is that I get so stuck in my head. My creativity flows around in my brain with no outlet, or I get that "AHA!" moment at the worst times, like merging lanes on the highway during rush hour. I think that the writing method that seemed most appealing to me was freewriting. I like the idea of just writing a narrative as your mind expands around an idea. I've never really had much success with mindmaps. I actually feel like they suppress my creativity in some way. I get frozen when I try to branch words of the other and they dont really seem to lead to any conceptual conclusions. Anyways, I had one of those "aha" moments last night as I was trying to go to sleep around midnight. I usually would have just ignored the creative pang in my head but I decided to exercise my writing skills and let it all out. So I got out of bed, went downstairs, busted out a sketchbook and just started rambling in illegible text all of the ideas that were floating around. I actually ended up creating a pretty solid gesture drawing of what I was trying to visualize.

It's About Legibility by Allan Haley

This article was a great type refresher considering It has been over 2 years since I took type 1. I have become re-familiarized with words like "bracketing", "counters", and lowercase "x-heights" that I had forgotten about. I feel like I have a better understanding of what makes a typeface legible and readable. Large lowercase X-heights, small subtle serifs (if any), and large counters are key. I liked the metaphor of the type being like "a crystal goblet" which allows content to be more important than the container. That's an insightful way to look at typefaces. 

Georgia and Verdana: Typefaces Designed for Screen (finally)

You would have thought that Matthew Carter was naming garage bands that way that he came up with these typeface names. I never would have thought twice about their origin had I not read this article, but a headline about alien heads in Georgia led to this typeface's identity. Why that article? 

Verdana was easily readable on the screen but I didn't particularly like the style of this typeface. It almost seemed like there was too much space in the counters and it was too tall. It just felt very bubbly to me. It was interesting to see how much thought went into the development of every component of the letters so as to make them legible on screen. The lowercase x-height being 1 pixel taller than the uppercase was impressive. He paid such minute attention to detail.

Georgia was much prettier to look at. I liked that it reflected more traditional typefaces and didn't seem so large and overpowering. I have never created a typeface, nor do I know the process so this article left me wondering what a bitmap was?

Matthew Carter

Inspiring. It's amazing how ones existence can revolve solely around letters. I think it is amazing that he is still alive and designing :) he must be what? 76 now. It is interesting that he has evolved through all of progressive stages of typography over the last century.