Aimee Parker Graphic Design Design Principles OUGD404 Fred Bates
TYPE
&
colour
COLOUR The seven colour contrasts ...................................................................................................................3 RGB & CMYK ..........................................................................................................5 The 12-hue colour circle ..........................................................................................................7 Complementary contrast ..........................................................................................................8 Pantone ........................................................................................................10
TYPE Origins of type ..................................................................................................................11 Anatomy of type .........................................................................................................13 Serif and sans serif .........................................................................................................15 -Mixing Typefaces -Kerning -Tracking -Leading Helvetica .........................................................................................................17 Type families .........................................................................................................19 Scale ........................................................................................................20
I have learnt so much in design principles in such a short amount of time, these page layouts are just a small summary of what I have learnt so far.
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COLOUR CONTRASTS
Johannes Itten was one of the first people to define and identify strategies for successful colour combinations. Through his research he devised seven methodologies for coordinating colours utilizing the hue’s contrasting properties. These contrasts add other variations with respect to the intensity of the respective hues; i.e. contrasts may be obtained due to light, moderate, or dark value.
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SATURATION Contrast of saturation The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of light and dark values and their relative saturation
TONE Contrast of light and dark The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of light and dark values. This could be a monochromatic composition.
EXTENSION Contrast of Extension Also known as the Contrast of Proportion. The contrast is formed by assigning proportional field sizes in relation to the visual weight of a color.
COMPLEMENTS Contrast of complements The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of color wheel or perceptual opposites.
CONTRAST Simultaneous contrast The contrast is formed when the boundaries between colors perceptually vibrate. Some interesting illusions are accomplished with this contrast.
temperature Contrast of warm and cool The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of hues considered ‘warm’ or ‘cool.’
HUE Contrast of hue The contrast is formed by the juxtaposition of different hues. The greater the distance between hues on a color wheel, the greater the contrast.
RGB
ON SCREEN VIEWING ONLY RGB colour system is only suitable for screen reproduction such as LCD and CRT computer monitors and TV screens. This is not suitable color matching for printing or to colour match from, as each screen may represent colours differently. What may look fine on one screen, may be look completely different on another. This can be due to a number of reasons, whether it be due to individual screen settings such as brightness and contrast or even may be due to different monitor
manufactures; i.e. Sony or LG. The red, green, and blue components are the amounts of red, green, and blue light that an RGB color contains and are measured in values ranging from 0 to 255. To see these values, open a drawing program on your computer and delve deep into the color settings. Also you can view some values on new models of CRT and Digital Monitors. The RGB color model is an additive color model. Additive color models use transmitted light to display color. Monitors
use the RGB color model. When you add red light, blue light, and green light together, so that the value of each component is 255, the color white displays. When the value of each component is 0, the result is pure black.
RGB and CMYK are the two most prominent and typical color spaces / formats / models used in the world of design. In print, web, or digital media, a basic understanding of what the differences are, means a fledgling designer
can vastly improve the quality of a project.
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The CMYK, also known as Process colours are generally used in digital printing for signage. CMYK refers to the four colours used; Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black to generate a colour. It is these four colours which are mixed together to make up other colours, much the same principal to how paint is colour matched.
One thing to note is that CMYK colours may not look identical to physical colours due to the restriction to the number of colours CMYK can reproduce and that Inks perform differently. For example, orange is very hard to reproduce, and can look very muddy in when printed digitally. We take care to register all images with our four color bars applied to all printing we do. In this manner, the production crew can quickly and visually check the print at different stages. If a final
DIGITAL PRINTING
CMYK
color is not accurately made, there is little we can do. It is a technology thing.
The CMYK colour model defines colour using the following components: C Cyan Ink (this is a blue ink colour) M Magenta Ink (this is a pink ink colour) Y Yellow (yellow ink) K Black (Black ink, the character ‘k’ is used so as not to get confused with the ‘b’ in RGB. RGB was invented first we believe.)
