Thinking With Type

What are the advantages of a multiple column grid? 

Some advantages of a multi-column grid is that it creates flexibility. The more columns you create the more flexibility the designer has. In a one column grid there is only one area you can place text, but with a more than one column you can neatly organize the text in one corner and it self have balance.

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

50-60, 12

Why is the baseline grid used in design? 

They create a common rhythm to unite the article. 

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

Justified creates a clean square shape to work well with a grid. 

An unjustified body has one clean edge but still respects the organic flow of how the text works. 

What is a typographic river?

An area of white space in paragraphs created by alignment of spaces. 

What does clothesline, hangline or flow line mean?

Hangline: a column on either side of the body that gives insightful information that is an important side note. 

Flowline: horizontal lines that break the page into bands. 

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

You can either not indent and leave space between paragraphs, or you can indent each new paragraph and not leave space between each line. 

Mario Sorrenti

Mario Sorrenti is best known for his nude fashion photography in Vogue Magazine. He has several images of women topless and other sexualized images, While this is his main persona when you think of him, he also did a graffiti vogue eice in the November 2009 issue of Vogue. He combined the bright colors of graffiti with the bright colors of vogue fashion. That series is what I am choosing to focus on in my next project, creating magazine spreads. 

Swift Font

Characteristics-

• Serif
• Created by Gerard Unger
• He also created-

1. Markeur (1972), not available as digital type
2. M.O.L. (1974), not available as digital type
3. Demos (1976), available at Linotype
4. Praxis (1977), available at Linotype
5. Hollander (1983), available at Linotype
6. Flora (1984), available at Linotype
7. Amerigo (1986), available at Bitstream
8. Oranda (1987), available at Bitstream
9. Argo (1991), available at Dutch Type Library
10. Delftse Poort (1991), not available for general use
11. Decoder (1992), available at Font Shop
12. Gulliver (1993), not available
13. ANWB fonts (1997), available at Visualogik
14. Capitolium (1998), available at Type-Together
15. Paradox (1999), available at Dutch Type Library
16. Coranto (2000), available at the Type-Together
17. Vesta (2001), available at the Linotype
18. BigVesta (2003), available at Linotype
19. Allianz (2005)), not available for general use
20. Capitolium News (2006), available at Type-Together
21. Leiden Letters (2008), not available for general use
22. Alverata (2013), available at Type-Together

• Designed in 1985
• Transitional 
• Family members-

Swift light, light italic, light sc+osf, light italic sc+osf Swift regular, regular italic, regular sc+osf, regular italic sc+osf Swift book, book italic, book sc+osf, book italic sc+osf Swift bold, bold italic, bold sc+osf, bold italic sc+osf Swift extra bold, extra bold italic, extra bold sc+osf, extra bold italic sc+osf Swift bold cond., bold cond. italic, bold cond. sc+osf, bold cond. italic sc+osf

GOOD infographics

After being introduced to GOOD Magazine, I looked through some of their info-graphs to find inspirations for my next visual communications project. Here are some of my favorites that I found.

For more awesome infographs visit...

http://magazine.good.is/infographics

Researching Designers part 2

PAUL RAND

(BORN PERETZ ROSENBAUM, AUGUST 15, 1914 – NOVEMBER 26, 1996) was a well-known American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs. Rand was educated at the Pratt Institute (1929-1932), the Parsons School of Design (1932-1933), and the Art Students League (1933-1934). He was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design. From 1956 to 1969, and beginning again in 1974, Rand taught design at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Rand was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972. He designed many posters and corporate identities, including the logos for IBM, UPS and ABC. Rand died of cancer in 1996.

His career began with humble assignments, starting with a part-time position creating stock images for a syndicate that supplied graphics to various newspapers and magazines. Between his class assignments and his work, Rand was able to amass a fairly large portfolio, largely influenced by the German advertising style Sachplakat (ornamental poster) as well as the works of Gustav Jensen. It was at around this time that he decided to camouflage (and abbreviate) the overtly Jewish identity telegraphed by ‘Peretz Rosenbaum,’ shortening his forename to ‘Paul’ and taking ‘Rand’ from an uncle to form his new surname. Morris Wyszogrod, a friend and associate of Rand, noted that “he figured that ‘Paul Rand,’ four letters here, four letters there, would create a nice symbol. So he became Paul Rand.” Peter Behrens notes the importance of this new title: “Rand’s new persona, which served as the brand name for his many accomplishments, was the first corporate identity he created, and it may also eventually prove to be the most enduring.” Indeed, Rand was rapidly moving into the forefront of his profession. In his early twenties he was producing work that began to garner international acclaim, notably his designs on the covers of Direction magazine, which Rand produced for no fee in exchange for full artistic freedom. Among the accolades Rand received were those of Moholy-Nagy:

http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/biography/#.VA--eMJdVvA

MAX HUBER

Huber always worked as a freelance designer, collaborating directly with each client. He tried to find a balance between the needs of his clients and his own need to experiment. He loved innovatory research. He would not hesitate to withdraw when a client made a ridiculous request, but if the suggestion was useful he was willing to adapt his plans.

