Monday, 7 December 2015

Conclusion of Investigation & Possible Practical Synthesis

Conclusion of Investigation & Possible Practical Synthesis 

Plan of action
To provide ideas of how to synthesis my essay findings an analysis on my conclusion will be made, highlighting key points to investigate into further to spark potential synthesis ideas and also begin to looking at further research to strengthen ideas around a given concept that derives from the synthesized conclusion. 

Conclusion
To conclude on all arguments, theories and research there has been an obvious impact on the way typographic communication has grown in terms of its distribution and production through the development of technological innovation from the visualization of verbal eloquence to the introduction of cyberspace technologies and prediction of future theories.

The impact technologies have had have all been with a focus on the streamlining of how effectively information is digested regardless of the distribution method be it physical or digital, evidence within the research investigated on mass communications suggest that the development of typography was a visualization of spoken language into a visual system as a means of placing verbal eloquence into an organized system that then developed into physical reproduction and repeatability within the introduction of letterpress typesetting and the Guttenberg press as the method mass distribution. What is interesting though is how typography began to introduce a literate society but as technology developed this literate society began to become lazy with less sensory participation becoming more and more common as cyberspace technologies became introduced, the ironic aspect of this been is that these cyberspace technologies are all repurposed elements of pre typographic and pre mass communication mediums. The most iconic evidence within the investigation has been the development of phonetic technology bringing back the focus on communicating spoken language across the mass’s and how this gave birth to mobile phone technology and text messaging. Text messaging has been the pinnacle off streamlining of typographic information with it developing into Emojis as a way of connoting emotion and information through pictorial references. Emojis been a technological reinterpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics suggesting a potential resurgence of cold media’s with less sensory participation within these technological distributions taking influence from pre typography communications before the introduction and importance of signs for sounds. A concluding key point within the investigation of mass communication distributions suggests that the use of tools to produce the typographic visualizations develop accordingly to technology to aid quality ergonomic digestion of information, from the sable brush, to the chisel to form serifs to aid legibility to the introduction of pixel based fonts that can be repurposed across print and digital format the use of tools and materials will always be one of the key considerations and results of technological innovation and maintain to be an extension of our senses.

Looking into Mass communication theories historic, current and hypothetical future oriented theories show the true potential of cyberspace technologies and there influence on distribution of typographic based information. Research suggest that mass media and communications will always react to social and cultural boundaries, and with a western society completely revolved around the over reliance of technology and innovation its obvious there will be a continuous growth of distribution methods that really fully immerse themselves with technological innovation. Hypothetical but potential future methods of communication-discussed outline how the need for traditional typographic information could potential become redundant as talks of brain transplants and direct biological information exchanges are discussed. Although this discus’s the transfer of pure theoretical information it does in fact support arguments made on the streamlining and effectiveness of how information is digested that could be seen as a farfetched development of how the spoken word was placed into organized systems and then developed and refined into pictorial elements. A continued reliance on pure cold media with little and soon to be no sensory participation required when digesting information. Cyberspace technologies themselves aren’t a physical technology like the development of the Guttenberg as a form of distributing mass media, so it could be suggested that a development towards an over reliance of cyber and digital distributions will arise. This statement becomes stronger when you consider the instant access internet allows when it comes to accessing typographic information but also the rise of more visual outputs like YouTube as a technological development and re interpretation of classic cold visual medias like television.

Brand identities have really taken on board technological innovation when it comes to solidifying a brand mantra, in essence a pre-typographic pre-digital medium of communication that still takes strong influence from classic verbal eloquence’s when it comes to the communication with the end user. The essence of branding is to communicate the organizations personality to a focused target market, so with the development of digital font design software a strong core focus on effectively digested logotypes have been developed, these logotypes lead onto another point that solidifies the argument of streamlining through the condensation of logotypes into letter form marks for digital and cyber application across internet and phone apps as a reaction to cyberspace and phonetic technologies which in themselves are the essence of mass communication and what typographic systems where developed for. Research into signage would be the final brand touch point that outlines points made that technology aids the re-purposing of historic principles with evidence suggesting that computer oriented design methods and digital printed often replicates classic signage production before the introduction of digital print, a technology that from 1969 changed the accessibility of print distributions from something that specialist tradesman to something that is now accessible for home business’s all the way to large corporations.


