http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Graphic-Design/Typography A listing of the most recently indexed works about Design and Graphic Design and Typography in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Graphic-Design/Typography http://tc.eserver.org/35476.html http://tc.eserver.org/35476.html In addition to font stacks, why not replace the heading text with an image, embedded font, or bit of Flash? The methods described below are easier than they sound. And the end result is that the vast majority of users will see the beautiful typography you want them to see. A word of warning, though: don’t use dynamic text replacement for all of the text on your page. All that would do is slow it down and frustrate your visitors. Instead, save it for headings, menu items, pull quotes and other small bits of text. http://tc.eserver.org/35483.html http://tc.eserver.org/35483.html Ampersands have long been the character in a typeface with which typographers can indulge themselves. Sweeping curves, flirtatious finishes and bold statements – these are the things that make ampersands an exciting character to use and, better still, to design. There are, however, two problems. http://tc.eserver.org/32719.html http://tc.eserver.org/32719.html In this article, we go retro, finding beautiful examples of vintage typography and the modern work they’ve inspired. Looking back, it’s easy to see why some of this type has stood the test of time and is still lingering in the design community today. http://tc.eserver.org/32572.html http://tc.eserver.org/32572.html Powerful design software makes many choices available to graphic designers, but just because you can do something doesn’t always mean you should. For example, sometimes it’s a good idea to convert your text layouts to outline, but sometimes it isn’t. Learn more about this occasionally necessary, often ill-advised practice before you decide whether or not it’s time to convert. http://tc.eserver.org/32594.html http://tc.eserver.org/32594.html Are you known by your initials? Turn those letters into a terrific signature! http://tc.eserver.org/32263.html http://tc.eserver.org/32263.html Typotheque is a type foundry, run by Peter Biľak (who is responsible for the fonts and website in general), and Johanna Biľak, (who is responsible for other products, such as books and t-shirts). We also work with a number of freelance designers, writers, and programmers who assist in some of our current projects. http://tc.eserver.org/32104.html http://tc.eserver.org/32104.html iLT is designed to inspire its readers, to make people more aware of the typography that is around them. We really cannot escape typography; it's everywhere: on road signs, shampoo bottles, toothpaste, and even on billboard posters, in books and magazines, online...the list is endless, and the possibilities equally so. http://tc.eserver.org/30527.html http://tc.eserver.org/30527.html An article about the graphic design of logotypes using typographic widely successful techniques. http://tc.eserver.org/30529.html http://tc.eserver.org/30529.html How to choose a typeface for clear, easy reading over long distances. http://tc.eserver.org/30158.html http://tc.eserver.org/30158.html The technology of in-house publishing is radically shifting the responsibility for document design from the graphic specialist to the individual writer. To apply the new technology, professional communicators need to understand the principles underpinning typographical design and their origin in the functionalist aesthetics of modernism, particularly as articulated by the Bauhaus. While some of the key concepts of modernism--strict economy, universal objectivity, intuitive perception, and the unity of form and purpose--are well-suited to business and technical documents, these concepts are bound to an historical and intellectual milieu. By understanding the influence of modernism on typographical design, professional communicators equipped with the new technology can adapt design principles to the rhetorical context of specific documents. http://tc.eserver.org/29800.html http://tc.eserver.org/29800.html This article considers various notions of 'beauty' and how these have informed the creative and critical processes of graphic design, specifically typography. The author considers how the Renaissance revival of Greek mathematics to support a 'universal beauty' was gradually unpicked by Enlightenment thinkers such as Descartes, Kant and Hume, and how this process has subsequently shaped modernist and postmodernist attitudes towards 'beauty'. From our current vantage point it could be argued that 'beauty' should now be considered a redundant concept; however, design schools and studios continue to make value judgments dividing the 'beautiful' from the 'ugly'. On what basis are these judgements made and are they still valid in a pluralistic society? Is it possible that we now have a new sensibility, a different notion of beauty? Reflecting upon important questions raised by the American designer and writer Steven Heller in his controversial essay 'The Cult of the Ugly' in _Eye_ magazine in 1993, the author proposes that 14 years on from the article, we can indeed witness