The end credits follow the classic model: a long row of text scrolls upwards, again using Bookman. Like all typography in Pulp Fiction, the end titles show a penchant for meticulously executed quirkiness. The type is compressed just enough to evoke the right kind of nostalgic amateurism. Things like the (faux) small cap A in “LaMarr” show an attention for typographic detail".

Blystone, M., 2019. Pulp Fiction (1994) Titles. [online] Fonts in Use. Available at: <https://fontsinuse.com/uses/25604/pulp-fiction-1994-titles> [Accessed 22 October 2020].

The MoT Serif was proposed in 1952.

Blue Pencil no.17 - Just My Type - Part One - Simon Garfield

Shaw, P., 2011. Paul Shaw Letter Design » Blue Pencil No. 17—Just My Type—Part One. [online] Paulshawletterdesign.com. Available at: <https://www.paulshawletterdesign.com/2011/09/blue-pencil-no-17—just-my-type—part-one/> [Accessed 22 October 2020].

A book where designers Steven Heller and Gail Anderson create letterforms out of anything but ink.

I like these letterforms because they’re made out of accessible household items. This is something to look at and towards in the coming weeks dealing with potential isolation with little resources and materials.

Dunne, C., 2014. Typography Made Of Everything But Ordinary Ink. [online] Fast Company. Available at: <https://www.fastcompany.com/3035025/typography-made-of-everything-but-ordinary-ink> [Accessed 22 October 2020].

This was me developing my very basic and simple initial ideas, prior to my proper research. I wanted to have created or completed something so that I could figure out where I could take this project.

My initial research has started with using materials around me. This photo is the view I can see from my room and I thought I would try find letterforms in the basic shape of the building. I plan to do more outcomes like this, and even develop this and see what else I can find in the image.

When I researched the term ‘letterforms’, the thing that stuck out for me was that it is the shape of a letter. I really wanted to emphasise shape and use shapes that already exist. For example; the rectangle windows provided a strong starting point to create a bold and basic letterform.

I looked at the links given as research and found the pages intriguing. However, I don’t have the skill, as of yet to create complex structures as seen in the 4D Type Design by Lo Siento Studio. I would still like to move this method and idea forward, if I can, in later work.

I think what I like about it is the fact it’s made out of paper. Something so simple and accessible in our daily lives. I think I do like the idea of accessibility and being about to create out of the surrounding materials, because for some people that is all they have. I have been fortunate in most cases, that I have been able to use the resources that I need but some people won’t have that. I think it was Keith Haring that said “art is for everyone”, and I fully stand behind that statement as many artists and designers will.

I also need to set about looking at numbers, symbols and punctuation. I think so far I have spent too long looking into letters and their shape rather than these other factors. 

Important parts of letterforms:

Baseline 

Cap Height 

Crossbar

Serif

Mean Line

Bowl

Descender

Counter

Stem

Tittle

Terminal

Ascender

Leg

Ligature

X-Height

Median

Stroke

I want to explore the terminology of letterforms and revise this before I start to create most of my main body of work. I feel like this knowledge will prove valuable to my course and my work and is worth understanding. Having only studied one year in Graphic Design properly I don’t know all the terminology, and currently haven’t taken the time to learn it. Initially, I wasn’t sure how relevant it would be to me, now I know it’s vital to have a rounded knowledge.

This video was about Ross Hastie who is a Signwriter and has been signwriting since he was 12 years old. What I took from this is that it is a very unique type of letterform creation. I found it quite interesting that at first signwriters were obviously high in demand before we could create basic letterforms on computers. Now, they have the more opportunities to take time in what they do and create signs for people who care more about the final outcome.

I think this just accentuates the fact that most people nowadays do take letterforms for granted. They are literally at our fingertips and many of us have grown up using them. But, there is always a special place in the world of handmade crafts, especially now that electronic letterforms are so accessible.

Signwriting seems like something I would definitely be interested in learning more about. I might incorporate more research and learning about it into my project as I go along.

Historic Environment Scotland, 2018. A Minute With...Traditional Signwriter Ross. [image] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BndCXYeopUI&feature=youtu.be> [Accessed 22 October 2020].

The first designer that I took interest in was Anthony Burrill. My initial reaction to Burrill’s work was that I liked it because of its formality and precision. It seemed very matter of fact and communicated well, which is what I like the most when it comes to letterforms. It is simple but effective.