The final investigation into contemporary and traditional font foundries supports and concludes all repeated statements that technology and development has regularly contributed to the repurposing, refinement and streamlining of traditional principles and practices. Ease of access, ergonomic effective communication and cross compatibility and appreciation seems to be the iconic result of this investigation and subsequent investigations. Analyse on the shift from physical to digital within music and typography show a reaction to social and cultural needs but there remains appreciation for the quality and craft obtained from physical ownership of these medias, this tradition physical appreciation relates perfect to the overarching result of the investigation relating the repurposing, refinement and streamlining of traditional principles. A key concluding theory to contrast and support ideas of appreciation and acceptance of progress yet maintained consideration to tradition is obtained from the merged investigations of Monotype and The Designers Foundry where there manifesto of type production and distribution supports the repurposing of traditional typefaces and print and there joint consideration to outputs that support digital, print and future oriented communications.

Possible Synthesis Concepts & Ideas
Visualise the transition between spoken words to organized language systems to pictorial references, this will provide a circular concept deriving around a starting point that references pre typographic communication (Verbal), to the pinnacle of communication (Typography developments) too the introduction of pictorial elements (Emojis) but in fact is just a repurposing of communication that was around in pre typographic periods. 

Play around with the transition between textual and pictorial visuals, morphing of typography to digital hieroglyphics to represent re-purposing of pre typographic visuals, but dont use emojis as this is too literate create a new kind of pictorial reference that has textual aesthetics or principles? 

Expand on current practical investigations (Screenprint's) using new technology’s to create typefaces.

Look into how I can use new technologies and contemporary process’s to create physical 3D typefaces.

Research typeface designs that embrace new technologies but also look at more traditional typeface design principles and figure out ways of replicating them into contemporary process’s.

Create rough ideas as a reaction to key quotes and sections of research, these can then all be compiled and focused down into one outcome that ties together all important pieces of research.

Create a useable typeface that exists physically but the design and concept behind it embraced technology and contemporary process’s (software, 3D printer, laser cutter, CNC machine etc). There should be no digital presence of the typeface remaining once it has been physically made, a good way of referencing how typefaces used to be physically owned rather than been a digital replica with no essence of uniqueness and ownership.

Dissect a traditional typeface changing the way its communicated using digital techniques, place it into a print format printed digitally at home to show insurgence of easy to access publishing/distribution mediums. Start off with using layouts influenced by traditional principles coined from the Gutenberg press but again manipulate it with digital techniques.

Create type specimens of deconstructed traditional typefaces, use traditional print type specimens as a basis starting point then add a digital vibe too them but the end result is still print to reference a transition and equal appreciation to physical and digital.

3 separate type specimens visualizing current digital, traditional and future oriented typographic distributions all laid out to reference the origins of mass communications from the Guttenberg.

Reference traditional Guttenberg style printing (layout) but use completely digital process's and experimental typography to show a transition between tradition and digital but also show how the purpose of  how typography is communicated is changing.

Visualise the progression of a literate society too a less literate society through typographic and pictorial references using digital and traditional principles that show how digestion of information went from hot to cold in terms of how much sensory interaction is required. As technology and communication developed mass media got more streamlined with how it presents information to the end user but visual requiring less sensory participation to digest the information. 

The essence of communication will always pre date typography and digital eras, represent this in a visual outcome. 

Show the easy to access technology, print distributions and modern innovation in design and publishing but emulate traditional mass communication principles through the use of experimental digital process's as way of repurposing classic distribution methods like Gutenberg and how typography designs like black letter where made to aid digestion of information. 

Bring back appreciation of quality and craft that was lost within the digital transition, but emulate this appreciation of quality and craft through the use of digital design techniques and accessible home print techniques to show the surge of accessible softwares and print methods making specialist print tradesman's redundant. Appreciate progression but realize it had an impact on industries. 

