The Art of Type

Over the past couple of weeks I have had to do other areas of work, unfortunately my laptop had broken the week before college started again, and it had been “In the shop” since, I’m happy to report that I have it back and am cracking on.

Monday morning, wasn’t like another morning, Steve just let us get on with our work, this was mainly aimed at the people that had referred on A3, and this was the morning that Steve wanted it handing in.

Luckily I had completed it, but had to print a few things out, this was mainly because my printer has stopped working, so I must buy another one, preferably one that doesn’t take 3 minutes to print out one page of work.

Later on I handed my work in to Steve, I then received feed back on A4, unfortunately one of my main objectives is to redo the image restoration task again, this was the one thing I didn’t want to do again because its too time consuming and I already have a lot on, but ill cope, I have to really.

The afternoon was basically a get on with it time, I started my website, which I was thrilled about but I realised that most of the people in the class are ahead of me, so it seems I will have to catch up rather quickly.

Also that afternoon, I decide to start my image restoration again, but I only got as far as rotating it, cropping the edges and just started the spot healing process, but this time I’ve decided to use the grid tool, hopefully this will help me to get all the marks and spots off the image.

Today I didn’t start college officially till 1 o’clock, but during the morning I decided to continue the image restoration task and give the Zuzana Licko presentation a look over and edit parts of it before getting to college.

When I came into college I rechecked the presentation then printed it off for seminar groups. Steve went over every groups presentation, to see how much everyone knew about there chosen typographer, after all this was only a draft for the presentation.

Today lecture was titled “type Anatomy”, which spoke of the heights which text it to be centered, there are called the baseline and the x height. It also explained what certain parts of letter are, for example the line in the centre of an f is known as a cross bar, and the bowl is the curved part of a P.

This presentation has been very helpful to me because I can now elaborate on the typographers fonts. Explaining what font has certain parts to it.

My tasks for this week are as follows:

• Redo the image compression essay for John to look over on Monday
• Continue image compression task – using the spot tool
• Complete web form on website
• Inspirational pieces for sketchbook

In the begining there was......CSS

Monday was, I feel, a very productive day for myself. As usual Steve began with a lecture, but no normal lecture, this was my first CSS lecture, something I've been looking forward to since I started the course.

It spoke of the basics, which included what not to do with CSS e.g. don’t put it directly into a web page; put all the CSS code into one file. Steve also warned the class of the strange things that Dreamweaver, importing CSS and JavaScript without you knowing.

In the second half of the tutorial, Steve told us how the form elements work and how and where to place them properly on the page.

He also explained how each one should be used, like for instance, the check boxes should not be already checked, because this would give the impression of arrogance making the user think that they have to do check the box, they would prefer to opt in to a offer, not opt out.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon I continued with my A3 referral work. This is where it my day went down hill. I had almost completed A3 during last week and when I opened the files I realise that most of them had not been saved. I was extremely angry with myself, how could I have been so careless?

But throughout the afternoon I managed to get back on track and now all that needs doing is to and a few words in to a couple of paragraphs and spell check it again, just to make sure that there are no spelling mistakes this time.

I also had a tutorial session with John Munday half way through the afternoon. He went over what was left to do on A3, which I have mentioned isn’t a lot.

Today Steve started off with another Lecture on typography; I was shocked when I notice that most of it was mainly about spelling and grammar. It went over text layout, punctuation and the correct usage of hyphens.

In the second half of the morning I started up InDesign to continue with the Zuzana Licko presentation when suddenly Steve announced that it was time for one of the timed typography tasks. I was defiantly nervous about this one.

The task was to create a design for the cover of FontBook, I first began by sketching 5 designs out, this took, then I sketched a large draft for the design I had chosen, I showed Steve the design and he gave me the go ahead. I then I opened InDesign and created it.

I had to redo it twice because there were a few problems, one was a funny letter and the other was that for some reason it wouldn’t show the margin guides. Unfortunately I didn’t hit the deadline which I was upset about but thankfully it was just a test.

This afternoon was mainly based on getting more information of the typographer I was given. There was also a group seminar with Steve, which was based on A1 and how much work we had done for it, I have realised that I need to do a lot more work for it and this will be one of my tasks for this week.

My tasks for this week are:

* A1 – Obtain more inspiration and place in Sketchbook
* A3 – Complete A3
* A6 – Create the first draft of my Presentation

Back in the Saddle

It’s the first week back since Christmas; it felt good to be back in the “Workplace” after three weeks.

The only problem with today was that the entire class was getting their results for A3 and A4 and I knew even before I went back that I hadn’t passed. On the Wednesday before, I received an email form Steve regarding my work.

He asked me to look through my spelling because there were a lot of repetitive mistakes. Straight away I knew that I had referred both units, it was obvious. But I wasn’t upset or mad. I just sat down and got on with the spell checking, and I was shocked with how many mistakes there were, I was very disappointed with myself.

Monday morning started off with a lecture form Steve regarding the mistakes that the majority of the class made in the previous units. This continued on till break time. After break we were introduced to Adobe Dreamweaver, Steve explained how to set up a folder to the site and how to use tables and cells.

After lunch I tested what I had learned and recorded my progress by taking screen shots and placing them in my sketchbook. I also tested other things, like form tools, how to import images, inserting text and testing the pages in a compilation of web browsers.

During the afternoon I was called up by Steve to have a chat considering A3 and A4. I found out there was a substantial amount of work to do on these but as luck would have it, the deadline had been extended which was reassuring.

After this meeting I continued to experiment in Dreamweaver and stick my screen shots into my sketchbook and label them.

Today Steve began by going over both A5 and A6, and explaining what content is needed in both of the assignments. In A5, the web plan form A3 will be used to create the website. A6 is all about fonts and typography, the main task is to create a presentation of a typographer which Steve chose for each of us.

But as well as that we all will be doing Quick fire work and typographic styles, these tasks will happen at random and will be timed.

The typographer I was given to present is a woman called Zuzana Licko; I have spent all of the afternoon researching her work and have been making notes which I can implement into the presentation later on. I have also printed and glued all of her typefaces into my sketchbook; this is form reference as well as proof of research.

I was given my full feedback for A3 this afternoon and I am happy that there isn’t that much to do because I have gotten the spell checking out of the way already.

My goals for this week are as follows:

• Continue referral work on A3
• Begin implementing Zuzana Licko notes into a presentation
• Practice In Design and take screen shots