whats the best way, of creating new typography??
layouts etcetra?
where should i look for inspiration.
need it soon.
how do i break the mould of regenerating the same idea over and over??
is this because that one idea works??

I'm not sure I understand, what do you mean by typography? Do you want to create a typeface?

I'm not sure I understand, what do you mean by typography? Do you want to create a typeface?


nope, i mean as in the use of text layed out.

basically, ive been given a font, and have to create a cd booklet around that font, for a college project.
and am asking for advice on where i should look for ideas and inspiration. as am struggling a little.
the font is called wittenberger fruktar.

am just asking for a little guidance on typography

sorry for not making any sense

Well that is a huge subject, one that Shecky i am sure can really expand upon for sure. :)

Well i dont really know the full requirements and scope of your project but I can offer a few suggestions to remember.

Typography is not simply typing words into a program like illustrator or indesign and then choosing a funky font.

There are many things to consider, letterspacing (tracking and kerning), letter width and height, and of course leading (space between lines). Choices for headline or subheadline and body text are important as well. Now I am not familiar with your typeface that you listed there and Iam not sure if it is a font that can be used as both headline and body text. There are alot of 'display' type fonts out there that work great for headlines or titles but are very poor for body text.

Its a good idea to use more than single spacing between lines on body text (adjust your leading manually).

From a more design standpoint, look at the shapes of the various letters of this font. What do the shapes present to you is there something in these letterforms that evokes some ideas. Can you use them to create interesting space and/or division of elements in the design?

There really are way to many things to get into here. If you want you might wish to post up your progress of this project and perhaps we can help by offering suggestions at that point. :)

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm yummy typography. yummy yummy yummy.

i would also look to Angryblue for a wealth of advice on type. this is a subject that could be expanded on for years, but a few basics to remember:

-If you go all capitals, they need more tracking (space between letters) to remain readable. Lowercase or a mix you should generally not alter the tracking the computer provides.
-all capitals do not read as well as a mix of capitals and lowercase; typefaces are designed to utilize the negative spaces between the letterforms, using all capitals breaks this.
-justified text usually looks bad (from a design standpoint) as it alters the spaces between the letters unnaturally.

i would STRONGLY suggest printing out (on actual paper) all the letterforms of the font you were given and then using a copy machine blow up and shrink down - then cut em up and collage - look at the letters as FORMS not as WORDS and that will help give you a direction. this is a great way to get going on a direction for a new project.

beyond that i would need to be asked some more specific type questions to give more advice. My personal type hero is Jan Tschichold (http://www.frostdigital.com/content/tschichold.html) so i always tell people to look at his layouts - if you are into a simple delicate kind of composition he is a god.

*edited cuz i made an incorrect comment. duh.

vheers thanks for the info,
i guess the font, ive been given is funky enough, so it'll be easier to look at the letters as shapes.

any advice, on how to advertise fonts??
whats the best way??

not sure what you mean by 'advertise fonts'

say for example, you create a font, and you wanna showcase it to potential customers, in booklet form.
whats the best way??

am thinking of possibly using two pages.
one page with everysingle, key, symbol etc.
and the other page,with the font, used in an article.

would that be a good way to advertise it??

basically yes - i should warn you up front that designing a typeface properly is a VERY complex task not to be taken lightly (assuming you want it to be good) - you are in essence making at least 62 different glyphs (in English at least - 26 lowercase, 26 uppercase, 10 numbers, not to mention punctuations) all of which need to be highly designed and work together in various configurations. Not trying to tell you not to do it, im just saying its very involved to do well.

I would design some layouts showcasing your font, think of them not as just a list of letters, but as a movie poster of "Your Font: The Movie" and generate some emotion and feeling behind it. Also all good fonts have an explination describing process of design, theory, precedent, etc.. You should also look at the sample pages that the bigger type foundries have, i personally like Font Bureau (http://www.fontbureau.com) (one of the partners was a typography professor of mine,) and House Industries (http://houseind.com/house.php) - they present fonts in a pretty straightforward way if you need to keep it simple.

something like this is a good way to present a typeface:

http://www.abrasivedesign.com/risd/graphicdesign/seniorshow/05.jpg

thanky :)
any good typographical books out there??

Complete Manual of Typography by Adobe Press (Peachpit)

along a somewhat related vien there is the Merriam Webster's Handbook for Writer or the Handbook for Editors and Copywriter, they are pretty similar.

You can also look at newspaper styleguides. They are available from places like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune as well as the Associated Press. For Canadaians the Globe and Mail puts out a good one.

:)

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst is a typographic bible.

you MUST own the Bringhurst book. Must. Also I like "A Type Primer" by John Kane for an easyer read.

you MUST own the Bringhurst book. Must. Also I like "A Type Primer" by John Kane for an easyer read.

I will be looking or that one. :)

i'm waaaaaaaaaaaaay late, but also getting books by type masters are good.

the end of print by david carson as well as 2nd sight are both good.

there are a few different collections just called typographics 1-4 that are just showcases of neat things people have done with type.

raygun makazine used to be awesome (partially because of david carson). they have a book they've released of combinations of their issues. every page was a piece of art.

raygun makazine used to be awesome (partially because of david carson). they have a book they've released of combinations of their issues. every page was a piece of art.