a new aesthetic sensibility, shared but not universal, rooted in loss yet also 'found'. http://tc.eserver.org/28438.html http://tc.eserver.org/28438.html Logos in the form of words or letters have natural properties that make them visually effective: (see also logos article): good recognition; good descriptiveness; and good presence. http://tc.eserver.org/27943.html http://tc.eserver.org/27943.html Weblog van Gerard Voshaar over typografie. http://tc.eserver.org/27899.html http://tc.eserver.org/27899.html We call on the common man to rise up in revolt against this evil of typographical ignorance. http://tc.eserver.org/27437.html http://tc.eserver.org/27437.html Brushed metal is always a cool effect to pull off in Photoshop. And after you’ve created your steel texture, what better place to use it than to produce beveled steel type? http://tc.eserver.org/10007.html http://tc.eserver.org/10007.html The Typographic Circle was formed about thirty years ago by a group of advertising typographers as the Type Directors Club, to bring together anyone with an interest in type. http://tc.eserver.org/25169.html http://tc.eserver.org/25169.html Al Ward, author of 'Photoshop for Right Brainers' walks you through an extensive tutorial using layers and layer masks for a rather striking image. More than 30 illustrations and Al's competent guidance will show you how to put type in your face! http://tc.eserver.org/25171.html http://tc.eserver.org/25171.html In this article, Fred talks about experiences with some of the greats of typography... and helps to answer the question with a quote from Jan White. http://tc.eserver.org/25152.html http://tc.eserver.org/25152.html Always use elements contained in the font you're manipulating! http://tc.eserver.org/22636.html http://tc.eserver.org/22636.html Almost everything we know in the world can be described in just 26 letters--isn't that amazing? Yet this most visible art--which we all see all around us each day--has long been invisible in most people's minds. Part of this was intentional-- because the content, not the type, is the message. With type, the media is not the message. But type also adds to everything we read in subliminal and powerful ways, and Typofile is about people who love type, and why. http://tc.eserver.org/21005.html http://tc.eserver.org/21005.html An interactive experience informed by type and typography, which aims to illustrate the depth and import of type, and to raise relevant questions about how typography is treated in the digital media, specifically online. http://tc.eserver.org/20997.html http://tc.eserver.org/20997.html I'd like to point out something that you may not have noticed yet. And though I'm quite sure many of you have seen it by now, its subtlety is worth mentioning here again. Go take another look at the FedEx logo — specifically, take another look at the white space surrounding the logo. There may have been years when you didn't notice this arrow in its negative space. Now you can't stop noticing how the figure and its ground produce an entirely new object. The brand may have even taken on new meaning. Josef Albers describes the arrow's visual effect as 1+1=3 or more, or the creation of an incidental new element from two intentionally placed elements. What has happened here is that you're stopped recognizing the logo, and started to perceive it as having another quality. http://tc.eserver.org/20953.html http://tc.eserver.org/20953.html It's not been easy for art directors and graphic designers to maintain a career amidst rapidly changing technology and design trends. http://tc.eserver.org/20938.html http://tc.eserver.org/20938.html The media is a battlefield where moral systems collide. Ownership tilts it. TV channels and newspapers in the U.S. promote their business interests by supporting a probig business government and its war. Even The New York Times, which opposed invading Iraq without UN consent, did so in a way unlikely to rock the boat—and clearly in direct contrast to the intention of Britain’s Daily Mirror. The Mirror's front page, designed to generate newsbox sales by aggressively engaging the man in the street, is as pointed and artistically crafted as an editorial cartoon. http://tc.eserver.org/20674.html http://tc.eserver.org/20674.html Different graphical software applications have different abilities at antialiasing: some software is very good at it, while other software is not. Here are some examples for comparison. http://tc.eserver.org/20675.html http://tc.eserver.org/20675.html Antialiasing is a method of representing perfect, continuous vectors on imperfect, discontinuous display devices so that they look as perfect as possible. http://tc.eserver.org/20429.html http://tc.eserver.org/20429.html Magazine typography is all about communicating, but magazines communicate in many different ways. One of those ways is through the text, the traditional meat of any publication. Other ways include photography, artwork, suggestive and allusive headlines, cartoons, and even the advertising. All of these require integrating words and images in imaginative ways. http://tc.eserver.org/20424.html http://tc.eserver.org/20424.html The more components a brand identity