T&H Final Submissions
28/3/17 - 4/7/17, Week 1 - Week 13
Kamal Afiq [0330643]
Typography and Hypertextuality
Final Submissions
Exercises
Project 1 A Story Book
Project 2 Font Design
Final Project Kinetic Typography
Lettering Exercise
After repeated review and feedback, I made a number of changes to the letterforms so that they would better follow type design convention. Certain changes suggested by Mr. Vinod I specifically disagreed with, as I wanted to keep the design of the letters as close as possible to the original source material. One of these changes he suggested was extending the bowls of letters like 'a' or 'b' beyond the baseline and x-heights to further emphasize their optical appearance. It is here that I willingly chose to not follow convention.
Final reflection
It's been quite a short journey. But one of the most informative and eye-opening journeys I've ever had. From the first few exercises we had that helped us learnt the basics and fundamentals of typography, to the final project where we had to use the knowledge we've gained to express our font in a dynamic way, we've learnt a great deal about typography. I feel that going into the module that I had already known the basics of what typography was and that would be enough, but coming out I feel like I've been introduced to this entirely new world that I've barely scratched the surface of. Most people take typography and its form for granted, but without the care, work and conventions put into place, the world of type wouldn't be the unique art form it is today.
In the past my design projects have always involved type one way or the other, but now I realize that I didn't really know what I was doing back then. Now I've learnt things in this module that I'm sure will greatly benefit my design work not only for now, but for the many years to come. I've stressed this many times already, but these few months spend in typography class have truly been one of the most interesting and informative ones I've ever had. I owe a great deal to my lecturers Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul who've helped me greatly throughout the course, and while its true that we due clash on many occasions, without the wealth of knowledge and experience they have there's no way that I would haven taken as much from this course as I could have without them.
Kamal Afiq [0330643]
Typography and Hypertextuality
Final Submissions
Instructions
Exercises
Project 1 A Story Book
Project 2 Font Design
Final Project Kinetic Typography
Exercise Submissions
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| Calligraphy submission. |
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| Digitized lettering submission. |
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| Lettering submission. |
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| Type expression submission. |
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| Type expression submission. |
Project 1 A Story Book Submissions
Google drive link - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6aqU66vURR8enBxaENRbkpUSWc
Project 2 Font Design Submission
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| All the finished letterforms. |
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Font design submission, preview of the OTF/TTF is open in windows.
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Final Project Kinetic Typography Submissions
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| Kinetic Typography Poster Submission. |
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| Frames of the animation, taken every half second. |
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| Kinetic Typography Animation Submission. |
Feedback
Calligraphy Exercise
During this session, Mr. Vinod gave me feedback on my exercise submission. While it appears I have improved since I began, I need to work more on having control over my hand while I do the strokes as they appeared quite jagged. He said I've gotten down the general form of the letters, its just that I need to further improve my control when doing the calligraphy.
During this session, Mr. Vinod gave me feedback on my exercise submission. While it appears I have improved since I began, I need to work more on having control over my hand while I do the strokes as they appeared quite jagged. He said I've gotten down the general form of the letters, its just that I need to further improve my control when doing the calligraphy.
Lettering Exercise
Mr. Vinod seemed quite pleased with my logotype animation. He said the type of animation I chose worked well with the shape of my logotype's letters, since both center around the idea of being jagged and rocky. Initially I had the name being carved from left to right, but he said I should make the carving alternate from both directions, to give it a more hand-made feel. He said the final animation was fine so it seems he was satisfied with my final animation.
Type Expression Exercise
My first draft of the animation was quite sloppy, as the animation appeared jagged. Mr. Vinod saw my work, and suggested that I simplify the animation a bit, since I had too many complex movements happening in such a short time making the action difficult to understand. I remedied this by making all the letters just 'walk' from the same side of the screen. Mr. Vinod then further suggested that I make it so that the letters all chase each other onto the screen and off, so as to create a perfect loop. After I had completed the final draft of my type expression, he appeared to be quite satisfied with the final result.
Project 1: A Story Book
In my first bit of feedback, Mr. Vinod said that the reasoning and general thought processes behind how I typeset my book was quite sound. Mr. Shamsul that I could better improve the layout of the type by creating more guidelines and aligning various lines of text together to create a more harmonious aesthetic throughout. Both lecturers said that I should add some more variety to the positioning of the text boxes to further diversity the appearance of the type.
In my second bit of feedback, Mr. Vinod reviewed my book and said my typesetting had generally good contrast and use of emphasis. Despite that, the text flow tended to repeat and started to become repetitive. Similar to the previous week's comments, I had to diversify the layout of the text through more harmonious and diverse alignments, textbox justification and positioning. The spreads seemed to flow and contrast quite nicely together, however they could be made more interesting through varying layouts. For the animation segment of the tutorial, I used simplistic fade ins to animate my text. Mr. Vinod liked the simplicity of my animation, but warned me not to make anything too flashy so as to make the animation seem harmonious with the style of typesetting I had chosen.