I moved on to choose Paula Scher, Eric Spiekermann and David Kindersley to investigate for my project. I chose Paula Scher’s New Identity for Public Theatre, mostly because I didn’t like the way it looked. The unevenness of the letters was something that made it hard for me to find aesthetically pleasing. However, what it stands for was very interesting because the “re-branding” of public theatre was a huge step towards breaking down traditional societal views. She made it fun and interesting and not bland, so I can appreciate it for that reason.

I like Eric Spiekermann’s work because his typefaces reflect his personality. I had never looked at fonts that way before I watched the Helvetica Documentary, but he was one of the first typeface designers that I really appreciated. His interview and what he said about his passion for typefaces changed my view on, not only the world of design, but the world as a general whole. I look for typefaces, I judge them on billboards and shop fronts. I analyse them; What could they have done better? What other typeface could they have used? What would make it more interesting? I think these are all questions that I should be asking, being that I do enjoy and appreciate letterforms.

David Kindersley was my favourite designer to look at. I like some of his more original work but as a whole I just really enjoy his work on the whole. He has a uniqueness to his letterforms that aren’t like anything I have, personally, ever seen.

The thing I like most about this topic of Letterforms, is realising and appreciating the broadness of the subject. There is so much to them that people don’t know and don’t care to understand. I guess if there was one thing I wish I could really do for this topic, is maybe create some kind of informative work that helped people see the beauty of letterforms.

In doing these developments, I have been able to show that no matter what word you are creating, it is evident what font you are using. There is a connection between those letterforms and the films that cannot be detached, and I found that really interesting.

1968 Mexico/Context and Information

Protests: “transparent dialogue with the government, freedom for political prisoners, an end to corruption, and an accountability for the government’s widespread and violent repression”.

October 2nd 1968 - “More than 25 people have been killed during a vicious gun battle in Mexico City just days before the Olympic Games are due to begin”.

“The Mexican government say “agitator groups” among the students begin shooting at the crowds from buildings, which resulted in a 90-minute gun fight”.

Reminds me of Bloody Sunday, January 30th 1972:

- “just before 16:00 GMT, stones were thrown and soldiers responded with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannon. Two men were shot and wounded”.

- “At 16:07 GMT, paratroopers moved to arrest as many marchers as possible. At 16:10 GMT, soldiers began to open fire”.

Army evidence: 21 soldiers fired weapons (108 live rounds between them all).

Army claimed self-defence saying that they were fired but eye-witnesses have other accounts of the army starting the shoot-out. Because of this event, the weeks followed with demonstrations “demanding democratic reform and social justice”. They promoted their message through the Olympic Games because of the international attention the was on Mexico City. Military occupation was ordered for the National Polytechnic Institute (which was a public university, that was dedicated to research as well as education). Meeting the protests with immediate violence (black lives matter).

“Following the massacre the Mexican government, facing one of its worst crises ever, launched a huge cover-up operation”.

Death toll after massacre, uncertain. “Eye-witnesses say bodies were removed from the scene throughout the night of 2 October in dustbin lorries”.

October 2003 – emerged America had been involved in the massacre.

Lance Wyman gave an identity to the 1968 Olympics.

“Its significance as a cultural artefact that makes it a perfect case study in the accretion of meaning – and warrants a deeper analysis”.

Peaceful protest turned into massacre after police and soldiers surrounded protests. Relates to plenty of other events in history from Bloody Sunday, 1905 in Russia to Bloody Sunday, 1972 in Northern Ireland to our more current affairs like the Black Lives Matter Movement which was also met and still is being met with violence.

All three of these specific events hold similarities in that, they all started as peaceful protests and marches to try and create a positive change but were met with violence, costing hundreds of lives.

“We did very little research prior to going to Mexico, so the first week was spent in the Museum of Anthropology researching indigenous folk art and ancient imagery, in Mexican markets understanding their local design, and in the street taking photos of the work of local sign painters”.

