General – COMD1127 Type & Media, Sp2019

May 17, 2019May 18, 2019

Magazine Project Due – Final Instructions

The last day of class is Monday, May 20th. This is the day the magazine spread project is due. To offer a bit of clarity, here is an example of what you should plan to submit:

The magazine project is a total of five (5) InDesign pages all together: 1 magazine cover + 4 page magazine story.
The 4 magazine pages should be printed as 2 spreads.
A spread is 2 facing pages of a magazine.
The InDesign pages are 8.5″x11″. When they together as a spread they will be 11″x17″.
Save your final file as PDF spreads. Name your file properly. Ex.: COMD1127_BrownM_magazine and add it to the Google Drive folder that will be set up. DO NOT use cropmarks in your PDF file.
You will print out your magazine project in COLOR. The cover will be 1 single page of 8.5″x11; the 2 spreads will print on 11″x17″ pages.
You will submit both the PDF and printed versions.
See the examples below.

Magazine Cover: 8.5"x11" — Magazine Cover: 8.5″x11″

Second spread of remaining story (pages 4&5): print on 11"x17" — Second spread of remaining story (pages 4&5): print on 11″x17″

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April 22, 2019April 21, 2019

Project #3 – Magazine Spread

The last major project of the semester is the magazine spread. During the last two classes, we learned about the anatomy of a magazine layout. Please download the handout if you didn’t get one in class.

Here is the assignment:

Design a magazine article: 4 pages, 2 spreads; design the magazine cover
The trim size is 8.5″x11
Topic
Choice A: snowboarding – the text and photos have been provided for you.
Choice B: a topic of your own, but it must be approved by the instructor first. You will be responsible for providing the text and photos for the assignment.
Requirements include use of grid, headers, subheads, dropcaps, indents, columns, page numbers, images, captions, margins, gutters.

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April 21, 2019April 21, 2019

Class 12: Visual Hierarchy

March 20, 2019March 22, 2019

The Type Book: Assembly Instructions

Every type book exercise is to be included. All of the exercises are listed below and should appear in your book in this order. The titles are based on the assignment sheets. Some of those handouts included more than one exercise. Hopefully this list is clear. If you have questions, please ask for clarification. Use the handouts as a guide for the number of pages included for each exercise.

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March 12, 2019March 12, 2019

Class 11 – Legibility, Readability, and What Not to Do

Some of the things we covered during the this class included some things we should not do when dealing with type;

Don’t use horizontal scaling
Don’t use vertical scaling
When using colored type on a colored background, make sure the colors of the two have a good contrast.

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February 25, 2019February 25, 2019

Class 6 and 7 — Multiple Pages in InDesign and a Review of the 5 Families of Type

We have discussed the five families of type since the early days of the semester. Sometimes these are referred to as type categories. Make sure you learn to identify the differences.

Here is quick review:

Old Style: Garamond
(15th-17th century)

designed in France in 1615 by Jean Jannon (Claude Garamond was
given credit originally)
designed in a time when inks and paper were coarse and type
technology was still rather rough
relatively thick strokes and heavily bracketed or curved serifs
emulated classical calligraphy

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February 25, 2019February 25, 2019

Class 5 — Introduction to the Grid, Templates and the Type Book Project

Here’s a brief recap from Class 5. We had a quick introduction to the grid system and templates as they will be used with InDesign.

A grid is a non-printing system of horizontal and vertical lines which help the designer align the elements of the layout. This system of alignment helps to create a more organized layout. In multiple page documents, the grid assists in the consistent placement of design elements. Think of the grid as the skeleton of the layout—similar to the frame that you see on the construction site when a building or house is being built. We will go more in depth with grids a little later.

In InDesign we learned how to use a template, and how to name files before submission. We did this as we were introduced to the Type Book project.

We also covered using the line tool to create rules, strokes, and arrows in InDesign.

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February 12, 2019February 12, 2019

Class 4 — Controlling Space, Leading, Tracking and Kerning

We covered three main topics during our last class that deal with spacing—tracking, kerning and leading. It is important to understand the difference between tracking and kerning.

Tracking deals with the adjustment of letter-space which will affect entire lines or blocks of text. By adding tracking, the letter-spacing, which is the amount of space between the characters, will be increased or decreased. The goal is to have consistently even space between all the characters
Kerning is often confused with tracking but kerning deals with the letter-space adjustments between a specific pair of letters. You only have to be concerned about kerning display or headline text. Certain letter pairs don’t fit well together, so the designer’s goal is to adjust the space so that letter-spacing looks consistent.
Leading is the amount of space between lines of text. It is measured from baseline to baseline. It is important that line-spacing is not too tight or too far apart.
All three of these—tracking, kerning, and leading—are important to the overall look and to make reading easier.

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February 12, 2019February 12, 2019

Class 3 — Variation in Type

During our third class, we covered the Five Families of Type, but we also reviewed the Variation in Type .

If you missed the lecture on the Variation in Type and the Five Families of Typography, you can download the slides Variation in Type. We learned how to identify the types of stress and the different styles.
Download the Type Anatomy sheet and keep it handy to help you identify the different parts of letters.
We watched several videos in class:

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February 4, 2019February 4, 2019

Far Rockaway Mott Ave

Far Rockaway is a very diverse area, its filled with many different cultures. There are many businesses with the use of many different types of typography. Most of the typography used is in San Serif. This allows the wording to be clear, clean, and, straightforward, making it easier for people to read. There are also some stores that use fancy, creative, and unique fonts to attract people. One example would be the liquor store seen in the image above. This store uses the Black Letter font, a font commonly used in newspapers, its text. At first, I thought this was odd, but through research, I later found out many alcohol brands use the black letter as their logo. I also found out that black letter is a font that has been used to give off a sort of rebellious attitude or vibe, it has been used in rap covers and rock band covers, it has also been used in many gang tattoos as well. Besides Black Letter, there were many other fonts that used a lot of curved lines, some stores made their text bold, making it hard to miss. A lot on the text used was mostly based on the type of business. Beauty salons or stores that sold hair products would tend to have their text in the script, and supermarkets would tend to have their text big and bold. Based on the typography in my neighborhood, you could say that it’s a very diverse, bold, and busy neighborhood. You could also say that my neighborhood is flowing with lots of energy.

Category: General