Cool I will have to check those out...if I can find anything.

you like that? makazine.

im actually gonna disagree with you on this one AB - while a seasoned designer like yourself can look at Carson's work and understand what he is doing, for someone who is starting out and is just beginning to understand typography as more than just letters, but as a piece of design, i think that Carson, Sagmeiester, and others in that vein are breaking so many rules of "traditional" typography that unless you already know all the rules, it can just be a jumbled mess. Thats why i see SO much crappy type on a lot of digital art - everyone wants to be (and thinks that they can be) David Carson because they have a ton of fonts on thier computer. But when you really look at Carson's work, you realise he has an incredibly strong understanding of type, and that because of this he can take it to new levels.

I certainly agree its interesting, but i think its a mistake for a novice to pick up a Carson book and try to be at that level without knowing all the background first.

makazines are cool

i wrote a long reply to this last night and it wouldn't let me post it even though i was logged in and then it lost the post when i hit the back button.

awesome.

while i understand what you're saying, i disagree.

anyone looking to learn how to paint, draw or play guitar doesn't just learn by the book. i didn't learn any of those by reading up on them. i learned from example.

i don't think i'm a genius at anything i do, but i think i've gotten the hang of a lot of it.

i understand what you're saying about bad type. it's abundant. its disgusting how much bad type there is. however, most people that know about sagmeister or carson are more interested in learning why it works than trying to trace it.

personally, i've always found typography books to be really really fucking boring (to be blunt). while i think people need to understand all of the terminology and why certain typefaces work together and why you can't do this or that, i've never been able to sit down and actually read a book on type.

but that's me. maybe it's just some a.d.d. thing because i don't read much these days (there's just tooo much to do. i don't have time) and haven't since high school other than a few palahnuik and rollins books (wow. testosterone-ridden books... man... that makes me look lame).

the majority of the books i purchase (and i've got a ton) are examples of type or art that inspire me to try new things, push 1-color design to its limits or just give me some ideas when i'm in a rut.

then again, i did have 4 years of high school where i did art for 2 hours every day. i learned a lot of the basics and had to adhere to rules to an extent to pass those classes. i agree that the fundamentals and boundaries need to be taught and understood of any art in order to understand how to control it and understand what guidelines (not rules) that you're breaking or pushing.

however, i don't think that discouraging someone from listening to avant garde music is going to make them fail to understand how to write their own. i think the comparison is the same with any art.

i'm hopped up on caffeine and i'm supposed to be working. hopefully my distracted and hyper long-winded comments make some sense

i understand what yer saying also - but all i know is that you can look around at the art being produced digitallyt and a lot of it (i mean a LOT of it) that has type on it is just horrible. (i am also mostly completly dissapointed by photomanipulation art you see these days - most of it blows - but thats another conversation.) I think this is due to what i said above. Of course you should look at carson's work - of course you sholuld read palahniuk (i think 'invisible monsters' is my favorite) but you should not try and BE them 2 seconds after looking at the book, because other than a very very few who are truly artistic prodigys, you end up hacking your way thru it and maybe you get lucky once in a while. However, if you read some of the masters (fucking boring? ::bitchslap:: shutyomouth!) like Weingart and Tschiold and just absorb what they can do with just type and white space its amazing. Once you see that and then see Carson and the like it just makes way more sense and is even better than looking at it with no background at all.


and oh by the way..........just found out David carson is lectureing Monday here.
http://intranet.risd.edu/ContentAdministrator/calendar/view/default.asp?event=737

shecky + blue in a battle to the death.

i learned on carson and my type is nothing like that.

but... for fuck's sake there's a lot of bad type on battles and stuff. some of this i'm completely guilty of. the problem is this:

people are finding excuses to include type. everyone has to have words in there even if its explaining what the piece is. these are often because peopel aren't making art to standalone and function all on its own. they think that they type helps so if they could just thing of something to write... some bad song lyrics....

bingo....exactly true.

Boy!...very interesting reading from shecky + blue - I thought this was going to be a long debate on the typo thing......but, I enjoyed reading all your interesting in put on this subject....
i wrote a long reply to this last night and it wouldn't let me post it even though i was logged in and then it lost the post when i hit the back button.
Boy!...that sucks....its happened to me a few times :thbsdown:

Scotty/Angry: Sorry about that...long post thing. That has happened to me on some many occasions on buletin boards that i have gotten into the habit of copying my message into note pad before submitting if its a real long one. ;)

Well I shouldnt really be in this discussion as i feel terribly underqualified to hold any position in this debate. But I still feel i need to say my 2 cents.

I will agree 100% on the bad type thing within todays digital art and art community. Alot of artists are attempting emulate what they see and any of whom they are emulating are not good examples they are exposed to so much crap. I studied typography to some extent in Design College, although I must admit it was limited as I didnt do the full 4 years - only a 2 year diploma.

Angry and I are very similar in our views on the reading of typography books -the real technical ones drain the life out of me. Freaky has a few, and the ones I have looked at nearly knocked me unconcious....I like to collect examples of good type by the various masters and talents and be inspired as well.

On the other hand I agree with shecky that a foundation and deeper understanding of type is required rather than just emulating, especially when it comes to real 'fringe' type typography. Angry can look at these books and be inspired and get new ideas from them because he has the necessary background from school, and experience in work. Many of the young artists today do not have this benefit...this is one of the reasons I feel art forums like this are so important (and why some art forums are not so helpful because they dont promote helpful critique.)

I also beleive alot of it comes from within you and a certain 'eye' for type design that goes beyond what you learn from reading a book or sitting in a class.