contains, the more onerous it can be. Logo, pictogram, texture, color scheme, wordmark: each must be laboriously created, launched, and cared for, and each of these stages has its own substantial costs. For many companies today, these costs are becoming prohibitive. An increasingly popular alternative is a hard-working, purely typographic wordmark that speaks clearly for the brand, all by itself. http://tc.eserver.org/20415.html http://tc.eserver.org/20415.html Designers are used to being detail-oriented and mathematically precise, nudging things a point this way and a pixel that way until technical perfection is achieved. However, when it comes to typographic alignment, the mathematical approach to design doesn’t apply: it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Visual alignment (also called optical alignment) means exactly that: using that high-tech tool, the human eye, to line up your text until it looks right. http://tc.eserver.org/20395.html http://tc.eserver.org/20395.html An interactive website dedicated to typography and its history. http://tc.eserver.org/20407.html http://tc.eserver.org/20407.html If you’ve ever gone looking 'behind the scenes' in your fonts, you might have stumbled upon a wonderful surprise: a logotype. Logotypes are usually small, commonly used words – such as the, for, and, of and to – that are designed as a unit. Like ligatures, logotypes are treated as a single character by your application (and are usually accessed with one keystroke or keystroke combination). Unlike ligatures, the letters within a logotype are not necessarily connected. In fact, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the design of these useful little words. http://tc.eserver.org/20404.html http://tc.eserver.org/20404.html U&lc Online is ITC’s international journal of graphic design and digital media. http://tc.eserver.org/19174.html http://tc.eserver.org/19174.html This site is designed to give you an impression of the contents and dynamics of IDJ by providing abstracts, a selection of illustrations, and occasional additional sound and video clips. The site is updated with every issue (three times per year). Information Design Journal is an international refereed journal which provides a forum for theoretical and practice-oriented discussions concerning the effective, efficient and attractive presentation of information. Topics include the design of infographics, public information signs, forms, product labeling, typography, instructions for use, user interfaces, websites, and instructional textbooks. The editors invite contributions. Please consult the Guidelines for Contributors. http://tc.eserver.org/18228.html http://tc.eserver.org/18228.html The purpose of my Web Page Design for Designers site is not to teach people how to produce web pages. There is little mention of HTML or any other technical stuff except where necessary. It is assumed that the reader already has a grasp of HTML programming, or has made the decision to use a WYSIWYG Web page editor. It is aimed at people who are already involved with design and typography for conventional print and want to explore the possibilities of this new electronic medium. They are probably already using page layout tools like QuarkXPress, Photoshop, Freehand and Illustrator and have discovered that designing web pages is something quite different. http://tc.eserver.org/18213.html http://tc.eserver.org/18213.html Technical communicators can make reading easier by using type-design principles proven to enhance reading performance. This paper, based on the author’s master’s thesis of the same name, revealed research related to the graphic design of text and concluded that further research is needed to measure the impact of typography on readers (expert, intermediate, and novice) and the ways in which they read (to do, to read to learn, to read to assess, and to read to learn to do). http://tc.eserver.org/14857.html http://tc.eserver.org/14857.html An interactive overview of design, color theory, composition and layout, perspective and typography. http://tc.eserver.org/13581.html http://tc.eserver.org/13581.html Every product that human beings create has an impact on the environment. The questions is, to what degree? How long will it last, what damage is done in creating it, and what will happen when it is no longer needed? http://tc.eserver.org/10243.html http://tc.eserver.org/10243.html Although this doesn't seem to be a Design and Publishing topic, it really is. Your visual experience should always be digesting new and different input. You need visual stimulation to maintain your creative edge. Looking at art is one way of doing this -- and the web offers an unlimited wealth of visual wonders. Pull out your daytimer, or your palm, and make an appointment with yourself. Take one or two hours each month and discover new visual landscapes. It will serve you well, and you'll come to look forward to those little jaunts into the visual web. http://tc.eserver.org/10203.html http://tc.eserver.org/10203.html Design, Typography and Graphics is the official publication of the Design and Publishing Center. It offers tips and tricks for design, printing, photography and publishing of all kinds.