He never used his images in a strict sense. He often mixed unframed flat photographic and typographic elements with strips of colour to convey a certain feeling of dynamism and speed. He used recognizable elements in his design, without having them tell a story. His work concentrated on photographic experiments and clear type combined with the use of bold shapes and primary colors. His strict grids were easily identifiable. Huber favoured clarity, rhythm and synthesis. He used succinct texts, composed from different hierarchical groups; a large title with secundary information in a smaller type, a sequence of levels. Throughout the years he was not influenced by fashion, but held onto his basic ideas.

http://www.iconofgraphics.com/Max-Huber/

EMIL RUDER

Emil Ruder (1914–1970) was a Swiss typographer and graphic designer, who with Armin Hofmann joined the faculty of the Schule für Gestaltung Basel (Basel School of Design).[1]

He is distinguishable in the field of typography for developing a holistic approach to designing and teaching that comprised philosophy, theory and a systematic practical methodology.[2] He expressed lofty aspirations for graphic design, writing that part of its function was to promote 'the good and the beautiful in word and image and to open the way to the arts' (TM, November 1952 Issue).[3]:160 He was one of the major contributors to Swiss Style design. He taught that typography's purpose was to communicate ideas through writing, as well as placing a heavy importance on Sans-serif typefaces.[4] No other designer since Jan Tschichold was as committed as Ruder to the discipline of letterpress typography or wrote about it with such conviction.[3]:218

Ruder first began teaching in 1942 at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in the Swiss city of Basel. There, he was in charge of typography for trade students.[3]:215 He became the head of the Department of Apprentices in Applied arts by 1947.[7] In 1947 Ruder met the artist-printer Armin Hofmann.[10] Ruder and Hoffman began a long period of collaboration. Their teaching achieved an international reputation by the mid-1950s. By the mid-1960s their courses were maintaining lengthy waiting lists.[9] He was a contributing writer and editor for Typografische Monatsblätter (Typographic Monthly), which was a popular trade publication of the time.[9] In 1946, his design was unsuccessful in the competition for the cover design of Typographische Monatsblätter.[3]:139

During the post war years when, in almost every field of applied art, there was still no sign of transition to a new form of expression better fitted to the times, Emil Ruder was one of the first pioneers to discard all of the conventional rules of traditional typography and to establish new laws of composition more in accord with the modern era. In spite of his bent for pictorial thinking, he is never tempted to indulge in merely playful designs in which the actual purpose of printing - legibility - is lost.[8] Ruder's insistence that the primary aim of typography was communication did not exclude aesthetic affects. Contrast was one of his methods.[3]:218 He was essentially devoted to the craft of letterpress printing.[3]:219

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Ruder

MAX BILL,  

(born Dec. 22, 1908, Winterthur, Switz.—died Dec. 9, 1994, Berlin, Ger.), Swiss graphic artist, industrial designer, architect, sculptor, and painter, primarily important for his sophisticated, disciplined advertising designs.

Bill’s early ambition was to become a silversmith, but the work of the architect Le Corbusier influenced him to study architecture at the Bauhaus, Germany’s foremost school of design. He also studied metalwork, stage design, and painting. In 1930 he set up his own studio in Zürich and concentrated on sculpture, painting, and architecture while earning his living by designing advertisements. After 1944 he became increasingly active as an industrial designer, creating products as diverse as chairs and wall sprockets with the same elegance of line and form that characterized his marble sculpture “Construction from a Circle” (1942). His use of austere geometric forms echoed his Bauhaus training.

Bill cofounded and was rector of the College of Design in Ulm, W.Ger. (1951–56). He designed the school’s buildings, planned its curriculum, and was director of the department of architecture and product design there. He then served as a professor of environmental design at the State Institute of Fine Arts, Hamburg (1967–74).

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/65351/Max-Bill

ROBERT MASSIN

Robert Massin is a French graphic designer, art director and typographer who is notable for his innovative experimentation with expressive forms of typographic composition. Massin stopped using his first name in the 1950s. Massin was born in 1925 in Bourdinière-Saint-Loup, a commune in the Eure-et-Loir department in north-central France. He began working as a designer following World War II. Massin's immediate influence in the 1950s was innovative French book designer Pierre Faucheux. Faucheaux emphasized the idea that each new book should be a new object determined by type choice, proportion and déroulement, the development of a visual concept over several pages. Faucheaux also emphasized the idea that the choice of typeface should have some relationship to the meaning of the text. These ideas are apparent in much of Massin's most famous work. For over twenty years Massin acted as art director of Éditions Gallimard, one of the leading French publishers of books. An early, important work for Massin at Gallimard was his 1963 design for Raymond Queneau's Exercices de style, a book of 99 retellings of the same story, each presented different graphically. Another famous design appeared

