OUGD504 // Software workshop//Type//Session 1

We had our first session with Graham on the type workshops today, I was looking to forward to these as I am interested in type and wanted to learn more about it.
When we first started the session we started by looking at QuarkExpress a software that I hadn't used before and wasn't familiar with at all. We started talking about Paper sizes and A paper sizes.

Why A paper size was introduced:
- standard format for everyone to use
- compatibility
- economics - labour costs // ink // paper

Using paper sizes cuts down on waste material as when it comes to printing something you can double them up on the different paper sizes as they double up each time.
A sizes are boring to work with because they aren't very creative to work with unless you don't use the full page size, but aslong the paper size is within the formula of the A size paper then it will work to print multiples etc.

Now we got started on working with type and with QuarkExpress:
- to start with we opened the software and opened an A4 landscape page, we did a couple of exercises to get us thinking about type and how you can work with it to the best.

We were told that:
EVERYYTHING WE ARE GOING TO LEARN, ISN'T NEW WE ALREADY KNOW ABOUT IT, IT IS JUST GOING TO BE PUT IN A DIFFERENT WAY SO IT WILL MAKE US THINK ABOUT IT DIFFERENT

From the exercise we did we determined that:
- Bold & LARGE text = loud people
- small & thin text = quite people
- a serif font is referred to as intelligent because we associate it with books and academia
- all this we have identified is how we look at the context of type and how it works through using different fonts, weight and point size.

FACTS ABOUT
-72pt is the same size as an inch
- books are printed in 9pt
- software automatically sets text to 12pt which proves that software designers don't know enough about the subject to design the software, because books are printed at 9pt but 14pt is that standard point size that everyone can read, so why not set at either of them instead of in the middle which is no use to anyone?
- a NOVEL is printed in 9pt because that size has been determined to be the best pt size to be able to read for a long period of time. Fonts used are always serif, this is because it serif fonts are easy to define the letterforms and makes it easier to read. Smaller pt size, so more text can fit to a page, meaning less pages have to printed.
- a MAGAZINE - type is set to bigger font size because when you read a magazine or newspaper you hold it further away from your body, so the text needs to be bigger to be able to read in it.

RULES
- only work with serif and sans serif fonts
- use type as though it would be spoken by using, pt size and weight to determine this
- Don't use colour

WHEN LOOKING AT TYPE
- analyse the text
- ask questions about the type: serif or sans serif? // uppercase/lowercase // weight // pt size // position on page

TYPOGRAPHY IS SPEECH MADE VISABLE