Type

Typeface
 'a particular design of type'

Font
 'A font is the combination of typeface and other qualities, such as size, pitch, and spacing.'

The lecture today was about typography and exploring different types of type and how they might be used or have been created. Looking specifically at Jan Tschichold's book "The New Typography" published in 1928, a book that shows striking composistions and tells the viewer how the pages work with type and images together. The book is organised around the following principles:

• Asymmetric balance of elements
• Utalisation of white space
• Sans serif typography
• Advocated lower case letters
• Supported the typo-photo approach
• Content was designed by the hierarchy

"Universal" typeface

Herbert Bayer was an Austrian and American graphic designer and last living member of the Bauhaus school. He created "Universal" in 1925, a typeface created by hand with the elimination of capital letters and a stronger focus on the geometrical elements of the type. Bayer created this typeface specifically so that the type was easy to read, legible, cheap to produce and had a simple layout all elements that made the type easier and cheaper to print from machines. "Universal" featured all these elements: uniform thickness, perfect circles and lines all measured which are things Bauhaus embodied.


I learnt something new today in the lecture, kinetic type. It appears everywhere today as type that moves with simple animations. It offers the reader a different way of looking at the type and shows how it can expand, shrink and morph on the page in front of you to keep you interested. Kinetic type appears in an order and we usually see them on TV adverts, blogs and landing pages.

Screen grab of title sequence

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker who became known for using the new kinetic typography in his work. An example of this would be from the film, "North by Northwest." Bass showed his first proper use of kinetic type in the opening titles of the film. The type is modern, clean, minimal and the grid shows a reoccurring theme with lots of interetsing lines and points that cross over each other which mimics scenes in the film about people meeting and crossing paths.

Lastly, we looked at conceptual type, there is no clear cut definition for this type but Peter Bil'ak (Slovakian graphic designer) said 'Before the typeface is executed, it is not a typeface, it is simply an idea."

Reference:
Image of "Universal" retrieved from http://www.widewalls.ch/bauhaus-typography/herbert-bayer/

Screengrab from trailer retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVUnUmPV33c