http://www.whoislog.info/profile/robert-massin.html

Research of Designers

Info gathered from Wikipedia 

Bruno Monguzzi (born 1941) is a Swiss graphic designer.
Monguzzi was born in Mendrisio, Switzerland in 1941. He later moved to Geneva with his family and attended the Graphic Design Course at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs.
In 1960 he travelled to London and attended Gestalt psychology, typography and photography courses at Saint Martin's School of Art and the London College of Printing (now the London College of Communication).
After working with Dennis Bailey in London moved to Milan in 1961 to join the Studio Boggeri – at the time the leading design and advertising agency in Italy. In 1965 he was called to join the Charles Gagnon and James Volkus office in Montreal, to design nine pavilions for Expo 67.
From the early-seventies he worked independently from his atelier in Meride, a secluded village in the South of Switzerland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Monguzzi

Armin Hofmann (HonRDI) (born June 29, 1920)[1] is a Swiss graphic designer. He began his career in 1947 as a teacher at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel School of Art and Crafts at the age of twenty-six. Hofmann followed Emil Ruder as head of the graphic design department at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel (Basel School of Design) and was instrumental in developing the graphic design style known as the Swiss Style. His teaching methods were unorthodox and broad based, setting new standards that became widely known in design education institutions throughout the world. His independent insights as an educator, married with his rich and innovative powers of visual expression, created a body of work enormously varied - books, exhibitions, stage sets, logotypes, symbols, typography, posters, sign systems, and environmental graphics. His work is recognized for its reliance on the fundamental elements of graphic form - point, line, and shape - while subtly conveying simplicity, complexity, representation, and abstraction.[2] Originating in Russia, Germany and The Netherlands in the 1920s, stimulated by the artistic avant-garde and alongside the International Style in architecture.[2] He is well known for his posters, which emphasized economical use of colour and fonts, in reaction to what Hofmann regarded as the "trivialization of colour."[3] His posters have been widely exhibited as works of art in major galleries, such as the New York Museum of Modern Art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Hofmann






Josef Müller-Brockmann, (May 9, 1914, in Rapperswil – August 30, 1996), was a Swiss graphic designer and teacher. He studied architecture, design andhistory of art at both the University and Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. In 1936 he opened his Zurich studio specialising in graphic design, exhibition design andphotography. From 1951 he produced concert posters for the Tonhalle in Zurich. In 1958 he became a founding editor of New Graphic Design along with R.P. Lohse, C. Vivarelli, and H. Neuburg. In 1966 he was appointed European design consultant to IBM. Müller-Brockman was author of the 1961 publications The Graphic Artist and his Design Problems, Grid Systems in Graphic Design where he advocates use of the grid for page structure, and the 1971 publications History of the Poster and A History of Visual Communication.
He is recognised for his simple designs and his clean use of typography, notably Akzidenz-Grotesk, shapes and colours which inspires many graphic designers in the 21st century.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_M%C3%BCller-Brockmann




Wolfgang Weingart (born 1941 in the Salem Valley in southern Germany) is an internationally known graphic designer andtypographer. His work is categorized as Swiss typography and he is credited as "the father" of New Wave or Swiss Punk typography.
Weingart met Emil Ruder and Armin Hofmann in Basel in 1963 and moved there the following year, enrolling as an independent student at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel (Basel School of Design). In 1968, he was invited to teach typography at the institution’s newly established Weiterbildungsklasse für Grafik, an international Advanced Program for Graphic Design, where he remained a highly influential instructor until 2005. Between 1974 and 1996, at Hofmann’s invitation, Weingart taught at the Yale Summer Program in Graphic Design in Brissago, Switzerland. For over forty years he has lectured and taught extensively in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
According to Weingart, "I took 'Swiss Typography' as my starting point, but then I blew it apart, never forcing any style upon my students. I never intended to create a 'style'. It just happened that the students picked up—and misinterpreted—a so-called 'Weingart style' and spread it around."[1]
The Museum of Design in Zurich is presenting a retrospective of Weingart’s work from May 7 to September 28, 2014.Weingart: Typography is the first exhibition in Switzerland which features his personal work as well as results from his teaching.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Weingart

 

Neville Brody (born 23 April 1957 in London) is an English graphic designer,typographer and art director.[1]

Neville Brody is an alumnus of the London College of Printing and Hornsey College of Art, and is known for his work on The Face magazine (1981–1986) and Arena magazine (1987–1990), as well as for designing record covers for artists such as Cabaret Voltaire and Depeche Mode. He created the company Research Studios in 1994 and is a founding member of Fontworks. He is the new Head of the Communication Art & Design department at the Royal College of Art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Brody