2012.03.17 St. Peter's House

I went to the St Peter's House on this Saturday, i have read three books: Basic Design and Layout by Alan Swann, Brighton Picture Hunt by Carmen and Alec Soth, Murmuration by Rinko Kawauchi.




This book teaches me a lot of basic skills and knowledge about how to design. 

The author said if we want to do graphic design, we should learn the following four areas: words, photographs, illustrations and graphic images. Try to use black and white first and then consider colour images. The main point of graphic design is making full visual and creative use of a limited number of design elements. 
Then, other two books are both photography about Brighton, authors are not local, photographs are showing us a special Brighton in tiny things. Therefore, i took some photos around where i live.

2012.03.04 Takenobu Lgarashi

Takenobu Lgarashi was born in 1944, he is a crossover designer, he is not only interested in fonts, he also a sculptor.
His design is focus on 3D font, he is good at use architects to build his font, so his works employ a visual impact. However, he is a sculptor, it is an affect of his fonts as well.

It designed in 1987, it is for his personal exhibition in Australia.

His design for Japanese company Meiji.

2012.03.04 Serif & Sans-serif fonts

There are two categories in fonts, serif font and sans-serif font.

• Serif fonts are Time New Roman, Georgia.

   
 

• Sans-serif fonts are Arial, Verdana.

 
  
To sum up, the difference between serif and sans-serif is 

2012.03.04 Hermann Zapf

Hermann Zapf is a one of the most famous font designers around the world and he is from Germany, he was born in 1918 and started work in 1935, he designed a lot of fonts in his life, his designs are very popular and general in the whole world, Apple and Microsoft both use his designs.
His designs do not look like exaggerated, but all of them are very elegant, every arc is fluent, here are some famous designs from Hermann Zapf.

• First is Palatino:

Palatino is a font designed in 1948, it shows a style from the Renaissance, it is a kind of old style serif font.

Then, it has two variations, Palatino Nova and Platino Sans, looks very similar, but their gradients are different.

• Second is Optima:

This is a sans-serif font, but i think it is a font between serif and sans-serif, because it has different stroke size, but still looks like more sans-serif. It designed in 1952, then in 2003, Hermann Zapf redesigned it with Akira Kobayashi, it became Optima Nova.

• Third is a very beautiful hand-writing style font, Zapfino:

I really like Zapfino, look at it first sight, it looks very fluent, but its details show it has many shapes, therefore, this kind of font is mix soft with hard together, amazing!

2012.03.04 Akira Kobayashi

Akira is a famous font designer, he comes from Japan and has won a lot of prizes in font design. He was a Japanese font designer, but after he worked in a Japanese for six years, he suddenly thought that learn English letters font is very important, then he came to the UK for letters design study, of course now, he is well-known in font design area. Until now, he has worked with Hermann Zapf and Adrian Frutiger. 
I have read some interview of him when he came to China to having a speech with chinese students, he told us that the point of font design is to keep balance between white and black. In his interview, he said that lots of students and designers use compasses and rulers to help their design, but Akira Kobayashi said we should use flat pen back original writing. Understand how to write a letter is important, letters are come from writing, thus, every designers should learn the skills of writing, understand some specials from letters. 
His designs are really popular today, here are are some examples:


The font design above is Magnifico, it is divided into daytime and nighttime, it is inspired from the letters on notes in 19th century. This kind of font is use for small size poster. 
I think his design is a evidence of Hermann Zapf's words, every font design should be based on the former font.

2012.03.03 History

When i first looking for font, i found i should learn more about history, letters and their font. A famous font designer Hermann Zapf said, every font we designed, it should be based on the former designs, because they should be related to each other.

Firstly, the following flow chart i made is about the origin and development of letters.

• Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic

                       ↓↓

• Greek Letters, rudiment of Latinbased alphabet
•  

       

• Roman Empire, went to practical and aesthetic

          

• Roman Empire, 26 letters came out

                      
    

• The 4th - 7th century, a period of lowercase letters, until the 8th century, they completed.

       


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Secondly, after the letters formed, font starting to be changed.

• The 1st - 2nd century, Roman Upper Case

                                 

• The 15th century, by the time font is in full due to typography, then Roman Upper Case mixed with Caroline lowercase, came out some circle and square font style.

                               

• The 18th century, people at that time were popular in classicism, replace circle script with straight lines. 

           Here an example:
      from Firmin Dodot

•  In 1980s, high technology, computer came out, lots of beautiful and special styles fonts were using.