FASHION INSTITUTE OF DESIGN & MERCHANDISING

An exploration of the history, usage and terminology

of type asused in graphic arts

GRAPHIC

D E S G N

I am currently in my third quarter at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, and majoring in Graphic Designwith a focus in Branding. I was born and raised in both Rialto

and San Bernardino, I currently live with my sisters amd mother. I am scheduled to graduate from FIDM in 2013, aftergraduating I hope to work in the Branding area of Graphic Design, designing packaging design for companies.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Elena Rodriguezelena.rodriguez9059@gmail.com

(909) 278-6175

Identity

Arroyo Valley High School1881 W Base Line St, San Bernardino, CA 92407

graduated June 2011 with a high school diploma. Cumulative 3.7 GPA, Graduated with honors

President and Captain of extracurricular clubs and sports

Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, Los Angeles919 S. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90015

1st year 3rd quarter Graphic Design Major ,concentration Branding.

Working on associates degree

Precision Auto Body N’ Paint 2010-June 2011

Receptionist: answering phones, writing invoices,

assisting customer, and designed previews.

Carmen AlvaradoManager at Precision Auto Body N’ Paint t

(909) 269-0057

Elena Rodriguez3075 Arizona Avenue

San Bernardino, CA 92407(909) 278-6175

elena.rodriguez9059@gmail.com

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Logo Designs

BEIJINGS P A H O T E L R E S T A U R A N T

H O L I D A Y R E S O R T

ADV E R T I S I N G

BEIJINGS P A H O T E L R E S T A U R A N T

H O L I D A Y R E S O R T

H O M E A W A Y F R O M H O M E

Typography makes at least two kinds of sense, if it makes any sense at all. It makes visual sense and historical

sense. The visual side of typography is always on display, and materials for the study of its visual form are many and widespread. The history of letter- forms and their usage is visible too, to those with access to manuscripts, inscriptions and old books, but from others it is largely hid- den.

This book has therefore grown into some-thing more than a short manual of typo-graphic etiquette. It is the fruit of a lot of long walks in the wilderness of letters: in part a pocket field guide to the living wonders that are found there, and in part a meditation on the eco-logical principles, survival techniques,

and ethics that apply. The principles of typography as I understand them

are not a set of dead conventions but the tribal customs of the magic for-est, where ancient voices speak from all directions and new ones move to unremembered forms.

One question, nevertheless, has been often in my mind. When all right-thinking human beings are struggling to remember that other men and women are free to be different,6 and free to become more different still, how can one honestly write a rule-book? What reason and authority exist for these commandments, suggestions, and instructions? Surely typographers, like others, ought to be at liberty to follow or to blaze the trails they choose.

Typography thrives as a shared concern - and there are no paths at all where there are no shared desires and directions. A typographer deter-mined to forge new routes must move, like other solitary travellers, through uninhabited country and against the grain of the land, crossing common thoroughfares in the silence before dawn. The subject of this book is not typographic solitude, but the old, well- travelled roads at the core of the tradition: paths that each of us is free to follow or not, and to enter and leave

when we choose - if only we know the paths are there and havea sense of where they lead.That free-dom is denied us if the tradition is concealed or left for dead.

Originality is everywhere, but much originality is blocked if the way back to earlier discoveries is cut or overgrown. If you use this book as a guide, by all means leave the road when you wish. That is pre- cisely the use of a road: to reach individually chosen points of de-parture. By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliber-ately, and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist.

Letterforms change constantly, yet differ very little, because they are alive.

Ubiquitous TypeThe presence of typography both good and bad, can be seen everywhere.

WRITTen AnD phOTOGRApheD By elena Rodriguez

of departure. By all means break the rules, and break them beauti-fully, deliberately, and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist.

Letterforms change constantly, yet differ very little, because they are alive. The principles of typo-graphic clarity have also scarcely altered since the second half of the fifteenth century, when the first books were printed in roman type. Indeed, most of the principles of legibility and design explored in this book were known and used by egyptian scribes writing hieratic script with reed pens on papyrus in 1000 B.C. Samples of their work sit now in museums in Cairo, London and new york, still lively, subtle, and perfectly legible thirty centu-ries after they were made.

Writing systems vary, but a good page is not hard to learn to recog-nize, whether it comesfrom Tang Dynasty China, The egyptian new Kingdom typogra-phers set for themselves than with the mutable or Renaissance Italy.

The principles that unite these distant schools of design are based on the structure and scale of the human body - the eye, the hand, and the forearm in particular - and on the invisible but no less real, no less demanding, no less sensu-ous anatomy of the human mind. I don’t like to call these principles

universals, because they are largely unique to our species. Dogs and ants, for example, read and write by more chemical means. But the underlying principles of typogra-phy are, at any rate, stable enough to weather any number of human fashions and fads.

Typography is the craft of en-dowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its heart-wood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage. It is true that typogra-pher’s tools are presently changing with considerable force and speed, but this is not a manual in the use of any particular typesetting system or medium. I suppose that most readers of this book will set most of their type in digital form, using computers, but I have no precon-ceptions about which brands of computers, or which versions of which proprietary software, they may use. The essential elements of style have more to do with the goals the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source of true delight, true knowledge, true surprise.

“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence.”

FREDERIC GOUDYBorn in Bloomington, Illinois in 1865, Frederic

W. Goudy, was one of the most well known and prolific American type designers. His first type face was designed in 1896 for his company, the

Camelot Press and was called Camelot. In 1903 along with Will Ransom, they created the Village Press. Over the years, Goudy moved the Village Press from Park Ridge, Illinois to Massachusetts, to New York City and finally in 1923 he moved it to Marlboro, New York. Unfortunately the Village Press had a devastating fire in 1939 where most of Goudy’s work perished including 75 of his 100 type styles. After the fire, Frederic Goudy devoted his life to teaching and lecturing. Frederic Goudy is best known for his typestyles: Oldstyle, Kennerly, Garamond, Deepdone and Forum. Goudy was his most popular typeface. This is due to its el-egance and readability. Designing all his typefaces by free-hand created their unique characters. Goudy’s typestyle was similar to the oldtype styles, yet it had a uniqueness of form no others could rival. Frederic Goudy authored “The Alphabet”(1918), “Elements of Lettering”(1922), and “Typologia”(1940). He died in Marlboro, New York on May 11, 1947.

ELENA RODRIGUEZ

FREDERIC GOUDY QQ

L Y R I C A L T Y P EP O S T E R

gg“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.”