Type 2 - Questions over Speech

My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."

Spoken by Edward M. Kennedy

This speech is important because it was to console the world as we said goodbye to Robert F. Kennedy. I find it interesting because it tells about who Robert F. Kennedy was and what he tried to do during his lifetime.

There is a lot of emotion in this speech because it was given at the service for Robert F. Kennedy by his brother. The tone is somber.

Words that could be emphasized are death, life, good and decent, wrong, right, suffering, heal, war, stop, loved, pray, wish, all the world, touched, why, why not.

It is a sad speech because we lost a great man, but it is also inspiring. It makes people want to live like Robert F. Kennedy and be the kind of person that he was.

Edward M. Kennedy is the youngest of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, and is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Virginia Law School. Kennedy lives in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, with his wife Victoria Reggie Kennedy. Together, they have five children – Kara, Edward Jr., and Patrick Kennedy, and Curran and Caroline Raclin. They also have four grandchildren. Kennedy is currently the Chairman on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the Senate. He also serves on the Armed Services Committee where he is the senior Democrat on the Seapower Subcommittee. He is also a member of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee and the Congressional Friends of Ireland, and a trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Senator Edward M. Kennedy has represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate for forty-six years. He was elected in 1962 to finish the final two years of the Senate term of his brother, Senator John F. Kennedy, who was elected President in 1960. Since then, Kennedy has been re-elected to seven full terms, and is now the second most senior member of the Senate. Throughout his career, Kennedy has fought for issues that benefit the citizens of Massachusetts and the nation. His effort to make quality health care accessible and affordable to every American is a battle that Kennedy has been waging ever since he arrived in the Senate. In addition, Kennedy is active on a wide range of other issues, including education reform and immigration reform, raising the minimum wage, defending the rights of workers and their families, strengthening civil rights, assisting individuals with disabilities, fighting for cleaner water and cleaner air, and protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.

Sources:

http://kennedy.senate.gov/senator/index.cfm

Graphic Design - Logo Flash

http://www.people.ku.edu/~allieb/html/index.html

Type 2 - Journal 6

Being a good writer can help you become a better designer and being a good designer can produce better writing. The two go hand in hand having many things in common, such as brainstorming, research, organization, roughs, revisions, etc. Yet, so often we seem to separate the two. We should try to see them more as a whole than two separate pieces. By being a good writer, a designer can better communicate their ideas and by being a good designer a writer can communicate to a specific audience in a specific way. This makes both products better in the end.



Links:
The Role of Writing in a Design Curriculum
Better Writing Through Design
Brand New

Type 2 - Journal 4

In the video of Stefan Sagmeister's presentation Yes, design can make you happy he spoke about things in his life that have made him happy, mostly about the ones that had to do with design. He also spoke about other people's designs that made him happy. I really enjoyed the designs made by other people that he showed. The subway signs were very interesting because they could easily go unnoticed. I wonder how many people notice them and how many do not? I like projects like that because if you do notice them, they can easily brighten your day. Also the speech bubble project was interesting because it let the viewers be a part of the project. I often enjoy projects where the viewer is a participant, like in the PostSecret project for example.

I also watched J.J. Abrams' talk, The mystery box. He talked about why mysteries are interesting to him and how that came about. He showed a lot of interesting clips from his projects as well as others. When he showed the Kleenex box that he had disassembled I found it really interesting. I never thought of all the work that goes into making something as simple as a box for Kleenex. I also really liked the whole theme of his talk, which sprang from the magic box his grandpa bought for as a kid and he has never opened.

The last video I watched was the presentation Fashion, passion, and about a million other things by Isaac Mizrahi. His talk was very intruiging and quite funny. It was interesting to learn that he stays up late and feels like that's when he comes up with his best ideas. Also it was interesting, and funny, when he spoke about following people that he finds interesting and going to Tarot card readers to find new ideas. Mizrahi said he was greatly inspired by color and amusing mistakes.

I picked these videos not only because they were recommended, but also because they were some of the few people that I had heard of on the site. Although, I'm sure many more of the talks were also good.

How Good is Good?
I think it's really fascinating that design can make people feel all those different things. The design doesn't even have to be different to evoke these different emotions. Two different people could feel two very different things while looking at the exact same design.

The Ten Commandments of Typography & How to Break Them

The Ten Commandments:

1. Thou shalt not apply more than three typefaces in a document.
2. Thou shalt lay headlines large and at the top of a page.
3. Thou shalt employ no other type size than 8pt to 10 pt for body copy.
4. Remember that a typeface that is not legible is not truly a typeface.
5. Honour thy kerning, so that white space becomes visually equalized between characters.
6. Thou shalt lay stress discreetly upon elements within text.
7. Thou shalt not use only capitals when setting vast body copy.
8. Thou shalt always align letters and words on a baseline.
9. Thou shalt use flush-left, ragged-right type alignment.
10. Thou shalt not make lines too short or too long.

How to Break the Ten Commandments:

1. Break the fetters imposed by the use of only three typefaces.
2. Let thine eyes be seduced by the hierarchy of type.
3. Do not forsake smaller of bigger sizes.
4. Be seduced into trying new and expressive typefaces.
5. Treat kerning and tracking with total irreverence.
6. Entice the reader to sample the delights of your text.
7. Do not forgo the liberal use of capitals within your text.
8. The Lord designed letterforms to stand side by side, but there is no harm in their being lured away from one another.
9. Yield to the temptation to align text in unusual ways.
10. Lure the reader down unfamiliar paths.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It's a great way to learn the rules of typography and how not to use them. Plus the creative format of the book made it an interesting read.

