typography: reading 3

read: in Typography, Graphic Design in Context:
(due 9/27)
Primer 4, pgs 154 – 161
Production, pgs 164 – 166
Craft, pgs 173 – 176
Materality, pgs 180 – 181
Hierarchy, pgs 47 – 50
Hierarchy, pgs 85 – 88

PRODUCTION AND REPRODUCTION
Typesetting Revolution
hand typesetting: metal and wood

• Gutenberg bible was the first complete book in Europe (though actually, the very first book ever printed was in China) 
• before then, everything was hand lettered using calligraphy --> the Gutenberg bible had a typeface similar to calligraphy
• Jensen: he designed letters so that they would work in any combination
• was the first typeface that was uniform
• stereotyping and the pantograph speeded up printing 

machine typesetting: hot type

• the Merganthaler Linotype machine turned the production of metal type into something done mechanically --> simply melted slugs to create new sentences, useful for newspaper industry

phototypesetting: cold type

• Diatype, Compugraphic, Phototypositor, Varityper moved type composition from the "metal chase to drafting table" --> letterforms could be manipulated
• letteringspacing could be decreased for the first time

digital typesetting: room temperature-temperature type

• (DTP) PostScript --> crisp, many possibitilies, probably what we will continue to be using for awhile

MEANS AND MEDIUM

Typographic Craft

• Peter Dormer says that craft is "knowledge that empowers the maker to take charge of the technology." --> requires a lot of experience to fully understand
• typographic craft requires 3 things:
• typographer
• his tools
• and the artifact in the process of becoming

MATERIALITY

Materiality and Message

• an impression of type can tell us it was printed using a letterpress, 
• "we feel typography through both touch and sight."
• problem of indentation of the paper by the press --> solved with offset printing

HIERARCHY

Structure

• what is seen first, priorities
• structures "delimit where and how elements behave..."
• most basic of typographical structure is changing the text in regards to space

Relational Hierarchy

• the importance of the phrase in relation to other text
• visual prominence "establish the order we see things" 
• movement complicates hierarchy --> depending on how it is presented, anything can be emphasized in a moving picture through movement

HIERARCHY II

• most basic: letters aligned on a baseline
• text stacked on vertical margin --> alignment is key to hierarchy: justification, centered, and asymmetry