Since it looks like my response for chapters 1,3,and6 got eaten by the draft folder again, I'm going to combine it with my response to chapter seven. I numbered everything to keep it ordered!
1. Looking into the history of written words is interesting to me when I think of how people were really doing it "by hand" in the most authentic sense of the term. Rather than outlining the rules behind a typeface, a person would just make the damn characters! Knowing this, I always find the consistency of pre-printing press documents amazing. I just took the printmaking course Mark Z teaches last quarter, so now that I know how much of a pain it is to actually print things, my appreciation for classic technique is much greater.
When the chapter arrived at the 20th century advances in typography, I noticed a lot of examples pertaining to the German language, which is kind of fun because that's the only other language I can pretend to know.
3. Compared to chapter one, chapter three is entirely new information for me to absorb! Just as when we learned character anatomy, I think it's critical to have names for specific elements we refer to beyond "that part right there", so syntax is something I can appreciate. I found the main ideas in this chapter were basically relating to spatial relationships, so all the examples they illustrate are super helpful.
6. It was kind of hard to get used to the idea of type having as much power as the very idea that is being expressed through written language. Ideas, and the type that represents them, are really mostly powerful due to the associations we make in our individual brains. Designers have to sort of anticipate the associations their creations will cause in the audience members. I saw a lot of language in this chapter that reminded me of considerations other artists take in their studio practices, like reductionism and expressionism.
And now, the newest addition:
7. As I mentioned earlier, I was fortunate enough to take Printmaking I with Mark last quarter, which is how I learned that printmaking is not really for me. I have a hard time planning anything, so the less-impulsive style of making art through a specific process sometimes is hard for me to feel at home with. Looking through the industrial printers of chapter seven sort of confirmed this for me. Beyond the functional illustrations at the top of the page, I was pretty lost when the methods of production for different presses were discussed. Although it is still definitely possible for me to romanticize the print shop life, I am incredibly grateful that I have access to digital means of creating the visuals I want (at this point). Although I am a PC....and I noticed many apple computers in the pictures towards the end of the chapter!
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