Communication is integrally linked to the tools commonly available in a given period of time. But humans are loath to completely eliminate tools that have been employed to communicate with one another, even when they become archaic—or because that. For example, ephemera from letterpress printers is cherished and collected like many antique items, but letterpresses are still employed by guerilla artists—and received with great enthusiasm by their contemporary admirers (Wayzgoose, 2011). Still it seems the key drivers for choices of communication mediums are convenience, speed, accuracy, and relevance. These determinants, however, do not stand still in time. Convenience, for instance, is a highly relative term that has much to say about the cultural context in which the communication takes place. Inescapably, the influence of technology is reflected in the evolution of each key driver to its temporal context.
Typography Design
Taking a lead from the typeface named Matisse ITC, a typography-based design was created with the broad-brushstrokes, primary colors, and dominant white space that characterized the gouche paintings and cutouts created by the artist Matisse. The central theme is of a ski hut on the night of a full moon, with evidence of children playing in the snow left over from the day, and the cold clear starlit night shining between sparsely falling snowflakes. Four distinct typefaces are used in the graphic design. The typefaces have been manipulated to increase the continuity and message of the overall design.
Typography
According to Useful Information for Web Developers and Designers, "Typography is the ultimate form of science meeting art. Space, size, type treatment/effects, contrast, color selection -- and much more -- go into every piece of design that involves the use of type."
Although children are taught in school to print on lines that divide the letters the make exactly in half, type is not designed that way. The middle line is called the x-line and it is exactly the height of a lower-case x. excluding ascenders and descenders. The bottom line is called the base line, and the top line is called the cap line. In type, the space between the x-line and the base line is denser than the space between the x-line and the cap line. That is, more of a letter is printed on the bottom part of those three parallel lines than in the top space.
The nuances of different typefaces are a great continuum of this sort of small consideration. From the exactitude of creating typeface, a graphic designer takes a huge conceptual leap, creating art through iconic application of letters.
The iconicity of typography. A wide range of powerful tools are available to those who are knowledge workers or toil in communication-heavy fields, such as politics, entertainment, publishing, marketing, and advertisement. Humans are inherently sensitive to visual imagery -- our survival has, at times, been dependent on our ability to see patterns in our environment and to identify friend from foe. The capacity to make these sorts of discriminations visually, rather than through touch or smell or hearing (which in humans requires a relatively close range) has been a distinct evolutionary advantage. Iconicity is not restricted to visual images or communication and information technology (CIT). Applying principles of design to the medium of print has some of the same capacity to elicit a range of responses from humans while effectively communicating through language as well. This exercise in typography is an example of how print can be iconic.
The printed word has power -- but there are reasons for the old adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words." Humans are able to discern many messages from visual images, some of which are subliminal. The printed word can accomplish that, too, but short of poetry, most readers take the printed word quite literally, and there is very little that seems to invade the human subconscious via the printed word. Images, however, do impose on the human subconscious -- the imagery used in horror films is testimony to that phenomenon -- becoming the stuff of bad dreams and latent anxieties.
Communication is integrally linked to the tools commonly available in a given period of time. But humans are loath to completely eliminate tools that have been employed to communicate with one another, even when they become archaic -- or because that. For example, ephemera from letterpress printers is cherished and collected like many antique items, but letterpresses are still employed by guerilla artists -- and received with great enthusiasm by their contemporary admirers (Wayzgoose, 2011). Still it seems the key drivers for choices of communication mediums are convenience, speed, accuracy, and relevance. These determinants, however, do not stand still in time. Convenience, for instance, is a highly relative term that has much to say about the cultural context in which the communication takes place. Inescapably, the influence of technology is reflected in the evolution of each key driver to its temporal context.
I think a comparison of the use of print -- in what is known in the design field as typography -- to visual imagery produced through photography or videography best exemplifies the point that Marshall McLuhan made in his book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, first published in 1964. McLuhan argued that a medium effects society, not just through the content (message) it delivers, but also through the unique attributes of the medium itself. Against this background -- the relative impact of visual images over the imagery evoked through the printed word -- I suggest looking at the linkage between communication (the message), technology (the medium), and the influence on the perceiver / reader (the relationship). When the imagery is one with the text -- the message and the medium are inexorably joined -- the message may be made all the more powerful, the observer made all the more receptive.
Typography design details. For this exercise in the use of typography to convey multiple messages, I have used four distinct typefaces, each of which has a particularly graphic quality. The most obvious translation of type to "art" or design is the use of ZDingbats, which is a pictorial typeface. I have used this typeface as a shortcut to drawing in my design as the typefaces themselves consist of singular iconic forms -- yet they are a form of type. I designed a ski hut structure labeled the Ice Castle by using the Matisse ITC typeface. I appreciate the connection between the type in this font and the broad yet simple brush strokes used by Matisse in his gouche paintings and his cutouts. A sky is represented by the two colored rectangles, one of which is yellow and conveys the bright full moon, the represents a starry night sky from which some snowflakes are falling.
Taking the art of Matisse as further inspiration, I chose to highlight the Matisse typefaces and the ZDingbat typefaces in the main design with the primary colors favored by Matisse. One can imagine that the vertical letters forming the horizontal "wall" of the ski hut are skis that have been leaned against the hut, a habit typical of resting skiers. Further, the letters "H" create an image of the rustic sort of doors that hold up to kicks from ski boots and that can be managed by hands encased in heavy mittens. I used manual tracking on the diagonal letters of the roof line, in order to give the impression of a wood cut or linoleum block print, and used auto-kerning to get the vertical elements closer together. I also chose single spacing between the lines of type in the overall design in order to place the elements in closer proximity.
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