Module 02

“No other design discipline requires so much

learning and training as fontography, and by
no other aspect can amateurs be so easily
distinguished from professionals. To be font
literate, a designer has to study the history
and the principles of font design.”
– Dmitry Kirsanov, www.kirsanov.com

ERIKA CARDON ART 230 TYPOGRAPHY | 1

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P O N D E R | S K E TC H E S A N D T Y PE FAC E S
“No other design discipline requires
so much learning and training as
fontography [typography], and by no
other aspect can amateurs be so easily
distinguished from professionals.”
– Dmitry Kirsanov
How does the quote impact your outlook on
pursuing a graphic design education?
The quote really motivates me to strengthen and
improve my typography skills. It would be unfortunate
to have a great design and really degrade it with poorly
chosen typography.
THUMBNAILS
Where were you most successful in the sketches?
I completely understand the need for the sketches, but
I really struggled with them this week. I have a really
hard time with total randomness, and being abstract. I
needed all of my sketches to be totally to scale, which of
course they we’re, and that really threw me off. Because
of this, it took me much longer than 2 minutes to draw
each sketch.
I don’t know that I felt that any part of the sketching was
successful for me this week.
DIGITAL SKETCHES
How did you use your concept thumbnail sketches
when creating the digital sketches?
For my digital sketches I pretty much just tried to copy
what I had for my hand drawn sketches. This was actually
ERIKA CARDON
a little hard though, as the scale was way off in most of the E. The E in Garamond has more variation in it with a
my sketches. crossbar and arms that are much thinner than the stem.
RESEARCH | TYPE-FACE THINKING WITH TYPE
Moveable type had been
employed earlier in China but
had proven less useful there.
Whereas the Chinese writing
system contains tens of thousands
of distinct characters, the Latin
alphabet translates the sounds
of speech into a small set of
Here is a old Chinese movable type(by wood!), and shows a important Chinese marks, making it well-suited to
mechanization.
Layout principle: all components are square characters.
In what way has the Type-Face activity helped you?
–Page 13
It has been really interesting diving into typefaces and
looking more closely at what makes them different
CONCLUSION
and unique. It has helped a little in understanding the
personality of a typeface. What was the most beneficial part of this module?
How did it help you?
FONT COMPARISON
While it was also the hardest part of this module, I
What did you notice when comparing Stempel thought that the sketching was the most beneficial. I am
fairly comfortable in Illustrator and InDesign and often
Garamond to Neue Haas Grotesk?
want to jump right in and get working on something.
Neue Haas Grotesk looks more “clean”. It has straight
The sketching for this module was a little tricky with
lines with no embellishment.
having to keep white space for letters that would be
Stempel Garamond, while not ornate, is dressed up more white, but it was a good reminder of how important it is
than Haas. to play around with an idea or ideas before beginning to
design.
Haas has very uniformly sized lines - the stem of the E
is roughly the same size as the crossbar and the arms in
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