Refined Synthesis Concept & Rationale 
Based on thorough analysis of key points in the conclusion and refinement of elements from the above possible ideas a refined concept has been defined. 

"repurposing, refinement and streamlining of traditional principles and practices. Ease of access, ergonomic effective communication and cross compatibility and appreciation seems to be the iconic result of this investigation and subsequent investigations"
"outputs that support digital, print and future oriented communications"
"appreciation for the quality and craft obtained from physical ownership of these medias"

Create a series of self published type specimens using traditional black letter fonts and roman fonts and there Gutenberg influenced distributions as a reference to traditional principles when it comes to the visualization of the spoken word. Deconstruct and produced these using experimental accessible digital softwares and printing hardwares to show the introduction of cyberspace technologies as experimentations that have caused a transition of how information is communicated and distributed from something that was a hot media that was digested slowly creating a literate society. Today the development and streamlining of communication systems as a reaction to technology and cultural conditioning has caused a decline in slow digestion of information turning it into something more visual and hot requiring less sensory participation much like it was in pre typographic movements. 

To place this theory into context evidence suggests that these ideas of repurposing could be visualized through the digitally recycled emojis that could be seen as a technological development of hieroglyphics, something that predates typography. The secondary purpose of the outcome is to show how even with technological innovation there has been a repurposing of pre typographic and traditional typographic communications showing that we accept progression but still always take influence from historic communication strategies to streamline how effective information is digested within a fast paced society. 

Friday, 4 December 2015

Research & Reasoning - Chapter 4 Font foundry case studies

Research & Reasoning - Chapter 4 Font foundry case studies


Based on the prologue of the essay a preliminary body of research was gathered before starting to write and inform arguments based around my essay question, doing this allowed me to gather a thorough body of research to extract the strongest quotes from to inform my own writing, include drop quotes, paraphrasing and to inform further reading and influence in the future for my extended practice. A color coding system helps me quickly extract what quotes are needed for what purpose in the essay so it allows me to maintain a consistent and good flow when writing my dissertation. 

Key

Orange informs my own writing. 

Blue for potential drop quotes and paraphrasing.

Black will inform further investigations into my extended practice module. 

Red is a rationale and reasoning of the quote.


4 - Font foundry case studies.
·      From physical to digital.

·      Ownership (what is ownership?) and value of something physical that has craftsmanship to the oversaturation of typefaces from budget and high end foundries. Ebooks audio books as a technological variation.

·      Critical analyze of a typeface from a traditional foundry with heritage and a typeface from a budget foundry like the designers foundry. 

·      Limitations of digital type.

·      Typography design software


·      Comparison between physical ownership of music (records) and its developed distribution to streaming with how type used to be physically owned but is now as easy to access as streamed music. Look into both piracy of software, type, music and how this feeds into how value is lost.

Thomson, M. (2015). Reputations Fres Smeijers. Eye 90. vol 23. P15.

My father was mechanic. Respect – for tools and for the material with which your work – is one thing I got from him. When the chisel is not sharp enough to do a certain job, even if it is just one cut, do not think you can get away with it. Sharpen the chisel properly and only then use it for what you wanted to do.

P16.
Without having a ‘style’, Smeijers’ types are recognisably immutably his. His individuality is the product of several factors: a deep conception of material and its history; a fluidity of drawn line; an engagement with technology; and a rebellious spirit. This shines through a collection of types that are reference points for the plasticity of type design and its close bonds with language and perception.

The formal material of type is the alphabet, but Smeijers’ conception of this is broader and deeper than that of many others, embracing the ways in which letters have been made across time, with pens, punches, casting, printing, pixels and myriad typesetting technologies. This conception informs every stroke of his work.
(Development of techniques using technologies)

P19.
Type design is an applied art – that is agreed. So where does the “art bit come in? There is an innovative aspect, a visual sensibility’ knowledge of use and its history’ a sense of craft. All this is necessary.
(Considering tradition and heritage even when using modern technologies)

P29.
A lot of badly designed fonts are good enough for a lot of purposes, so standards are falling. There are more good typefaces being released than twenty years ago, but compared to the amount of not-so-good or mediocre stuff, this number is not significant.
(Oversaturation of typefaces within a digital age with accessibility to technology)

Gill, E (2013). An essay on Typography. London: Penguin Group.

