Seahorse 01-05

Tomorrow we review our animal sketches and begin to refine the ones we may actually use. I can't wait to finish this project, I remember how much I hated it in BDS, however at least we get to draw an animal instead of a hand tool :P

The weather today is...

Rainy? Today we went over our paper/grid weather exercises. We had to complete fifteen of them with each being unrelated to each other. We got into our pods and chose the best five compositions. While walking around and looking at others' work, I noticed many different things that I did not even think of. I hope we don't have to do anymore compositions by hand <3.

Typography Definitions

Weight

Relative darkness of the characters of a type font resulting from the relative thickness of the strokes, expressed as light, bold, extrabold, etc.

Width

Width of a character in relation to the height.

Style

A particular kind, sort, or type, as with reference to form, appearance, or character; Variation of letters.

Font

Complete character set of a particular typeface in all sizes

Typeface

Single set of characters that share stylistic unity. Usually comprises an alphabet of letters, numbers, punctuation and diacritical marks.

X-Height

Height of lower case x or the height of the lower case letters.

Cap Height

Distance between the baseline and top of the capital

Leading

Amount of hrizontal space between two lines of text, measured from baseline to baseline.

Letterspacing (Tracking)

Overall spacing between letters in a block of text.

Yeah..

Totally seeing things in my food. Too much seahorses right? Lol..

*HINT: egg*

Sea + Horse = Seahorse

While brainstorming what cool animals I could design, I ran out of ideas believing that "It's not right" or "This isn't it." When I gave up and asked a friend what animal he would draw if he had to.. He responded with a simple answer... Seahorse. Lol.. Why didn't I think of that? I thanked him and told him I had chosen this animal. After researching, I realized how much I liked this gentle creature. The shape was unique and memorable. The seahorse also practices monogamy and court one another for a decent amount of time before mating. The weird thing is that the males nurture and bear the unborn young.. If only it was like this in humans... Straying from the facts, the symbolic meanings are also interesting. At first I was sketchy because seahorses are usually static and best viewed from the profile, but I figure it will be fun to tweak it here and there to make it work. Back in the day, Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that the seahorse was an attribute of the sea god Poseidon or Neptune. Seahorses represent strength, luck, patience, protection, friendliness and more. They are content to be who they are since they are inflexible, stubborn, and persistent. They gain perspective and are aware of the things around them.

Typography Exercise

Our word of the day was: Made. We all went outside for an hour (about forty in my case) to look for random things to create a kind of typeface. Madi and I came up with this typeface made completely of bike parts. The letter A is our favorite. It was a fun exercise until I guess I got very hot and had a migraine/heat stroke problem??? Obviously I need to drink more water.. because it is still affecting me now! I am happy with our creation and hope we do fun things like this again.

Project One: Modular Grid

Grid: "A structure made up of horizontal and vertical lines and on it the designer places components such as headings, text, images, captions etc" (GIRWT).

Designers often use grids to create a page that allows the eyes to easily receive information by being able to place more than just columns of texts, but also titles, photographs, charts, illustrations. The grid benefits both the designer and the reader by guiding and organizing information in a way that 'makes sense.' Grids can help define composition, direction, and balance.

Modular Grid: It is like the normal grid, however the modular grid has gutters between each horizontal and vertical line which creates cells, or modules.

Margins: The space surrounding the context of the text.

Columns: Vertical columns on a page separated by a gutter or space.

Grid Modules: Consistently spaced vertically and horizontally division of cells. These components ensure ease of reading and presentation.

Flowlines: Horizontal lines that break space into horizontal bands.

Gutter: White space between the inner two margins of two facing pages. Also can be found where the book is binded on any page.

Hierarchy: Emphasis in typefaces by tweaking the size, plaecment, weight, and s p a c ing to express the importance in information.

Typographic Color: Lightness or darkness of the font of a block of text regarding the overall look of the content (the font size, space between letters, space between lines, and the font).

One way to achieve a clear hierarchy is by changing the font style. Another is by changing its color, size, or placement.

White space: Negative space; Space between elements in a composition.

Contrast: Compare in order to show unlikeness or differences;

Check Check

1, 2, 1 ,2...

Accidentally deleted my old blog..... Fail.