Annotated Bibliography

Matthias Kleven

Typography

On going Dates

Annotated Bibliography

Berry, John. Language Culture Type. Graphis Press, 2002.

Annotation: This was a very interesting book to read, and lead to me really take in the idea of how culture and geographical placement affected a font. Like languages, type faces adapted and grew from other type families. Type creators would try to craft a type set to fit their culture more, and to make it their own. This influenced my work and helped me on my projects once again because of the history but also in noticing smaller aspects of a type family. There could be two very similar fonts but the one difference could be x-height of the lowercase “e” or it could be the curvature of the upper case “C”. Those single letters can make a whole family of type seem very different.

Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, 2005. Print.

Annotation: This was one of the most dense books that I flipped through and it had more history and information than I could handle. All in all it gave me more information for my tool belt of typography. If I continue my study of type in the next couple years or in my future career it is a book that I would look more in depth too and study further.

Carter, Sebastian. Twentieth-Century Type Designers. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1987. 84-88, 101-116, 157-163.

Annotation: This was a great read for me because it had information on George Trump. The creator of Trump Medieval, the font I chose for the identity of Nurse San Francisco. It gave me some further details on his time as a typographer, which for him was a job/hobby, and he continued his passion after this life. Knowing he was a highly regarded typographer in German gives me a better selling point, as to why I chose his font as well. History is a big part to a font and the creator gave life to that font.  

Craig, James, Irene Korol. Scala, and William Bevington. Designing with Type: the Essential Guide to Typography. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2006. Print.

Annotation: Definitions, anatomy, definitions. As I found while looking through a lot of modern type books, there all about the information, and key information dealing with type. This book had an entire glossary of typographic definitions for myself, and next time I have this book in my hand I’m going to want to photo copy and “borrow” the whole entire glossary. Definitely helped explain some terms in a different light that I needed to know for the final.

Gray, Nocolete. A History of Lettering: Creative Experiment and Letter Identity. Boston: David R. Godine, 1986

Annotation: This book was very long so I did not read all of it, however in my time spent with this book I learned a lot about history and breakdown of letters. How they are made up, and why they were used as they were, an example being Roman style. This book covers much of the background of type, and helped me in better understanding the history of type. That helps me because understanding where a type face came from and how it was used can effect what font I will choose for a future ad campaign or project for a class.

Golombisky, Kim, and Rebecca Hagen. White Space Is Not Your Enemy: a Beginner's Guide to Communicating Visually through Graphic, Web & Multimedia Design. Amsterdam: Focal/Elsevier, 2010. Print.

Annotation: The grid, something I know, am learning to understand, but definitely helped me through this course. This book was a great introduction to the grid system. From my previous Visual Communications course I had a small idea of a grid but this helped learn from it more. I learned some absolute no-no’s and idea’s of how to create a grid. It was very useful for all the projects, especially project 1 and 2.

Helfand, William H. Quack, Quack, Quack: the Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera & Books : an Exhibition on the Frequently Excessive & Flamboyant Seller of Nostrums as Shown in Prints, Posters, Caricatures, Books, Pamphlets, Advertisements & Other Graphic Arts over the Last Five Centuries. New York: Grolier Club, 2002. Print.

Annotation: This book became very useful for finding actual original print copies of ads in the later 1800’s to the 1900’s. It has a ton of advertisements, displaying the use of slab serif fonts, and how they were so useful during the time period. This was definitely a huge factor in making my project 1 turn out so great.

 Heller, Steven. The Education of a Typographer. New York: Allworth, 2004. Print.

Annotation: This was first reading that was given to me as a student of typography, and it gave me the greatest summary ever of what typography it is. I didn’t learn a huge amount of in depth information from this reading but it definitely made me more comfortable with entering the world of typography. It took away the stress and feeling of uncertainty and put it at bay, definitely one of the most useful reads for me during this semester.

Harrison, Steve. How to Do Better Creative Work. Harlow, England: Pearson Prentice Hall Business, 2009. Print.

