Leading and Kerning

One skill that i have learnt this project is how to lead and kern letters on indesign. Here i am going to post a few examples of the skills that i have learnt. I can see why this is a useful skill, especially in the publishing industry.

Here is an example of me kerning the word War. W and A digitally are typed being very far apart. 

These last three pictures are by me going through the process of leading. 

Magazine Layouts

One thing that is useful to a graphic designer is to have knowledge with layouts of books, magazines etc and that is exactly what we are looking at. I have been tracing over the layouts of various magazines on paper which include everyday gossip magazines, graphic magazines and i have even looked at newspaper layouts to see the contrast.  
Indesign is a very useful tool for preparing and making layouts and i have been copying a few of the layouts i have drawn onto paper in indesign and highlighting which parts are imagery and which parts are text. Here are some of the work that i have done on indesign;

Here the red boxes represent images and the text filled boxes represent text. This is a double page spread from Eye magazine. By looking at many graphics magazines i have noticed that almost every one dedicate a whole page to an image that is relating to the article.

Again this is another double page spread from Eye  magazine and here there is more of a cluster of images and more text included in this article.

This double page spread is from the popular magazine for woman, Glamour. These sort of magazines can have very interesting layouts as they are not afraid to have a diagonal picture and convention columned text. Here the columns of text are not exactly rectangle as the picture that has been placed on the middle has cut off a tiny bit off the edge on both of the columns. 

Digital Postcards on Illustrator

Here i have made my three paper drawings on illustrator. They are a little rough around the edges as i still think that they are a work in progress but after this i can decide which one i like that will have as my main finished postcard. 

This is the poster that i have made for Fear. It is still a working document hence why it seems a little rough around the edges but i have based it on Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and this scene is the famous shower scene that was featured in the movie. This scene evokes fear in some people that have watched it as it is so intense and very well directed and written in my opinion. 

This is the first postcard that i made representing femininity. Femininity says to me about strong and elegant woman who are good people to look up to and admire. However this word is not to be confused with being linked to feminism. I made this postcard this way because it represents what most females want to be. Femininity is all about looking good, feeling good and being a strong character. 

Out of all the postcards that i have designed i think that the second poster here has to be the strongest for its message.

Paper Drawings of Postcards

Here are three of the postcards that i would like to be made in Illustrator as i feel that they are the stronger of my designs. Here they are only a rough depiction before i make them in illustrator to look at compositions and what works best for them. 

(Femininity One)

(Fear)

(Femininity Two)

Here i cannot decide which one i will use for my main postcard yet, i think it is too early so i am now going to make them all in illustrator. 

Thumbnails and Influences for the Postcards

For my project i have been asked to produce a postcard to show my skills at photoshop and illustrator. We were given a list of words, which were different emotions and the three emotions that appealed to me were Anger, Fear and Femininity as they are all strong words that i had many ideas spring to mind. 
Here are the thumbnails: 

(Anger) 

(Fear)

(Femininity)

Whilst drawing my thumbnails, by the time i got to mapping out my femininity drawings i had the idea of basing them on the 1930's to 1950's film noir's, as they had the angry villain, the fear of a monster or a crime and the gorgeous feminine heroine. I don't particularly have a favourite film noir but i do like films directed and written by Hitchcock and Welles for their artistic and mysterious filming. 

Influential Pieces

Whilst my researching on the internet i thought that i would include some of my favourite pieces of typography and calligraphy that i had stumbled on that could be useful references and influences in the future....

Andre Bergamin

Shaun Morrison

(Unknown)

(Unknown)

Calligraphy Research

Calligraphy translates from the greek words ‘killi’ and ‘graphos’ which means beautiful and writing. Calligraphy is described as being in Harmony with your writing instruments. In old English writing the organs of the letter started out as pictography and took more of a shape when the roman alphabet was introduced to England. The Roman alphabet has derevatives from the greek alphabet where phonics featured. In Old English scripts were featured such as Gothic (Black Letter) and Medieval calligraphy and are a sans serif type that originated from British Northern France and these scripts were heavily used in the periods of the 11th and the 16th centuries. From the opinion of some artists and designers there is a fine line between paintings and works of calligraphy as with some works of calligraphy could be so unreadable whereas there are some paintings that could look like they are trying to form words or obscure pictures.

