Type Workshop 1

I found this type session very interesting and it really pointed out a lot of gaps in my knowledge of type and type history.

The workshop ran sort of like a conversation or debate about different peoples perception of how type represents speech or the spoken word.

Type is given no character or 'voice' through decorating it, decorative type is just there to look aesthetically pleasing and the catch the audiences attention, but if the content and aesthetic are out of context the text becomes obsolete.

Graham took us through a few exercises so we could se how we think about type and the voice behind it.

Firstly we typed out our own names and we could use any font, weight or point size available.

This exercise was to see how the voice of the word we've written actually relates to us as a person or designer. It was quite fascinating to see how many people who are quiet or loud or talkative or calm had arranged their name in a way completely different to their personalities.

From here we did a some more experiments using the word 'dog'.

Angry dog. I used a Bold weighting and maybe the point size as big as I could to make the word stand out more and seem agressive. When looking around at what others had done, most were similar however one or two had thought to turn the canvas to landscape and fill the entire page.

Pissed off dog. I used a lighter weight making the font more condensed as if the word was wound up tight. I found it difficult to represent this one although the more I look at the word the more it looks like the descender of the 'g' looks like a mouth of the dog as if its growling through its teeth

Shy dog. I made the text as small as possible without it becoming unreadable and placed it in the top left. Whereas most people did a similar thing and placed the text in the bottom right corner of the document.

I'm still unsure of which module I will choose for the optional module but I did find this session really interesting and useful. I'm going to look more into the world of type to see if my interest continues.