Experimenting with Letterforms

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來自 California Institute of the Arts 的課程

Fundamentals of Graphic Design

5550 個評分

California Institute of the Arts

Fundamentals of Graphic Design

5550 個評分

課程 1（共 5 門，Specialization 平面设计）

Graphic Design is all around us! Words and pictures—the building blocks of graphic design—are the elements that carry the majority of the content in both the digital world and the printed world. As graphic design becomes more visible and prevalent in our lives, graphic design as a practice becomes more important in our culture. Through visual examples, this course will teach you the fundamental principles of graphic design: imagemaking, typography, composition, working with color and shape... foundational skills that are common in all areas of graphic design practice. I don't just want you to watch a video of someone talking about design, I want you to MAKE design! If you want to be a designer you have to be a maker and a communicator, so this course will offer you lots of opportunities to get your hands dirty with exercises and with more practical projects. At the end of this course you will have learned how to explore and investigate visual representation through a range of image-making techniques; understand basic principles of working with shape, color and pattern; been exposed to the language and skills of typography; and understand and have applied the principles of composition and visual contrast. If you complete the course, along with its optional (but highly recommended) briefs, you will have a core set of graphic design skills that you can apply to your own projects, or to more deeply investigate a specialized area of graphic design. To succeed in this course you will need access to a computer. You can complete this course without one but it will be tougher. Access to, and a beginner's level knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite programs, such as Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign will help you, especially if you want to complete the optional briefs.

從本節課中

Week 2: Fundamentals of Typography

This week we are going to look at typographic terminology and the basic rules for creating typography. I'll show you a range of tips and techniques for working with type, in both a functional and expressive manner, and you'll find out about the process involved in making and controlling typography. This week you'll complete a quiz to make sure you understand the language of typography–this is required. I also highly recommend you complete the two optional peer review assignments. In the first assignment you'll create your own typographic monogram, and you'll use that as a central element in designing a typographic business card in the second assignment. Give them a try, they are the place where you can demonstrate and apply your formal skills, and the place where you get to play with type!

Looking at Letterforms4:11

Experimenting with Letterforms5:23

Typographic Composition4:15

與講師見面

Michael Worthington
Faculty, Program in Graphic Design
School of Art

I'm gonna start by going back to the first typeface that I set the M and the W in,

which is Universe Bold.

And these are fairly regular sans serif forms.

And I'm just gonna play around with how the two letters fit together,

see what kind of ideas I might come up with.

So straight away one of the things that I notice is that the M is straight.

And the W is flat, or angled.

And I also, unfortunate that my name has an M and

a W which are almost symmetrical letter forms.

So to begin with I start to wonder what would happen if

I turned the M into a W for instance.

And if I turned the W into a M.

And just by a simple move like that, it means that I've suddenly got

two letter forms that might interlock in a more easy way.

So you can see the M and the W, form a fairly harmonious pattern together.

And the same with the straight m and the w.

And even little accidents like that when you're moving things around,

you can see negative and positive space.

You might start to think about how things might line up.

And what the relationship between the two letter forms might be.

So let's just take this one and put it in another spot.

So just starting to think about how the letter forms link together, and

what their relationship is, how they might overlap, sit side by side.

And just starting to play around with what those letter forms are, and

how they sit together.

And don't worry about legibility or

trying to get any meaning into the letter forms and their arrangement.

For now, just experiment and have fun.

Move things around.

Really look at the forms.

It's kind of just a way of really playing and

discovering really, by moving form around.

So rather than have you watch me shuffling around an M and a W, I'm gonna go away and

make some M's and W's with the typefaces that I chose.

And then we'll look at them really quickly,

just to give you an idea of, again, process.

Which is, in this case, just one of iterations and generation.

Trying to make a lot of work and a lot of possibilities,

knowing that they won't all be good.

But at least we'll have something to look at and react to.

So here's some M's and W's working together.

And I'm gonna go through them quickly and just point out some of the strategies that

are used for making these two letter forms work together.

So here you can see we've flipped the W to make an M, so

now we have this nice repetitious harmony in the angle of the strokes, and

even-ness in negative and positive space.

That feels quite interesting.

Here you can see if we just add a little tiny bit of space, in between the two

letter forms, it actually makes it a whole lot legible as an M and a W.

Here we're just playing around with scale, taking one of the letter forms, making it

smaller, seeing how it might fit into the counter space of the other letter form.

Here trying to do the same thing, but have them interact and

overlap a little bit more.

Down here you can see a similar idea to the strokes of the M and

the W here, and the rhythm and repetition.

But with totally different and

more solid letter forms, starts to be a little harder to read.

And here you can see trying to line up the serifs as a way, as a strategy for

making the letters work together.

And in this case, rather than trying to make the two letter forms

be harmonious in terms of being straight or flared.

Here I'm trying to make the two work together and

accentuate the difference between the two.

My strategy for making these monograms will be to generate as

many as possible as quickly as possible.

Just so I can try and see what the range of ideas are that are out there.

So here's a bunch more that we'll look at very quickly.

So you can see here different letter forms start to make different shapes.

This one the negative space becomes interesting.

Almost looks like an intestine.

Here you can see again the flipped letter forms, but

with a totally different kind of letter with a modern serif.

It has a very different feeling.

Here you can see what happens when we use, down here it's the straight capitals,

here it's the angled capitals, starts to feel very different.

I kind of like this very blobby, cooper black type face,

even though it isn't, I'm not sure what it's really doing.

Just the forms, and again the negative and positive space seem to very interesting.

So let's keep going and look at some more.

Here you can see a more traditional italic type face, and

how those might connect together.

A much less conventional but still really interesting type face.

Some very simple forms and

really looking at how the two letters might align and start to make a new form.

You see this very strange X appearing here.

Trapping the negative space to try and make that have some kind of energy or

become something else.

And generally, just really playing around with a lot of different things and just

trying to generate ideas, and sometimes they really don't work and that's fine.

It's really just about volume and having fun.

So now we have a group of monograms that we can work with.

Let's put them into the context or the form of the business card, and

add the other typographic elements that we have, and

start to see how the two are gonna interact.

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