Tom Gourdie's Shakespeare Sonnet, 1980

Donald Jackson

Donald Jackson (1938-present) born in Lancashire and at the age of 13 was awarded a scholarship at the Bolton School of Arts. Following that he went to specialise in design and calligraphy at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and then went on to study it further at Goldsmiths in London where he became a professional calligrapher and a teacher at Camberwell. Since 1964 he has became one of two scribes at the House of Lords and preparing charters and commemorative documents. From the 1980's he now writes books and lectures. 

Julian Waters

Julian Waters (1957-present) was born in Hampshire, England and is known as a calligrapher, type-designer and a teacher. In the late seventies began studying extensively with Hermann Zapf, a remarkable German type designer. In the early eighties he went to Washington D.C. and worked at Bookmark studio with Gerard Valerio  specialising in logo design and publication design. After opening his own studio and working with several studios and publishers he has produced a huge variety of work including magazines, C.D. covers, logos and books etc. Some of Waters' clients include the U.S Postal Service and National Geographic magazine who have wanted letterforms designed for their companies. The style of his work is very interesting as he combines letter-drawing with computers and has taught this all over the world as letterform design. As well as teaching he also works for the Adobe company. 

25ct
  United States. 1989
  Bill of Rights
  Designed by Lou Nolan. Lettering and
  calligraphy by Julian Waters.

John Stevens

He is a calligrapher, lettering artist and a graphic designer who has created his own custom calligraphy, logo types and illustrative letter designs for clients who include; book and magazine publishing, ad agencies, packaging firms and television and film. Stevens has work in many private and public collections globally and in similarity likes to teach all around the world. He has a passion to teach in Italy where he would finally have access to many Roman inscriptions which is what he and his work are influenced by. 

Headliners Poster, 1986

Rings of Saturn, 1996

Typography Research

Edward Johnston

Edward Johnston (1872-1944) is probably most famous for making the sans-serif type that is 
seen in the London underground, Johnston Sans-Serif which he produced in 1915, based on 
classical Roman designs. But before that he was the man that single-handedly made 
calligraphy, which had lain dead for almost four centuries, popular again. In 1906 Johnston 
wrote a book, Writing, Illuminating and Lettering and in 1910, one of his pupils, Anna Simons 
translated his book into German where there was a huge interest sparked in that country for 
calligraphy and hand-drawn type. Interest in the United States came about in the 1970’s and 
ever since has been quite a popular subject to study. In 1912, Johnston followed his pupil Eric Gill to Ditchling after already being very influential as a calligrapher it was time to try his hand in typography. In his begining years in Ditchling Eric Gill and Johnston worked closely together working on printing techniques and letter forms where eventually along with their mutual friend Dominic Pepler they set up a printing workshop. The press gave Johnston an insight and taught him the production of books. After this, he produced his own typeface which was used for the London Underground Railway.

Johnston's Bullseye's 1916-1919

Eric Gill

Eric Gill (1882-1940), started his artistic career as a sculptor. Johnston had always been an 

infleunce to Gill and in 1903 he gave up his architectural training to become a calligrapher, 

monumental stone cutter and letter cutter to train with Johnston in lettering at the center

school of arts and crafts in London. In 1927-30 he produced Gill Sans after working as part of the adminisration part in the London Underground, which has come to be a popular typeface of today. After that he produced;Golden Cockerell Roman (1929), Perpetua (1929–30), Solus (1929), Joanna (1930–31), Aries (1932), Floriated Capitals (1932), Bunyan, Pilgrim (1934) and Jubilee (1934).

Gill Sans Alphabet which has been digitalised

Rudolf Koch

Rudolf Koch (1876-1934) was born in Nuremberg was a type designer, calligrapher and an artist. He designed both Blackletter and Roman Alphabets. He was strongly christian and parts of this influenced what he put into his work. His other influence was baroque forms and romanticism and his work has been described as having a balance between being extremely elegant and having a powerful raw energy. Koch's most well-known typefaces include; Deutsche Schrift, Maximillian, Jessen, Prisma and Zepelin. His typefaces were released by Klingspor foundry, a company where he worked for, after the time of his death. Koch had an affinity with the arts and crafts movement which was lead by William Morris and later in life took an interest in the Bauhaus where he produced his final pieces of calligraphy. It was also known that Koch had been concerned with the development of industrial type.

An Example of his Blackletter Calligraphy.