In the final bit of feedback, Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul said they were very pleased with the final layout of the text. The type of animation I used for my book was quite satisfactory, and it suited the typesetting well. However, in some pages the animation was far too slow, to the point where the reader could become bored. Furthermore the animation tends to become repetitive, so they suggested I could further improve the animation by making certain lines of text appear together, faster, or just pop-in to add diversity.
Project 2: Font Design
Mr. Vinod said that I jumped the gun a bit, because my initial digitization document was measured in pixels. He told me to create a new document for my digitized letterforms, and to ensure the measurement units were in points. He also told me to ensure my x-height was 500 points. I had to scale all the letters so that the x-height was 500 points. Furthermore he added that I should make certain letterforms in the alphabet thicker or thinner so as to create a uniform appearance throughout. For now I'll have to keep refining my font and ensure they meet technical conventions.
After repeated review and feedback, I made a number of changes to the letterforms so that they would better follow type design convention. Certain changes suggested by Mr. Vinod I specifically disagreed with, as I wanted to keep the design of the letters as close as possible to the original source material. One of these changes he suggested was extending the bowls of letters like 'a' or 'b' beyond the baseline and x-heights to further emphasize their optical appearance. It is here that I willingly chose to not follow convention.
Final Project: Kinetic Typography
Mr. Vinod told me initially that I had no ideas at all as I was literally mimicing the source material to create my poster. He said that I should do more exploration and try to create a different kind of poster. More research was needed before I came up with my poster.
Mr. Shamsul said that I should play around with the color a bit more, and try to make the central most line of text in the poster more pronounced. He said I should try experimenting with 3D to make it look more interesting.
After my consultation with Mr. Vinod, he said that I should focus more on advertising and showing off the font than trying to make it as visually appealing as possible. I should try to fit in more words into the poster to better display the font. The whole point is to present the font in its most pristine form. He said that I should also try to explore various other styles than just sticking with the vintage one I have.
After showing Mr. Vinod the final draft of my Type Poster, he was pleased with it and gave me the go ahead with the Kinetic Typography animation. After doing so, he approved my final design without further comment.
Mr. Shamsul said that I should play around with the color a bit more, and try to make the central most line of text in the poster more pronounced. He said I should try experimenting with 3D to make it look more interesting.
After my consultation with Mr. Vinod, he said that I should focus more on advertising and showing off the font than trying to make it as visually appealing as possible. I should try to fit in more words into the poster to better display the font. The whole point is to present the font in its most pristine form. He said that I should also try to explore various other styles than just sticking with the vintage one I have.
After showing Mr. Vinod the final draft of my Type Poster, he was pleased with it and gave me the go ahead with the Kinetic Typography animation. After doing so, he approved my final design without further comment.
Reflections
Exercises (Week 1- Week 4) reflection
Throughout the first few weeks of the course, I had come to slowly understand what typography is and what it's about. I've known the basics of modern type, fonts and how to use them but I never really delved into the world of calligraphy before, and the exact history of how modern typography came to be. It's truly been quite an eye-opener because I feel like I've learnt already so much in a span of just 4 weeks how massive and in-depth the subject of typography and its history really is. I've never known things like the various parts of the individual letters, what typographical conventions were and what things like kerning and leading even mean. It's truly been an engaging experience so far and I'm sure the same will be for the next few months to come.
Project 1: A Story Book (Week 5- Week 8) reflection
Over the past few months we've gotten more into what modern typography is, and its at this point that I started seeing type as more of an art form than just arbitrary things we type into a document and use everyday. I find it fascinating, that each typeface and font we use everyday has their own unique character and personality imbued in their forms. Small details like how the letterforms bend and split, the stresses of strokes and the way they interact with their counterforms truly gives type its own artistic nature. And to think the fonts we use everyday have all this depth and character really has made me appreciate the world of typography more.
With the Babadook assignment, I was able to put into practice all the things I've learnt in the past into my own project. My lecturers helped me a great deal through this process as they helped me spot and fix things that even I couldn't see in plain sight. It's made me further appreciate the importance of having a different perspective when it comes to design work. I've also been able to pick up a couple of conventions typographers often use in their projects, and I feel this knowledge is going to greatly benefit me in the future.
With the Babadook assignment, I was able to put into practice all the things I've learnt in the past into my own project. My lecturers helped me a great deal through this process as they helped me spot and fix things that even I couldn't see in plain sight. It's made me further appreciate the importance of having a different perspective when it comes to design work. I've also been able to pick up a couple of conventions typographers often use in their projects, and I feel this knowledge is going to greatly benefit me in the future.