THE 12- HUE COLOUR CIRCLE By way of indroduction to colour design, let us develop the 12-hue colour cirlce from the primaries- yellow, red and blue. The primary colours must be defined with the greatest possible accuracy. We place them in an equalitral triangle with yellow at the top, red at the lower right and blue at the lower left. About this triangle we circumscrible a cirlce in which we inscribe a regular hexagon. In the isosceles triangles between adjacent sies of the hexagon, we place three mixed colours, each composed of two primaries. Thus we obtain the secondary colours: yellow+red= orange yellow+blue= green red+blue= violet The three secondary colours have to be mixed very carefully. They must not lean towards either primary component. You will note that it is no easy task to obtain the secondaries by mixture. Orange must be neither too red, nor too yellow; violet neither too red, nor too blue; and green must be neither too yellow, nor too blue.
Now at a convenient radius Thus we have constucted a outside the first cirlce, let us regular 12-hue colour cirlce draw another circle, and diin which each hue has it’s vide the ring into twelve equal unmistakeable place. The sectors. In this ring, we repeat sequence of the colours is the primaries and secondaries that of the rainbow or natural at their appropriate locations, spectrum. leaving a blank sector every two colours. Newton obtained a continu ous colour cirlce of his kind by supplementing the spectural hues with purple, between red and violet. So the colour circle is an artificially augmented spectrum. The twelve hues are evenly spaced, woth complementry colours diamatrically opposite each other. One can accurately visulise any of these twelve hues at any time, and any intermediate tones are easily located. Unless Our colour names correspond to precise ideas, no useful discussion of col ours is possible. I must see my twelve tones as preciseIn these blank sectors, we ly as a musician hears the then paint in the tertiary coltwelve tones of his cromatic ours, each of which results scale. from mixing a primary and secondary as follows: Johannes Itten yellow+orange=yellow-orange A Swiss expressionist painter, red+orange=red-orange designer, teacher, writer and red+violet=red-violet theorist associated with the blue+violet=blue-violet Bauhaus school blue+green=blue-green yellow+green=yellow-green
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We call to colours complementry if their pigments mixed together, yeild a neutral greyblack. Physically, light of two complementry colours, mixed together, will yeild white. Two such colours make a strange pair. They are opposite, they will require each other. They incite each other to maximum vividness when adjacent; and they annihilate each other, to gray-black, when mixed- like fire and water. There is always but one colour complementry to a given colour. In our colour circle, complementaries are diametrically opposite each other. Examples of complementry pairs are: yellow, violet orange, blue red, green
Just as the mixute of yellow, red and blue is a grey-black, so is the mixture of any two complementries. We also recall the experiment showing that if one hue of the spectrum is suppressed, all the others mixed together will yeild it’s complementary. For every hue, the sum of al the other colours in the spectrum is the complementary of that hue. The top image on the left is a composition in two complementary colours and modulations of their mixed tones. Of course, two, thress or more pairs might be used. The effect is clearest if the complementry colour areas touch or are not too far seperated.
C O M P L E M E N T R Y C O N T R A S T
What would the world be without colour? A dull, joyless melange of shapes without vital meaning. ‘Colour is life, a world without colour seems dead. As a flame produces light, light produces colour. As inotation lends colour to the spoken word, colour lends spirtually realized sound to a form’ Jonathan Itten
PANTONE The Pantone Color Matching System expands upon existing color reproduction systems such as the CMYK process. The CMYK process is a standardized method of printing colour by using four inks—cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The majority of the world’s printed material is produced using the CMYK process. The Pantone system is based on a specific mix of pigments to create new colours—referred to as Spot Colours. The Pantone system also allows for many ‘special’ colours to be produced such as metallics and fluorescents. While most of the Pantone system colours are beyond the printed CMYK gamut, those that are possible to simulate through the CMYK process are labeled as such within the company’s guides. Pantone colours are described
by their allocated number (typically referred to as ‘PMS 130’). PMS colors are almost always used in branding and have even found their way into government legislation (to describe the colours of flags). In January 2003, the Scottish Parliament debated a petition (reference PE512) to define the blue in the Scottish Flag (saltire) as ‘Pantone 300’. Countries such as Canada and South Korea and organizations such as the FIA have also chosen specific Pantone colours to use when producing flags. It is open to speculation whether legislators realize that Pantone may choose to reformulate the colour.
