Contemporary Typography Group 3: January 2010

25 Jan 2010

Tauba Auerbach (Research)

Letters as Numbers ii

Tauba Auerbach is an American artist who uses typography in her work.

i particularly like these pieces of hers as they present type in an un-obvious way- the viewer cannot initially recognise the letters although the shapes appear familiar.

Only with the help of the work's title or after a while can the viewer piece the shapes into an alphabet or number order.

i like how she has dissected the typeface to show the bare components, you can recognise a uniformity to all of the letters this way, showing that this alphabet is made up of very limited forms.

Lowercase Components

I think this work shows a link to the exploration of semiotics and plays with the ideas of codes and secret messages- almost unreadable type. She is trying to strip the function of the type itself.

Ambo Dextro

In this piece Auerbach has reconfigured a typewriter so that the letters typed do not correspond with the letters on the keys. The use of the typewriter has connotations of the 'engima machines' designed for the encryption and decryption of secret messages during WWI. I think i am interested in her work because it combines typography and art with maths and science.

British Enigma Machine

24 Jan 2010

Johhny Cupcakes. (Research)

Johhny Cupcakes is an incredibly well branded clothing line that has some brilliant examples of custom typography not presented in the standard printed media. Design for apparel has always interested me. I would enjoy designing for a wearable medium, what better compliment to a designer's work is there than wearing it for a day?

Personally i think the brilliance of this style of work is in the mixing of illustrative forms and typeface. Working with illustration as well as type opens up new doors to creativity demonstrating a concept with only type it not an easy task, providing illustrative clue's to the concept in hand is i believe a great way to succeed in shirt design.

Mike Giant/Rebel 8 (Research)

Mike Giant is a tattooist/graffiti artist who now run's the clothing line rebel 8.

Personally I think Mike's type successes' are largely dependant on his experiences in other creative fields, being an ex tattooist his line work is impeccable, all his type form's are hand rendered, taking influence from perhaps non-graphic locations allows for his incredibly original style.

I think the appeal of hand rendered type to me as designer comes mostly from knowing how difficult it is to type set by hand, keeping the type in parallel with each other whilst adding creative flourish's is no easy task that isn't perfected in a short period of time.

I think mike's success in typography is reliant but not dependant on his skill as an illustrator, approaching typography in a different way to that of a graphic designer perhaps give's him a wider scope for creative letter form's never working from vector's or stock typeface only promotes original work.

Teagan White (Research)

By Teagan White. (www.teaganwhite.com)

This poster is created from hand rendered type. I really that the type is very illustrative, it becomes more than just typeface and turns into something more. Combing the idea of the type and the image as one. The first two lines, 'person you love' are my favourite. They are letters formed from anatomical style illustrations of body parts such as muscle and bone. Despite being based on something which is actually quite gruesome, the illustrations have a beautiful and almost fragile quality to them. The type composed mostly of veins, again looks very delicate and each letter flows onto the next, making the individual letters in the word work as one. This contrasts with the third type, which is very mathematical look, being planned and measured out precisely.

Marion Bataille (Research)

By MARION BATAILLE

The type in this book really interests me due to the fact that it is you, as the reader, who has influence over the the forming of the type itself. Many of the letters would not work together without the physical movement of the opening and turning of the pages within the book. In some cases it is also all about the angle at which you look at the letter, you have to turn the book on its side or move it around until you can see the letter as it is meant to be. It is this versatility that intrigues me when it comes to this collection of typography, more so than the letter forms themselves.

Typography Analysis (Research)

Craig Ward & Sean Freeman & Alison Carmichael - ‘Calligraffiti’

I visited the 'If You Could' exhibition in Shoreditch over the weekend. I really liked the exhibition as a whole (especially some of the video pieces) but the work that stood out the most to me was Craig Ward, Sean Freeman and Alison Carmichael's piece which is being dubbed as ‘Calligraffiti’.

I think I found the piece so engrossing because it had a perfect mix of typography and craft elements, the format that they realised the concept through really accentuated it's imapct, I admired this direction and would be keen to involve it within my own work.

The compositions of these pieces were obviously very well thought out, and the 3D nature of the letter-forms was impressive up close. The different styles worked well for the different quotes and managed to set them apart from each other. Once again, the fluidity within the type was a highlight, it really seemed to gel together within the sentence and create a sense of rhythm. The flourishes were used really successfully to create shape and structure, holding together lines and placing extra emphasis on some characters and detracting it from others.

Typography Analysis (Research)

Mommie - Hubert Jocham

I don't usually like Script fonts. I find them too garish, over the top and often awkward to use (Brush Script & Vivaldi being two of the worst offenders). However, Mommie seems to be an exception for me.

Designed by Hubert Jocham in the 1980's, this script font has slowly been gathering a following and has resulted in some excellent pieces of design. Jocham said that he was influenced by "American penmanship tradition" when designing Mommie and the fluidity and harmony between the letters clearly shows this influence. The flourishes between the characters feel really natural and create a good sense of rhythm within the face, something that I feel is a necessity for a good script font.

To me, Mommie comes across as a really contemporary type face; especially considering that it is almost 30 years old. You can easily draw parallels between it and some of Non-Format's more experimental, heavily stroked slab serifs. Every character manages to retain a sense of individuality whilst coming together to create a uniform style which really makes it stand out as a good type face.