OUGD404: Design Principles - The Anatomy of Type Part 5

We started the Design principles session by discussing as a group observations from the final outcomes for the readability task set last week.

Some of the observations we has were;

• Script fonts are display fonts for readability - When scaling up reduce the amount of words
• Roman fonts - Work better at a smaller point size as they were designed for body copy
• Block fonts - Work better at a larger point size, as at a small point size the letterforms merge

• Most important skills for a designer - Be able to look and listen

"Type is speech made visible"

SEMIOTICS - Sign, Symbol and signifier

The Anatomy of Type Part 5

• Female symbol only works in comparison to the male symbol - in a context

• Genesis - Whole book written in symbols

Using the Script, Block, Roman and Gothic letterforms  - we were asked to bring last week - We asked to complete a series of set tasks based on the anatomy and manipulation of letterforms and investigating how far the letterforms could be before the legibility is effected. 

We began be varying the stroke from it's narrowest form to it's thickest form on the lowercase 'b' and uppercase 'A'.

We then applied this technique to the different anatomy within a single letterform for example, making the bowl of the lowercase 'a' it's narrowest and the stem it's thickest.

Although, in the investigation the stem on the uppercase and lowercase 'B' has been reduced to the narrowest it could possibly be the characters are still legible as the eye can still 'read' the stem.