Chapter 1:
Within our class book, Typographic
Design: Form and Communication’s, the first chapter mainly discusses the
topic of the history of typography and the major events that occurred through
time that shaped, influenced, and evolved the world of typography that we know
and love today. Personally, I found this chapter extremely interesting because
the fact that all the information is presented in the form of a timeline. Not
only does this draw attention to the content, but it makes reading the material
easier and kind of entertaining. I think that most interesting of all the dates
and advances on the entire timeline, would be 1886 when Ottmar Mergenthaler
created the Linotype. The Linotype was known as the first ever keyboard style
typesetting machine. This is such a huge advancement because this person
literally paved the road for the keyboards that we use every single day,
including the one that I am using to type this blog post right now. Another
point that I found really interesting was the earliest written document, the
impressed clay tablets that were derived from Sumer. The symbols of this
impression of the clay tablet is so abstract. I am just as curious as to what
those symbols mean. The book says that it was used for record keeping before
the invention of writing. They kind of look like the letter I but it seems like
they could be numbers. I wish the book would specify what exactly those
markings on the clay tablet mean and what the clay tokens were used for.
Chapter 2:
Within the second chapter of our class book, Typographic Design: Form and Communication’s, the information that is presented mainly discusses the topic if the anatomy of typography and how each letter-form is classified, distinguished, and created. This chapter touches upon the most popular of typefaces and even breaks down the similarities and differences between them. For instance, the book states that optical relationships within a font are critical for making it legible. It states that, “Optical adjustment is necessary to achieve visual harmony within a font since mechanical and mathematical letter-form construction can result in serious spatial problems.” (Page 38, Line 1) This is very true because if the type is to close together or too far apart then it could care issues for the reader and make the text hard to understand. Since the letters are too close together it could confuse people, whereas if it is too far apart, it might draw people’s attention away from it cause it does not make sense. Which is why curved letter-forms are drawn slightly above baseline and below the cap-line, to prevent them from appearing too small to the reading. As a designer, I would say that the cap-line and baseline are very important for any type of type. This is due to the fact that if the letters are not aligned properly then it will just looks very unappealing and ugly. It’s kind of like a coloring book, if you do not color within the lines, it just looks ugly.