Chapter 1 – Time and Place
p1.
The conflict between industrialism & the ancient methods of handicraftsmen, which resulted in the muddle of the 19th century, is now coming to its term.
(Development of Mass production through industrialization, from craft to mass production and introduction to mass communication)

The handicrafts are not killed, & they cannot be quite killed because they meet an inherent, indestructible, permanent need in human nature.
(Craft, Respect of ownership from end user & Pride of making)

p3.
Even the small craftsman, in spite of the impossibility of competition with ‘big business’ and mass production, cannot be permanently put out of action, if only because the pen-knife is always with us and men will always want to make things to please themselves, tho’ only in there spare time.
(Ownership and quality of craft)

p4.
Mr Maritain, in his recent essay on Religion and Culture, says: ‘The modern world is spiritually dominated by the humanism of the Renaissance, the Protestant Re-formation and the Cartesian Reform’
(Religion and its impact on communication through a key period within the Renaissance and the development of communication through this period)

p14.
It is no longer permissible to design things with no reference but to our own pleasure, leaving it to engineers to design machines capable of making them; our business is now to design things, which are suitable for machines to make. And this is not to say that we accept the limitations of machinery as such.

p17.
Nowhere is there a perfectly humane civilization, but all who are not enthralled by industrialism desire its perfection. On the one hand is the dream of those who imagine a perfectly organized system of mass production; every article of use made to a good standard pattern; a perfected system of marketing and transport, whether Communist or Capitalist; the hours of labour, both for masters & men, reduced to a few hours a day, & a long leisure time devoted to amusement & love-making, even to the pursuit of the thing they call Art.

p20,
The hard and logical development of industrialism will impose, even upon its enemies, a very salutary hardness and logicality. Fancy lettering will be as distasteful to the artist as it will be to the engineer (maker) - in fact it is more than probable that it will be the artists who will give the lead. It has always been so. It is not the artist who is sentimental – it is the men of the business and the man of science. Even now there are few really logical & relentless alphabets of plain letters in common commercial use in this country, and they were designed by artists.

Chapter 2 – Lettering
p23.
Letters are signs for sounds. Signs for numbers and other things (like the sign for a dollar) may in practice be included, though they are not strictly letters (except as in Roman or Greek numerals & the letter signs use in Algebra)

Letters are not pictures or representations. They are more or less abstract forms.

p24.
Lettering is for us the Roman alphabet and the Roman alphabet is lettering.

The English language is done in Roman letters, and these letters may be said to have reached a permanent type about the first century A.D.

Fourteen hundred years after the cutting of the Trajan inscription the tablet in Henry VII’s chapel was inscribed, and no Roman would have found any difficulty in reading the letters.
(Basic outline of development of lettering and communication)

p25.
But, although the Roman alphabet has remained essentially unchanged through the centuries, customs & habits of work have changed a great deal. In the time of the Romans, say A. D 100, when a man said the word ‘letters’ it is probable that he immediately thought of the kind of letters he was accustomed to seeing on public inscriptions.

Although all sorts of other kind of lettering existed (on wax tablets, on papyrus) the most common kind of formal lettering was the inscription in stone.