Annotation: This is not a typography book, but it does deal with graphic design, but more specifically advertising. I purchased the book for an advertising class, but in grand schemes, chapter 5 became very useful to me. It was a collection of very successful ad campaigns, and part of a successful campaign is good typography. The national Phobics society ran an AD on OCD awareness and it all focused around type and keyboards. They ran the whole campaign with a font that looks like American type writer, and it sent a clear message. For the campaign, they sent a ton of journalists keyboards. They wanted to have journalists see something they were familiar with, but then be forced to see it in a way a person suffering from OCD might by placing all the keys in ABCDEFGHI matter instead of qwerty. This was also interesting because we consider type to be set on a keyboard in one way and this makes you look at it in a whole other light.

Kinross, Robin. Modern Typography: An Essay in Critical History. London: Hyphen Press, 1992. 15-30, 85-100. (Gleeson Reserve)

Annotation: From this reading I learned a lot about the transition from hand written type to machine printed type. It changed the game of typography and it changed how types were looked at. This reading took a close look at Didot and it focused on the weight of letters and how they started to change in “modern” typefaces. This helped me notice the different stroke weights in letters. It allows me to see if they were blown up to big to used for an advertisement it would look awkward, and this is why slab serifs came around. All in all really helped with looking at weights more drastically and the way it can make a typeface more unique.

Loxley, Simon. Type: The Secret History of Letters. London. I.B. Taurus, 2004.

Annotation: Unfortunately I found this reading later after project one, however I still found it interesting to revisit this information. Out of the text I read it covered a lot of how the rise of advertising came about, and technology. I covered more in depth the history of this period in my project but what really affected my learning was how technology completely changed the type game. Especially with machines like the linotype,  that allowed faster production of type. Going into advertising as wel, I like to see how fonts became to be because of the need for them in advertising. Larger font families, thicker stroked letters, broader kerning, etc. A great example being Slab Serrifs or also known as Egyptian.

Lupton,Ellen. Thinking with Type. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. 2004

Annotation: Quickly after reading only 20 pages of this book, I had gotten a quick run through of the history of type. It gave incredible examples of how each typeface differed, how they came to be, and the goal of each typeface. I learned that typography followed the artistic era’s, and simply put, it started out as a clean, and legible art, to something more abstract and creative. Type went from being purely for displaying mass amounts of text in a book, to advertisements, large letters, capturing eyes, to drawing emotions with a typeface. It also gave me a detailed and visual look at all the characteristics of a type from X height, Cap height, descenders, baselines and the units of measurment for type like picas and points. Overall Thinking with Type quickly threw me into the world of type with a head full of knew knowledge.

Samara, Timothy. Typography Workbook: a Real-world Guide to Using Type in Graphic Design. Beverly, MA: Rockport, 2006. Print.

Annotation: The most useful part of this book for me was a quote from a designer in this book. “Typography is my starting point for every design. Every concept is invented with type: the selection of a font, the shape of the letters, and of course the types semantic dimensions”, this was said by Philippe Apeloig. This quote fit perfectly in my mind with how to look at creating an identity for project 3. It’s exactly what how I needed to look at type for this project, thinking about the history, the shape of the letters, and the type of emotion type faces can draw out. I still am very happy with my choice of Trump Medieval and I think this quote is a great way for myself to always look at a project dealing with type. This was creative, unique and really struck a string my head about taking a common idea and flipping it around for a striking campaign.

Spencer, Herbert. Pioneers of Modern Typography. Lund Humphreys, 1969. 11-31

Annotation: This reading really helped me understand typography in this day in age. It specifically helped me project 2. Before the 1900’s typography wasn’t always about art. It slowly became that way in time, but this reading allowed me to better understand typography as an art form, not just as read material. A great example is learning how to utilize white space (negative space) and that played a huge role in the first layout of project 2. It took me time to learn how to use it, and this didn’t

"Type: Anatomy." Princeton Architectural Press * Welcome. Web. 06 Dec. 2011. <http://www.papress.com/other/thinkingwithtype/letter/anatomy.htm>.

Annotation: This was another handout given to us in class. This gave me a very in depth look at the anatomy a letter. It gave me all the information I needed to know about the anatomy of a letter. From the x-height, cap height, loops, counters, ascenders, descenders, bowls, serifs, arms, legs, etc. It also dove into the classifications and gave me not only explanations but examples of how they were different. This again went towards my better understanding of type, but it specifically came in hand for studying for the final exam and any quizzes we had in a class.