I found this image whilst browsing for information and images on my essay topic relating to our perception of communication. And even though the concept of this image is a bit different, its yet the same principle of us relating things to other objects because society and our upbringing has taught us to. I.e. children are taught that rough and sketchy representations in books are animals; even though they are actually quite far off reality. Despite that though, our brain makes the connection between the differences automatically, e.g. if we see a table on a poster we see it as a chair, not as ink on paper. 

Hence the image above is only a little more abstract that what we see in our daily lives.

Essay Plan for Semiotics of Typography: What typography means and communicates and what makes a font successful

(Also writing this in Times to give everyone a breather from Helvetica)

Evolution of type:

• historical aspect and introduction;
• initially the ability to communicate non-verbally was success enough
• due to lack of technology 100% of the message of text was communicated purely through the actual words and its meaning, not the typeface or colour, size, etc.
• change in type from just the negative space being relevant as well as the positive space being relevant and adding to the meaning and message, i.e. 
• not just the actual word that has meaning, but also the placement, spacing, arrangement, size, face, colour, etc.
• how typefaces themselves have evolved due to society and reflect societies development and mentality (e.g. old middle age fonts very heavy and ornate, nowadays minimalistic, modern)

Meaning of type

• what does it mean to us and give us these days?
• use of different faces in everyday life, i.e. from roadsigns, contracts to bold advertisements. why certain shapes and forms more appropriate than others and what they communicate to our society (e.g. serif font elegant, old school, sleek sans serif modern and more bold)
• legibility and readability: what makes a font legible and amiable 
• grids and alignment, placement and size of copy

Looking at famous typefaces:

Times New Roman - 

• brief history and creation, use
• why it was the standard font and ultimately used everywhere
• how it was being overused, its downfall - could it have been prevented and to what extend does society and culture define aesthetics and what is preferable 

Comic Sans - 

• brief history and creation, use
• why it is hated
• what physically makes it annoying, unwanted

Helvetica - 

• brief history and creation, use
• celebrity typeface
• why it is THE ultimate font of modern typography, also a “people’s” font
• comparison to Times New Roman- will enjoy longer period of popularity than Times New, but could eventually suffer same downfall
• Helvetica is already being overused, however is scientifically meant to have the perfect positive to negative space; i.e. could it be used forever or is it just a current, modern font that matches nowadays society?
• is Helvetica a result of science (perfect negative to positive space ratio) or a result of society’s preferences?

Conclusion

• Especially in our modern day world we are surrounded by design everywhere, every shape, colour and size being there on purpose. Hence we interpret the typeface a text is written in as well and ad it to the message the text itself is communicating, i.e. an elegant swirly type gives the text a sense of what it will say before we have read it, a clean sans serif like Gill Sans looks pleasing and nice to look and but is simple enough to be looked through and focus on the message of the copy itself. 
• Whether we notice it or not, the typeface has an impact on how a message is read and communicated 
• Psychologically and visually it is easiest for us to look at and read a clean sans serif, as it does not distract the eye and acts as a “Crystal Goblet”

Bibliography (of books)

“Type and Typography” - Phil Baines & Andrew Haslam, Watson Guptil 2. Edition

“Typography: n the arrangement, style and appearance of type and typefaces” - Ambrose, Harris

“Typography and Language in everyday life” - Sue Walker

 "The fundamentals of Typography" - Ambrose and Harris

Semiotics of typefaces

I have always been fascinated by semiotics and the psychological influence of things we are surrounded by,  hence did a module in Psychology and the Media last year and really enjoyed the module we had on colour semiotics as well.

In my opinion psychology (of virtually everything) plays a large role in Graphics and especially advertisement, which is the industry I am interested in going to.  For my typography essay I am thinking of analysing exactly this, as understanding the effect and influence different types and colours have will be vital for the message they bring across, especially in advertisement.

What I will also look as it why virtually all commonly used faces these days are sleek and clean sans serifs, trying to look as similar to Helvetica as possible and the classic Times New Roman is treated like an embarrassing item of clothing that has been worn too much and now remains untouched.
Bearing in mind the amount of typefaces there are around and the long history of typography I probably wont find it difficult to write 3000 words on this topic...

Swiss Style

As part of my essay research I am looking at various areas. Currently I'm looking into how typography reflects mindsets, mood, mentality or culture.

In one of our lectures we covered the Swiss style, also known as the International Typographic Style, which is as neutral as the country itself (e.g. it stays out of wars). This style is very modern, elegant and has a cleaniliness about it which makes it neutral but suitable for almost anything. It focuses on the objective of legibility and objectivity, and has reformed the style of typography since the 1950's. And of course, since this was such a revolutionary change to typography, something great came of it: Helvetica. The only typeface to reach celebrity status, be featured everywhere and even have a film made about it. Let alone the amount of books written on it.

 

What I am really interested in about this style though is how typefaces represent and stand for something, i.e. represent a mentality. The Swiss have their neutral type, and the Germans went from the old, very hard and headstrong typeface (like Fraktur or Antiqua) through the modernist Bauhaus movement to much more simple and clean typefaces like DIN, the common roadsign font. Its very strong and precise, quite like the general german mentality. In the cases of Germany and Switzerland I see a similarity between type and mentality, so I will keep looking into this.

However I am also fascinated by type cognition and ligibility, so I shall be researching and posting on both areas.

Legibility

Relating to my little exploration last week, I came across this german copy "at the edge of legibility", also playing on the the fact that our brains try to make sense of everything we see and we automatically perceive the incomplete lines as words.

This also leads me to my next explorations and research towards the topic I might choose to write my typography essay: Typography and its reflection of culture and mentality.

A little exploration of typographic cognition

Based on the last typography lecture I had on monday, I decided to post something about cognition this week. The lecture having been titled "The objective of text" I thought it would be interesting to look at text as something abstract, something that is perceived to have a meaning merely because our culture gives an arrangement of lines in a certain order a certain meaning: text. 


Based on this, but also psychological aspects (which I know only little about but find very interesting) of wanting to give everything we see a meaning, make sense of it. I decided to mock up a few text-images. Although they are not actually a word in a form as we know it, we are still able to make sense of it and force it to give us meaning.


The following images are a series of more and more abstract images of a word; which however will not vary in meaning to the observer because we (will) know what it means. Even though there are only abstract boxes of colour they will form to a word in our minds- because we want it to and know what it is meant to mean.

The latter could be classified abstract art- yet our brain makes connections between the squares and forms a word.

Featuring Inspiration

Ever so often I come across some amazing graphic and typographic designs- some of which are on a similar level to the me and my course mates produced in year 1, and some on a far more academic and advanced one.


This one is a classic example of typography promotion, using only copy and few colours to make a clear and bold statement; ergo summarising the typeface's character:

A more unusual and more graphic style that really amazed me is the use of many different elements and styles. I find it very attracting and gripping to look at- but nevertheless it is not as communicative and effective as the simple and clean example above. After analysing the round shapes at on the left hand side, I mind myself overwhelmed by too much to take it at once.

1:0 for Helvetica 

(or any other typeface presented in that style)

Amazing Magritte

Based on an inspiring lecture I had on typography, I decided to feature this philosophical masterpiece, painted by the artist Magritte. The simplicity of the way of communication shows the complex thought process behind it. I found so interesting and fascinating, I decided to mock up my own typographic interpretation of it: