Avant Garde

In the first half today's Seminar we was introduced to the historic modern art type face Avant Garde. In the second half of the seminar we were briefly introduced to the art design styles and movement timeline. Below are my Notes from that seminar.

Lecture Notes

Lecture Notes

Inspired by the Avant Garde Typeface I decided to do some research of my own of the type face itself.

Name of the font in the typeface



Different mediums to the font

 Avant Garde was originally created by Herb Lubalim for the cover of a Magazine for his own design firm called Herb Lubalim incorporation. This typeface was originally designed to be a commercial typeface being a logo for a magazine. This was later developed by himself and Tom Carnase to become it's very own Typeface.



"Lubalin’s letterforms with tight-fitting combinations reflected Ginzburg’s desire to capture “the advanced, the innovative, the creative.” The character fit was so perfectly tight that they created a futuristic, instantly recognizable identity for the publication." - http://www.thinkingforaliving.org/archives/147

My experiments inspired by the original typeface

As I was influenced by the style of Avant Garde I experimented with the style using different fonts to which I manipulated the kerning, sizing of the characters low key lettering and adding the Italic to the first letters to get the slanted effect of the Avant Garde.

For the first 3 I used the font Britannic Bold experimenting with how it would look in Low key lettering as well as in Capitals.

The middle 2 I used the font Calibri adjusting the kerning and the sizing of the lettering.

The last My favourite out of them all I used the Font Century Gothic. this I feel has got to be the best experimentation out of them all due to the lettering flow together well even with adjusting the kerning.   



History of Graphic Design Avant Garde from Minji Aye Hong on Vimeo.

Saw this on Vimeo which I find very inspirational and clever of how it's merged the main movements together into a small animation. Interesting way to remember the movements along with it's design style.

InDesign Typesetting

In this Production workshop we was taught all the basics to the different terminology related to typesetting within In-design, which tools to use for what and how to fix any related problems.

Kerning - is adjusting the Space between the characters

The Kerning tool in Adobe In-Design (which adjusts the space between characters in a whole word). 

Tracking - is the process of tightening or loosing a block of text.

Kerning tool In Adobe In-Design (used to tighten or loose a block of words)

Leading - Is the process of adjusting the vertical space between lines of type. 

Leading tool in In-Design (adjust the space vertically between lines)

Widows - Are the words at the end or at the beginning of a line that are separated from the rest of the text. This separates a word leaving the first part of the line on the first line and the second part of the word on the line below.

Example of a Widow.

Orphans - Are a few words or maybe a word it's own row in a paragraph creating too much white space between paragraphs.

Example of a Orphan.

How To prevent Widows and orphans?

One way to prevent orphans is to use Kerning and Leading to adjust the spaces between the type to either tighten the words and space or to loosen them. this will then adjust the scale and spacing of the words being able to remove and words that cut onto two different lines.
You can use this technique for widows to but also use tracking to tighten the spaces so you could fit more words on to a line.

Another way which could prevent Widows and Orphans is if you edit the composition of the text to 'Justified alignment'. 

Justify Tool

 

The Rocket & Pear

The Rocket

Developing more of our knowledge on Adobe Illustator we Created a rocket vector from 5 simple tools. Following simple process and instuctions I was able to Create a Rocket which I experimented the colour. the pattern stroke and the shadow. 

My final Outcome of the rocket

 I also added a gradient circle in the middle of my rocket to give the perception of a window and ligh reflection upon it. Addjusting the saturation levels to create a brighter more intense colour rocket.

The Pear

For the second part of the workshop we pen-tooled the shape of a pear in Illustrator, using the mesh tool to create a visual image of the pear itself. This part of the process was slightly time consuming as the levels of the shadows had to be more or less precise to gain a visual representaion of the pear. We then added ontop of it a copyright free texture from the internet to give it a more life-like appearance and resemblance to a actual image of a pear.

My final Outcome of the Pear

I really love how the final image of the pear turned out as with the textures it creates different layers for the pear looking 3-Dimensional rather than a simple one layer pen-tool. It gives the pear a much more detailed appearance making it seem like a photograph rather than a pentooled drawing.

One way which helps me to think and generate ideas is to create a sort of mind map. (From the Project Earth Artefact)

Working with Text Layout

The aim of this exercise was to be able to adjust the type layouts for the appropriate formats. Working with a leaflet design, we were shows and taught how to correctly insert text in using the correct formatting tools. To split the page into 3 columns where the main body of text would be placed.

For Paragraph Style

1. Paragraph styles
2. Click on New Paragraph styles
3. Change the Name
4. Basic Character Formats
5. Change font/Size
6. Leading to - 11.4pt
7. Indent Spacing (often 4mm)
8. Left Justify
9. Apply Syle
10. Edit -
11. Select all
12. click on the body text
13. Edit-
14. Click control
15. Click on the subheading
16. Type name.      

We also were taught how to format a contents page properly so if the pages changed the numbers would be updated themselve without us having to re-enter them. 

1. New paragraph style
2. Base on (Subheading type)
3. Layout -
4. Table of contents
5. Style - TOC
6. (Other style)
7. Click on subheading
8. Add
9. Entry style
10. Newpage
11. Add tabs to line up with p.s options
12. Tabs
13. Leader- .
14. Right justified tab (89)
15. Update table of contents

(Apply tabs instead of dots, press tab if nothing works right click on the text tool - Type - Tabs).

Contents page.

Advertising

As a group exercise we looked at the Christmas adverts of these supermarkets and jotted down what each advert reflected we talked about the different atmosphere's in the festive season and which each supermarket was trying to portray.
I feel discussing in a group is very beneficial for certain projects as it allows us to share our ideas come up with more ideas but most importantly every one has their own imagination their own way to perceive something therefore it allows many minds to collaborate together to come up with a distinct idea.

Words and Images

A Small exercise we did to show how description of a image has a big impact the way a viewer perceives the image.  The in-depth the description the more the viewer has a chance to visualise the image and to understand the atmosphere within the boundaries of the Image.