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ORIGINS OF TYPE Pictograms, ideograms, and phonograms While cave paintings, dating as far back as 20,000 B.C. are the first evidence of recorded pictures, true written communication is thought to have been developed some 17,000 years later by the Summerians, around 3500 B.C. They are known to have recorded stories and preserved records using simple drawings of everyday objects, called pictograms.
Antient Pictograms
Romans and Phoenicians The Roman numerals we use today are considered to contain ideograms: I, II, and III representing fingers of the hand, V the open hand, and IV the open hand minus one finger. By 1600 B.C., the Phoenicians had developed symbols for spoken sounds, called phonograms. For example, their symbol for ox, which they called aleph, was used to represent the spoken sound “A” and beth, their symbol for house, represented the sound “B”. In addition to sounds, phonograms could also represent words.
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THE ALPHABET It is the Phoenicians who are generally credited with developing the first true alphabet— a set of symbols representing spoken sounds, that could be combined to represent spoken language.
more informal style for letters and routine types of writing. By A.D. 100, the Romans had developed a flourishing book industry and, as Roman handwriting continued to evolve, lower case letters and rough forms of Primarily a seafaring merchant society, they traded punctuation were gradually added. with many cultures, spreading their alphabet throughout the Western world. Around 1,000 B.C., the Phoenician alphabet was adapted by the Over the next 1,000 years, manuscript Greeks, who developed the art of handwriting in preparation developed into a specialized, several styles. The word “alphabet” comes from highly regarded craft and came to be the first two Greek letters alpha and beta. practiced chiefly in monasteries. Books were objects of immense value, and contained Pictograms evolved into the letters of the alphabet elaborate ornamentation. Illuminated, or illustrated, initials were painstakingly designed and incorporated into exactingly Early symbol for “ox” Phoenician “aleph” rendered text. It was not uncommon for Greek “A” Roman “A” a monk to devote an entire lifetime to the Several hundred years later, the Romans used the completion of a single manuscript. Greek alphabet as the basis for the uppercase alphabet that we know today. They refined the art of handwriting, fashioning several distinctive styles of lettering which they used for different purposes. They scribed a rigid, formal script for important manuscripts and official documents and a quicker,
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Anatomy of type The basic typographic element is called a character, which is any individual letter, numeral, or punctuation mark. The capital letters are called caps, or uppercase characters. Small letters are called lowercase characters. Numbers are called numerals or figures.
Character components
Contrast The amount of variation in between thick and thin Typographic characters have strokes. basic component parts. The Counter easiest way to differentiate characteristics of type designs The empty space inside the body stroke. is by comparing the structure Descender of these components. The following terms identify some of The lowercase character stroke which extends below the components: the baseline. Loop The bottom part of the Ascender The lowercase character stroke lowercase roman ‘g’. Sans serif which extends above the From the French, meaning x-height. “without serif”. A typeface Bar which has no serifs .Sans serif The horizontal stroke on the typefaces are typically uniform characters ‘A’, ‘H’, ‘T’, ‘e’, ‘f’, in stroke width. ‘t’. Serif Baseline Tapered corners on the ends The imaginary horizontal line of the main stroke. Serifs to which the body, or main originated with the chiseled component, of characters are guides made by ancient aligned. stonecutters as they lettered Bowl monuments. Note that serif The curved stroke which type is typically thick and thin surrounds a counter. in stroke weight. Bracket A curved line connecting the serif to the stroke.
Shoulder The part of a curved stroke coming from the stem. Stem A stroke which is vertical or diagonal. Stress The direction in which a curved stroke changes weight. Terminal The end of a stroke which does not terminate in a serif. X-height The height of the body, minus ascenders and descenders, which is equal to the height of the lowercase ‘x’. X-heights vary among typefaces in the same point size and strongly effect readability and gray vaule of text blocks.
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Combining typefaces is like making a salad. Start with a small number of elements representing different colours, tastes and textures. Strive for contrasts rather than harmony, looking for emphatic differences rather than mushy transitions. Give each ingredient a role to play: sweet tomatoes, crunchy cucumbers and the pungent shock of an occasional anchovy. When mixing typefaces on the same line, designers usually adjust the point size so that the x-heights align. When placing typefaces on separate lines, it often makes sense to create contrast in scale as well as style or weight. Try mixing big, light type with small dark type for a crisscross of contrasting flavors.