Project 2: Font Design (Week 9- Week 10) reflection
It's around these couple weeks that we stopped having theoretical lecturers in class. But replacing that was a wealth of hands-on knowledge that we gained from working on our second project. This is the first time I've had a project that revolved exclusively around font design, and it's really been a fascinating experience going through the process.
The research I did for my font design helped me understand how font design conventions have changed as time passed, because I often did research on older fonts produced in the early 20th century. The struggles of actually creating the letterforms, adjusting and tweaking them to try to meet modern day conventions has also thought me a lot about how design standards for fonts have changed the past 70 years or so. My font took heavy inspiration from a display font made in the 1930s, and when I showed it to my lecturers, we had quite a clash of opinions pertaining to what was considered acceptable for font designs. I even knowingly ignored some modern day conventions because I really wanted to give my font its own if unconventional character.
The final process of having everything compiled together, having the letterspacing done and generating the font makes me appreciate the entire process of creating a font even more, as there's a significant amount of work that goes behind crafting these individual letters and shapes that we take for granted everyday.
The research I did for my font design helped me understand how font design conventions have changed as time passed, because I often did research on older fonts produced in the early 20th century. The struggles of actually creating the letterforms, adjusting and tweaking them to try to meet modern day conventions has also thought me a lot about how design standards for fonts have changed the past 70 years or so. My font took heavy inspiration from a display font made in the 1930s, and when I showed it to my lecturers, we had quite a clash of opinions pertaining to what was considered acceptable for font designs. I even knowingly ignored some modern day conventions because I really wanted to give my font its own if unconventional character.
The final process of having everything compiled together, having the letterspacing done and generating the font makes me appreciate the entire process of creating a font even more, as there's a significant amount of work that goes behind crafting these individual letters and shapes that we take for granted everyday.
Final Project: Kinetic Typography (Week 11- Week 13) reflection
It's around these couple weeks that we stopped having theoretical lecturers in class. But replacing that was a wealth of hands-on knowledge that we gained from working on our second project. This is the first time I've had a project that revolved exclusively around font design, and it's really been a fascinating experience going through the process.
The research I did for my font design helped me understand how font design conventions have changed as time passed, because I often did research on older fonts produced in the early 20th century. The struggles of actually creating the letterforms, adjusting and tweaking them to try to meet modern day conventions has also thought me a lot about how design standards for fonts have changed the past 70 years or so. My font took heavy inspiration from a display font made in the 1930s, and when I showed it to my lecturers, we had quite a clash of opinions pertaining to what was considered acceptable for font designs. I even knowingly ignored some modern day conventions because I really wanted to give my font its own if unconventional character.
The final process of having everything compiled together, having the letterspacing done and generating the font makes me appreciate the entire process of creating a font even more, as there's a significant amount of work that goes behind crafting these individual letters and shapes that we take for granted everyday.
The research I did for my font design helped me understand how font design conventions have changed as time passed, because I often did research on older fonts produced in the early 20th century. The struggles of actually creating the letterforms, adjusting and tweaking them to try to meet modern day conventions has also thought me a lot about how design standards for fonts have changed the past 70 years or so. My font took heavy inspiration from a display font made in the 1930s, and when I showed it to my lecturers, we had quite a clash of opinions pertaining to what was considered acceptable for font designs. I even knowingly ignored some modern day conventions because I really wanted to give my font its own if unconventional character.
The final process of having everything compiled together, having the letterspacing done and generating the font makes me appreciate the entire process of creating a font even more, as there's a significant amount of work that goes behind crafting these individual letters and shapes that we take for granted everyday.
Final reflection
It's been quite a short journey. But one of the most informative and eye-opening journeys I've ever had. From the first few exercises we had that helped us learnt the basics and fundamentals of typography, to the final project where we had to use the knowledge we've gained to express our font in a dynamic way, we've learnt a great deal about typography. I feel that going into the module that I had already known the basics of what typography was and that would be enough, but coming out I feel like I've been introduced to this entirely new world that I've barely scratched the surface of. Most people take typography and its form for granted, but without the care, work and conventions put into place, the world of type wouldn't be the unique art form it is today.
In the past my design projects have always involved type one way or the other, but now I realize that I didn't really know what I was doing back then. Now I've learnt things in this module that I'm sure will greatly benefit my design work not only for now, but for the many years to come. I've stressed this many times already, but these few months spend in typography class have truly been one of the most interesting and informative ones I've ever had. I owe a great deal to my lecturers Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul who've helped me greatly throughout the course, and while its true that we due clash on many occasions, without the wealth of knowledge and experience they have there's no way that I would haven taken as much from this course as I could have without them.
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