Entry 3

Notes: 

    Rococo's design has a lot of detail. it uses copper plate engraving. guys who made copper plate stated doing their own typography. used thick and thin lines. in england, not much was happening, they had civil war and political turmoil. Charles demanded number of printers to be 20 and death to otherwise. Printing is power. it threatens people in power. 

Bodoni made an early title page that showed that it was influenced by Rococo. 

prior revolution, has fancy style, revolution came and wanted to destroy it but had to put something new in it. could go back or…. do something new. when antiquity was appreciated. intreats in classic work. Bodoni was inspired by frunior. Bodoni helped bring modern in 1790. he redefines roman letter forms with geometric system. designs alphabet that was mechanical and geometrical. looked for interchangeable parts that could be reused. draw something by hand, human, organic. but mechanical means precise. reinvents the serif. took bracts off. His idea was letterform was to be built with a limited number of interchangeable units.

Late 1700's in america, guns interchangeable parts, modernization.  Bodoni built same way as gun. Bodoni, modern typeface. he had decoration before, as time passed, decorations disappeared and lighter page. 

1800's, Bodoni evolves to be fat face. a display version of Bodoni. has exaggeration of thick and thin and keeps on exaggerating. has fat face and a display face. display face is deceptive and good for say "SAIL" or "ROW" 

industrialization, opening factories, sold lots of stuff. world is affected in change, within industrial revolution shifts form librarian to on an industrial based. not happy time for workers, especially if young. industrialization lead to consumers. people need to buy stuff to support the machine. rise of the middle class. people come into money who never had money before. need to be told what to do with the money. breeds envy and contempt. a social cost to industrialization which had long wages, mass unemployments and tenements. plus side, growing literacy, public education.

Video short: Gangs of New York~ short clip.

talked about how Irish were treated like crap. Loved and hated William Tweed. Theives admired him.

Technology lowers cost and increase production. same with printing greater availability, more money means more productivity. competition, when want attention, they want bigger type. 

Nest thing comes along is wood type. with machinery and the Router. it means an orgy of different styles. the Router discards limitations of type faces. created Egyptian face. they get their name because it was what was cool at the time. 

next major innovation came with Two line Egyptian type which we would call San Serif. they had egyptian and one day someone took the serifs off.  even weight, not contrast to thick and thin. 

Tuscan face, a type of display face. a crazy decoration of letters. (similar to cowboys). then we get dimentional letters, knocked out letters,  

Words for the day: Democrazization, Bodoni, Transitional, Modern, Neo-classical, interchangeable parts, fat face, compositor, industrialization, display type, egyptian, sans serif, tuscan style, wood type, ephemera.  ephemera: things that's not suppose to be collected. 

people used ephemera everywhere. poster houses springing up, not designed, what would fit in the space and what's available. 

Looking a ephemera in the past showed what was being sold what people were buying.  

five historical faces: old style, transitional, modern, egyptian, sans serif.  the differences are in quality of strokes, separation, and the brackets. 

Display: black letter, hand written, script, dingbats. 

faces are measured by the height of the lowercase letters or the x-height. 

Leading is the space between lines of type. it's measured from base line to base line. 

Advice to myself in the future- ((Leading is 20% beyond the base line)))

Never use auto leading, especially on a poster.  it's 20% over.  

Personal Thoughts:  I felt that class was actually useful as to what we need to learn as design students. Since we're using a lot of typography in 2D design, it's good to learn how it evolved and what the different types of typefaces were created. The differences of how the type used to look was really simple and interesting. It's a little scary but also believable that people compete in how popular their typography is and do wacky things to get the public's attention. Even in today's era, we focus on what's new and popular and sometimes get fueled with envy on wanting what the others or multiple people have. I've felt that feeling before and it's sad that it's what society has come too but it's acceptable as well. These lecture is also for future information for me when I need to make a poster and there are things I shouldn't do if I want good results in my career.  Learning about how Bodoni became popular and how it copied the Rococo design was good for me to know since I've been using it a lot with my typography in 2-D Design class. Overall, there are things that are quite unique about how the historical typefaces lead an impact as to how the world falls to consumerism and how it'll continue to grow with display face to attract people to the different styles companies produce.

Questions: I would like to know how the other types of typefaces on my computer like in Photoshop and Illustrator came into becoming popular? Another one is are they similar to the historical typefaces and if they are, who were the different types of people that thought of their design being similar to it?