Reading Reflection For Ch: 2, 4 and 5

Chapter 2 

The Anatomy of Typography

The most important aspect of the chapter for me is the vocabulary, which I'm glad is on the first pages of the chapter, including the fact that there are visuals. I picked up on the vocabulary pretty quickly and had little trouble understanding the rest of the chapter and its usage of said vocabulary. Going into depth in regards to the classifications really helped out, not having known many of the details that distinguished the different classifications, it was interesting to have them shown along side the descriptions. Every single page of the chapter is chock full of useful information and is all explained with ease that I felt like I had a good grasp on the basics after reading it just once. I spent a lot of time looking at the Univers branch on page 47, too. Seeing how Adrian Frutiger created the family and how ingenious the numbering system for it is; you know the specifications with just the name. I will admit that I had to reread a section of the chapter, but because the pictured examples kept throwing me off, but the spacial measurement section I had to reread to make sure I was understanding what I was reading. And one thing I wondered during my reading was why in the Italic version of the font, the a changes form. Maybe it's so it looks more like handwriting, considering most people write out the a like a? But as I continued to think about it, I wondered why there aren't more San Serif fonts with that style of 'a', considering it's a bit neater and more modern looking. I Googled 'classification of typefaces' and the first link included this picture:

There is more of a breakdown of San Serif fonts here, and noticed that the Geometric Sans Serif was a San Serif with that style of 'a' that I was wondering about, effectively answering my question. I also got more information on the other classifications, which is pretty neat.

Chapters 4 & 5

Legibility and The Typographic Grid

"The primary purpose of a letterform is to convey a recognizable meaning to the mind", off the bat I am in agreement with the book. I'm the kind of person that hates to be confused or have to put an ungodly amount of effort to read a poster, an add, etc. because it's in a horrible font that's serifs resemble the 'dancer, danger' example on page 78, or because the words are distorted/and or not on a grid. One of my other classes this semester is the history of motion editing and today we discussed how the job of an editor is to put shots together in specific ways to achieve a desired impact, put shots in front of behind the other either close together in time, or elongated shots, all contributing to the feeling or emotion a person gets viewing it - this theory closely relates to interletter and interword spacing, which I thought interesting. Going back to the legibility, I thought how the book goes in depth with the different aspects of the typefaces: weight, width, color and the justifications really interested me and goes well with how I personally think type should be displayed. The whole 'recommended' and 'not' I felt is the highlight of chapter four. What better following chapter than the grid? A huge part of legibility is using a grid of some sort. We subconsciously recognize them, use them and sometimes need them that using type on a grid seems natural, in my opinion, that this chapter felt like an even larger help in understanding typography. Typography and also a great chapter for anyone taking the InDesign workshop, like I am this semester. Learning the theories and descriptions for good legibility and then applying my knowledge to the class is always great.

Wolfgang Weingart is one of those people that learned all of these rules of typography, legibility and using the Swiss grid, but broke them to create an all new style of his own. This website talks about that and how he has to understand these concepts completely before experimenting. I thought it was relevant to the chapters considering he both experimented with legibility and the grid.