Typography and the Environment

I took this photo in the Louvre of Joseph Kosuth's exhibition- 'Neither apperance nor illusion'. The work consists of neon french sentences displayed inside an ancient section of the louvre. The combination of the modern technology of the glowing font on the ancient medieval walls I found beautiful even without underatanding the text. The work reminded me of glow worms on cave walls.

The Psychology of Typography, an essay plan by Hannah Lord

So as you can see I moved away from the theme of decorative type design. When I asked myself what I liked about typography I eventually realized I was interested in its psychological effects on the viewer and why. Also how this is utilized in graphic design.

Considering an essay question

I found a stall at Cambridge craft markets selling letter press typefaces and images. I bought one letter to use as a stamp; I chose the stamp on the right as I liked its art nouveau aesthetic. I plan to incorporate decorative type into my essay question perhaps focusing on particular designers or simply in opposition to modernist typography.

I don’t enjoy the modern style of typography nor the concept of form follows function. I accept that Jan Tschichold was a pioneer who revolutionized typography. I also believe that the introduction of set paper sizes, and the concept of layout for legibility are all ground-breaking elements to emerge from modernist typography. However I dislike modernist typography’s simplistic and formulated aesthetic, and I especially dislike the limited colour palette. I feel the modernist style is so absorbed in all its invented rules that it leaves no room for real creativity, just a mathematical format on which to consult with every design.

I think I will look into more of Wolfgang Weingart’s work also as he is the other extreme having no rules and no concern for legibility.

What you see or what you read?

I typed this up after thinking about form follows function and modernisim versus decorative type.

My typeface experiment

Lastly here are letters from my typeface layered on top of each other. It's completely illegible but i thought it was an interesting visual effect.

Creating the decorative typeface

Here is the finished typeface. I chose to create capital letters as it worked well with the geometric shapes of the links. I think the typeface would look effective as a heading but would be impossible to read as body text!

Ideas for a decorative type design

I thought i would start this blog with decorative type design. For my graphic design class in Australia we were asked to create a decorative typeface from found objects. I chose to create mine out of links. On the left are images i drew of swimwear clasps, broach clasps, earring hooks, a buckle and a jewellery clasp. I then used their unique shapes to create letters.