Letters are such and such forms; therefor, whatever tools & materials we have to use, we must make these forms as well as the tools and material will allow.
(Limitations of type design)

p25-27.
This is not to deny that tools and materials have had a very great influence on letterforms. But that influence has been secondary, and for the most part it has been exerted without the craftman’s conscious intention.
(Impact of new technologies even back then on the influence of type design)
  
p30.
The point that chiefly concerns me is that, with whatever tools or materials or economic circumstance (that is hurry & expense), the artist, the letter-maker, has always thought of himself as making existing forms, & not inventing new ones.
(Takes influence from past practices just develops them in better ways to aid communication and embrace technologies and change to develop better made typography)

p34.
Again they did not invent new forms, but formalized and adapted existing forms to the exigencies of typefounding and printing.
(Develop the way type is created for the introduction of mass communication and efficient communication of language)

p36.
The ninteeth century developed machinery, & machine makers are now able to supply accurate, though mechanical. Imitations of the type faces of the pre-commercial era.

Hult, R. (2015). Monetizing And Preserving Digital Art. Elephant. Issue 23. P17.
Ebooks
Similair to apps but with a less steep censorship barrier on the iTunes store, artworks can be packaged as digital ‘artist’s books’ in the e.pub file format. This format hems closely to html5 and can include video, animation, pics or just text, allowing for a wide range of visual languages and easy distribution on online stores such as iTunes or Amazon.

P18.
Printing
There remains the option of finding ways to translate the digital works into the physical world and selling them either as photos or 3D-printed objects. 

Monotype. 2015. Company. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.monotype.com/company/. [Accessed 01 December 15].
We are the company behind type. Our fonts and technologies bring the worlds words to the page and screen.

Monotype. 2015. Technology. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.monotype.com/technology/. [Accessed 01 December 15].
Font technology makes text look as sharp in pixels as it does on paper.

Davis, M (2012). Graphic Design in Context - Graphic Design Theory. London: Thames & Hudson.

Chapter 7 – A new paradigm designing experiences, not objects
p210
Social networking sites, such as Facebook, incorporate the older media of writing and photography and turn participant’s into content. Any individuals page is less significant than the fact millions of people are willing to broadcast personal information to strangers, that letters and the telephone are no longer satisfying as the only ways to stay connected to friends at a distance, and that online relationships can be formed more quickly and with fewer social constraints than those made in person.
(How technology turns something physical and meaningful into generic communications, how the web has expanded communication possibilities)

One of McLuhans most controversial ideas was his description of hot and cool media, which refers to our sensory experiences with differing levels of message definition under various technologies. He described radio and film as hot media because they were clearer and more information-rich than other media of his time (they had high-quality sound, clear visuals, and so on).
They therefore required little sensory participation by the listener or viewer for completion of the message. Political cartoons and television, according to McLuhan, are low-definition and cool because they require more of our involvement.

Openshaw, J. (2015). Touched Screens. Elephant. Issue 23.

P184.
Its easy to get tangled up in technology when discussing ‘Post-Internet’ creativity. The term itself invokes ideas of screens, servers, clouds and bots, and perhaps overshadows the human agents and physical infrastructures caught up in this sticky web. It hints at things happening online, and so contains the impossibility of something ever being offline: as if the ‘virtual’ is opposed to the ‘real’, or the physical or the digital.

The average person in the UK spends upwards of nine hours a day looking at screens, while the web now absorbs around half of our waking attention.

We approach our physical environment with new expectations of malleable form, responsive surfaces and connected behaviour. The rise of technological production processes such as 3D printing and generative design only accelerates the process of slippage and cross contamination between digital and physical forms.

P185.
The future of music market may be iTunes and Spotify, but vinyl is also growing 69 per cent year on year. Streaming films online may have never been so popular, but immersive theatre events are also breaking box-office records. Innovative websites may be putting contemporary art online, but they cannot replace the experience of physically standing in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.
(Physical ownership maybe coming back)

Barnes, P. (2015). James Mosley A Life in Objects. Eye 90. vol 23. P64.
During the age of letterpress both production and product were physical. As type historian Harry Carter said: ‘Type is something that you can pick up and hold in your hand.’

Leonidas, G. (2015). Beyond Latin. Eye 90. vol 23. P81.
As digital tools liberate type design from arcane limitations, more people become free to communicate using there own alphabets and languages.

p86-88
(Universal and switchable typographic systems to work across multiple languages to bring in cultural versatility.)