Type 2 - Journal 2

Stay up late.

Strange things happen when you've gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated form the rest of the world. (18)

Bruce Mau is the creative director of Bruce Mau Design (BMD) and the founder of the Institute without Boundaries. His studio has gained recognition for its expertise and innovation in identity articulation, research and conceptual programming, print design and production, environmental signage and way finding systems, and exhibition and product design.

Mau recently worked on a project called "Massive Change: the Future of Design Culture" with the Institute without Boundaries. It was an international project that mapped the capacity, power and promise of design. Massive Change explored paradigm-shifting events and ideas, investigated the capacities and ethnical dilemmas of design in manufacturing, transportation, urbanism, trade, warfare, health, energy, materials, the image, information and software. The exhibition lasted 3 months in the Vancouver Art Gallery and traveled afterwards. "Massive Change" has also inspired a book, weekly electronic newsletter and radio broadcast.

Type 2 - Journal 1

Chip Kidd is an author and graphic designer. In 2007 he was awarded the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for one of his book covers. He is important because he has created over 1,000 innovative book covers. He designs book covers that look good, as well as have a mass appeal.

John Gall is the Art Director for Vintage and Anchor Books, a publishing group within Random House. He uses simple, but elegant typography on his book covers. He uses collages, photos, typography and art in many of his book covers, which are unique from the many other books on the shelf.

The title of Confessions of a Shopaholic is written on a price tag, a reference to shopping.

The cover of How to Talk to Girls is all typography except for the heart that is encompassed by a speech bubble. This gives the impression that the book is about how to find love. 

On the bottom of the cover of Flat Belly Diet there is a tape measure. This is an index of weightloss, which the book will be about.

Series - A sequence of books that share common characteristics and are identified as a group. Harry Potter is an example of a series.

Sequence - An ordered list of objects or events. The order in which a series of books is meant to be read.

A sign can be identified as 1 of 3 categories: icon, index or symbol. Each relates to their object in a different way; icons have specific properties in common with their objects, indexes are directly influenced by their objects and symbols have a convention-based relationships with their objects.

An icon is a pattern that physically resembles what it stands for. Such as the symbol of the woman and man that represent the restroom.

An index either correlates with or points to something. For example a dog bone would reference a dog.

Symbols can either be categorized as word symbols or nonword symbols. Word symbols such as the word peace, are usually just the word. While nonword symbols are a picture that represents a word, such as the dove, which represents peace.

Graphic Design - Reading 1

Symbols can represent a variety of different things, such as the apple we looked at. One person could say it means health, while another says temptation. All of the different ways a symbol can be interpreted should be looked at and considered because you wouldn't want anyone to badly interpret your message. Also a lot of times you don't need the whole picture to get the same point across. Just by showing Elvis' different haircuts you can tell what is being represented. Always remember to simplify! 

There are so many different things to think about before designing a logo, a lot more goes into it than I thought. It's not just putting something together that looks good; you have to consider it from every viewpoint. 

Who is Adrian Frutiger?

Adrian Frutiger is a well known type designer, having produced some of the most used and widely known fonts. He studied at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts after working as a printer's apprentice at the age of 16. 

After school Frutiger moved to Paris to work at the Deberny & Peignot typefoundry, where he helped move classic typeface used with traditional printing methods to newer phototypesetting technologies. This is also when Frutiger started designing his own typefaces.

In 1956 Frutiger designed the Univers typeface and it was released the following year. 

Univers “is a neo-grotesque san-serif; it features optically even stroke weights and a large x-height to improve legibility. It's become known for the variety of weights and set-widths included in the family. At the time it was designed it included 21 variations, and was the first type family to implement a numbering system as opposed to using names. Today there are over 27 different variations of Univers available. Univers is an extremely diverse typeface that has the ability to work very well at large display sizes for applications such as headlines and mastheads as well as in small sizes for body copy.”

In 1990 Frutiger expanded Univers with the help of Linotype to include 63 different weights, which were each carefully drawn so they would be compatible with all the others.

All these variations of the Univers typeface can be seen in the Univers grid, which shows how each variation is slightly different from the previous one.

Sources:

Typophile: Universe

Typophile: Frutiger

Mr. Univers

Who is John Baskerville?

John Baskerville is best known as a printer and typographer. He was very interested in the shapes of letter forms, which led him to design and manufacture his own typeface for the printing press. He printed many books, including Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Political Songster by John Freeth and a pocket dictionary. However, the Bible he printed in 1763 is regarded as his masterpiece, which is somewhat ironic since Baskerville was an atheist. 

Baskerville's printings are known for being clear and carefully done. They are considered among the best examples of art printing. 

Baskerville was a printer for Cambridge University from 1758-68. He also created the Baskerville font, which is still used today because of it's clarity and balance.

Baskerville is a traditional typeface. “...with its generous proportions, the Baskerville appears not very different from its predecessors. But the difference between fine and bold strokes is more marked, the lower-case serifs are almost horizontal and the emphasis on the stroke widths is almost vertical.”

Today there is a monument dedicated to John Baskerville in Birmingham, by the Baskerville House, where Baskerville once lived and worked. Columns of stone display reversed letters, which spell out “Virgil,” his very first work in 1757. The monument is known as “Industry and Genius,” which comes from a poem which praised Baskerville.

Sources:

John Baskerville Biography

John Baskerville of Birmingham

I Love Typography

Industry and Genius