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Combining typefaces is like making a salad
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MIXING TYPEFACES
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SERIF AND SANS-SERIF Serifs are semi-structural details or small decorative flourishes on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. An example would be the Times New Roman font. Sans serif does not have these details or flourishes. An example would be the Arial font. It is said that serif fonts are usually easier to read in larger text areas like in books, magazines, in body content on websites. And sans serif fonts are used regularly because of how clean they tend to look in those main text areas.
KERNING
Adjust the spacing between (characters) in a piece of text to be printed
Tracking
Tracking by typographers, refers to a consistent degree of increase (or sometimes decrease) of space between letters to affect density in a line or block of text.
Leading
In typography, leading refers to the distance between the baselines of successive lines of type. The term originated in the days of hand-typesetting, when thin strips of lead were inserted into the forms to increase the vertical distance between lines of type.
H E L V E T I C A
WHO? WHEN? The original Helvetica was designed in Switzerland in 1957 by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas type foundry
Helvetica was designed in post-war Europe, and many companies were looking for a change. It was the opposite of all the kitschy, fancy, decorative typography that covered corporate materials and advertisements. Helvetica’s sleek lines and modern sensibilities were just what companies were looking for to remake their identities and set themselves apart from the past.
Corporations stick by Helvetica because of what they have invested in it. Because of this, it has become associated with corporate culture and business to some degree. This is one reason why American Apparel chose to use the font for their own brand identity to poke fun at corporate culture in America.
Variations
There have been a number of Helvetica variations created, including a number of language variants (Cyrillic, Korean, Hindi, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Greek among them). Others variations include: Helvetica Light was designed at Stempel by artistic director Erich Schultz-Anker and Arthur Ritzel. Helvetica Compressed was designed by Matthew Carter that’s similar to Helvetica Inserat, but with a few differences. Helvetica Textbook is an alternate design with a few different characters. Helvetica Rounded was developed in 1978 and includes rounded stroke terminators. It’s only available in bold and black versions
(including condensed and obliques), plus an outline version that wasn’t available digitally. Neue Helvetica was developed in 1983 and has more structurally unified heights and widths among its characters. It also has improved legibility, increased spacing in numbers, and heavier punctuation marks.
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TYPE FAMILIES In the sixteenth century, printers began orangising roman and italic typefaces into matched families. The concept was formalised in the early twentieth centry.
ADOBE GARAMOND PRO, DESIGNED BY ROBERT LIMBACH 1988 A traditional roman book face typically has a small family- an intimate group consiting of roman, italic, small caps, and possibly bold and semi bold (each with an italic variant) styles. Sans- serif families often com in many more weights and sizes, such as thin, light, black, compressed and condensed.
ABC XYZ abc xyz
The roman form, also called plain or regular, is the standard, upright version of the typeface. It is typically conceived as the parent of the larger family.
ABC XYZ abc xyz
The italic form is used to create emphasis. Especially among serif and sans-serif faces , it often employs shapes and strokes distinct from its roman counterpart. Note the differences between the Roman and the ittalic a.
ABC XYZ abc xyz Bold versions of traditional text fonts were added in the twentienth century to meet the need for emphatic forms. Sanserif families often include a broad range of weights (thin, bold, black,ect.)
ABC XYZ abc xyz The typeface designer tries to make the two bold versions feel similar in comparison to the roman, without making the overall form too heavy. The counters need to stay clear and open at small sizes.
scale
Blackpool Comedy Carpet October 2011
Scale is the size of design elements in comparsison to other elements in a layout as well as to the physical context of the work. Scale is relative. 12-pt type displayed on a 32-inch monitor can look very small, while 12-pt type printed on a book page can look flabby and overweight. Designers create hierarchy and contrast by playing with the scale of letterforms. Changes in scale help create visual contrast, movement and depth as well as express hierarchies of importance. Scale is physical. People intutivively judge the size of objects in relation to their own bodies and environments.
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