Week 5: Type Designer T-shirt Project Part 4

On Tuesday, we had an in class work day to finalize our concepts before our in-progress critique, which took place in class today. For today's class, we had to have our design(s) printed out and attached to a t-shirt to get an idea of what the finished product might look like. Then we hung them all on the board and the class gave critical feedback on each shirt. I received some helpful feedback and I will need to make some adjustments before the final critique.

Front:

Back:

Week 4: Type Designer T-shirt Project Part 2/3

For homework, we had to sketch out some concept ideas for our t-shirt project. After we sketched out our ideas, we got together in small groups to explain our designs. Then, using the feedback from our groups we narrowed our designs down to our top two favorites. Our next assignment is to make 50 thumbnail sketches (25 for each design). My sketches are as follows:

For Thursday, I created 50 thumbnail sketches. After meeting with a partner to discuss our ideas, we narrowed our thumbnails down to our top three favorite ideas. Then we had the rest of the time in class to start working. My 50 thumbnails are shown below. The ones that are circled with a star next to them are the three ideas I would like to develop further.

Week 3: Type Designer T-shirt Project Part 1

For class on Thursday, we are to have typed a brief biography of our specific typographer. My typographer's name is Gerrit Noordzij, and his biography is as follows:

          Gerrit Noordzij, a “Dutch typographer, designer of type, author, lettering artist, and influential teacher”, was born in Rotterdam in 1931 (Sherman). Beginning in 1960, Noordzij “taught writing and type design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague”, the capital of the province of South Holland. In addition, “…[he] has worked as a graphic designer for various Dutch publishers”, including the publishing company Van Oorschot, for whom he is the house designer (Devroye).

          Noordzij was an assertive force in the writing and lettering program of the graphic design department at the Academy from 1970 until his retirement in 1990. His influence has been passed on to the type community on an international scale through the work of his former students. Additionally, “he…continues to influence new generations of designers, as the method of teaching type design at the Academy is still largely based on his theoretical models, and his writings are still published in a variety of languages”. Perhaps Noordzij is best known for his work, The Stroke: Theory of Writing, which proposes that “type is in its very essence calligraphic,” though Noordzij preferred the term writing to calligraphy. He asserts that “type is inextricably tied to writing…and defines typography as ‘writing with prefabricated letters’”. Furthermore, Noordzij proposes that “handwriting reveals the logical construction of letters, through the dynamic translation, expansion, and rotation that occur when writing with a pen”. Noordzij’s “cube” theory has been a vital influence on type design software like Superpolator, which “aids type designers in generating type families with multiple axes of weight, width, contrast, etc.” (Sherman).

          Noordzij has designed numerous typefaces, but very few are available to the general public (Sherman). He also designed what some consider “the perfect font”, known as Ruit, but unfortunately it is nowhere to be found. His two main typefaces that can be found, however, are Ruse and Burgundica. Ruse is “a huge text family that started out based on Gerrit’s own handwriting,” and is published at TEFF, also known as The Enschedé Font Foundry. “The family is divided up into eleven variants of increasing contrast…each variant is available in roman, italic, and small capitals.” Burgundica, published at TEFF in 1983, “emerged from analyzing the elongated version of the Burgundian Bastarda appearing firstly in manuscripts from the calligraphic workshop of Jacquemart Pilavaine in Bergen (Hainaut) in 1450…[Noordzij] adapted the spatial proportions of the calligraphic pattern to the shapes of that typeface” (Devroye). To acknowledge his contributions to the world of typography and design, Noordzij was the first person to receive what has become known as The Gerrit Noordzij Prize, obviously named after himself, in 1996. The award is given every three years and “recognizes writing and teaching as essential qualifications” (Sherman).

References

Devroye, Luc. “Gerrit Noordzij”, http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-24699.html

Sherman, Nick and Angela Voulangas, “TDC Medal Awarded to Gerrit Noordzij”, http://www.tdc.org/news/tdc-medal-awarded-to-gerrit-noordzij/

In addition, we were asked to find images related to our designer. They are shown below:

"TDC Award 2013"

Source: http://letterror.com/noordzij/

Gerrit Noordzij

Source: http://www.tdc.org/news/tdc-medal-awarded-to-gerrit-noordzij/

"Gerrit Noordzij Burgundica"

Source: http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-24699.html

"Gerrit Noordzij Dutch Postage Stamp 1974"

Source: http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-24699.html

"Gerrit Noordzij Ruse"

Source: http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-24699.html

Book cover for The Stroke: Theory of Writing by Gerrit Noordzij

Source: https://hyphenpress.co.uk/authors/gerrit_noordzij/

"Noordzij’s concept of translation, expansion, and rotation, illustrated in his iconic “cube” diagram, moves type design beyond debates about serif vs. sans-serif and reveals the endless typographic forms that can be produced when design variables are interpolated"

Source: http://www.tdc.org/news/tdc-medal-awarded-to-gerrit-noordzij/

Week 2B: Circle Project

Part of our homework was to pick a four letter word and create that word three separate times using a circle template. We were to create the letter once in all caps, once in all lowercase letters, and once using any combination of our choice. The word I chose was "riot" and here is how I chose to display it:

Week 2A: Six Letter Word Assignment

Our homework was to pick a six letter word and use it out of context to create a new meaning for the word. The word I chose was "lethal" and here is how I chose to display it out of context:

The word lethal means harmful or destructive. Typically, when I think of the word "lethal" I think of lethal injections or weapons of mass destruction.

The photo on the left shows a teenage girl (in this case, me) looking into a mirror at her reflection. In front of the mirror is makeup along with some brushes used to apply makeup. I chose to portray lethal in this way in order to show that the media's portrayal of beauty and the pressure to use makeup can be very destructive to a girl's self esteem.

The photo on the right shows a teenage girl (again, me) sitting at her desk with her laptop open to her FaceBook page while simultaneously looking at her phone, all while trying to read her textbook. This gives the word lethal a new meaning, because these distractions are very destructive to our study habits.