- “National pride” – exploring the cultures in Mexico “the indigenous, the colonial, and the modern mestizo independent state”

- “The modernist, international style, the quest for universal legibility and the base geometry that embraces mechanized production”

- “peyote-inspired identity”

So, to answer the question in my opinion; yes. A design for peace can exist amidst chaos. My reason being, because when I read something and learn something about history, the way I learn to understand the situation is that I compare it to something I know or have experienced. In doing so, I can start to process how people might have been impacted during those events, and so on. I took my knowledge of other historical events that I knew a lot about and found interesting but also the recent historical event of the Black Lives Matter Movement. This is because you could see the chaos and the anger, you could see the horror and the way people were being treated and the way that, even still, these protests were being met with violence. But, the communities and the support shown against all the hate, was something special. Of course, I know the fight for that movement is far from over and I am aware not everyone during it got to experience the strength and support from others, but the parts where people came together in a genuine attempt to help was something special. I would say there isn’t direct relevance necessarily in that I wasn’t looking at design, per say, during the peak of the unrest but there were artists and designers using the talents and skills to get this message out there and that was something powerful.I think as well, this source about this historical event in Mexico, is just one of so many. The reason it was isolated and publicised was because of the Games. It highlighted the fault in Mexico through all sorts of reasons, but despite the fact it was a horrible and tragic time, the Games gave a platform in some way. It helped the students especially show the world that they needed help. The way the design for the Games was handled is so unique, my favourites are the ones that emphasise the beauty in Mexican culture, even though parts of it caused unease and disagreement. There was a sense of national pride in some of the designs and I found that interesting to learn.The dove symbol I find the most intriguing because it represented a sort of unity. It was “an effective image of the violence of uprising”, as the students “would spray a red spot on the white dove and let the red paint drip down the decal”. But, it was the fact there was this underlying agreement that they understood and agreed with that. It was a prominent symbol; however, I would not say that it was a token of peace amidst chaos. It is more like an acknowledgement of the chaos.

Bibliography:

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1998. Bloody Sunday Russia [1905]. [Online]. [14 September 2020]. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/event/Bloody-Sunday-Russia-1905

Byrne, E. 2014. Radiant Discord: Lance Wyman on the ’68 Olympic Design and the Tlatelolco Massacre. [Online]. [14 September 2020]. Available from: https://walkerart.org/magazine/lance-wyman-mexico-68-olympics-tlatelolco-massacre

1968: Student riots threaten Mexico Olympics, n.d. [Online]. [14 September 2020]. Avaliable from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/2/newsid_3548000/3548680.stm

Bloody Sunday: What happened on Sunday 30 January 1972? BBC News, n.d. [Online]. [14 September 2020]. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-foyle-west-47433319

“Peyote.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/peyote. Accessed 16 Sep. 2020.

“In 1994 Paula Scher designed a poster for the New York Shakespeare Festival that introduced a new identity for the Public Theater“.

This is an example of a piece of work that I don’t like and the reason being, is because I am drawn to more accurate and rightly proportioned fonts. I still appreciate and enjoy those that aren’t, but I am quite boring and simple when it comes to my own font choices. This is why I am looking into other styles, because I want to push myself out of my comfort zone and create some letterforms that do make me uncomfortable, to some extent. This way, I can learn as well as developing my skillset.

Coles, S., 2012. The Public Theater Logo Evolution (1994–2008). [online] Fonts in Use. Available at: <https://fontsinuse.com/uses/2197/the-public-theater-logo-evolution-1994-2008> [Accessed 22 September 2020]. 

I liked Erik Spiekermann but there are definitely parts I don't like about him and his work. He has this bold, confrontational personality that makes me a little scared of him as a person. But, I think that’s what attracted me to his typography. I feel like some of his fonts accurately reflected his character, which was interesting to me because it is evident a lot of fonts have character but it never occurred to me that the reason they do is because of who created them. It sounds silly of me to have not thought about that before, but I guess you don’t tend to delve into the history of fonts and the creation of them. We use fonts and letterforms all the time, everyday, and we do take them for granted.

The first time I was properly introduced to letterforms was when I studied Graphic Design at college. I watched the Helvetica documentary and learnt about “Erik Spiekermann, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Wim Crouwel, Hermann Zapf, Neville Brody, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut, David Carson, Paula Scher, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Experimental Jetset, Michael C. Place, Norm, Alfred Hoffmann, Mike Parker, Bruno Steinert, Otmar Hoefer, Leslie Savan, Rick Poynor, and Lars Müller.” The film really sparked this interest I now have with letterforms. I wouldn't consider myself to me a type fanatic, but I have started to appreciate the beauty with letterforms and spaces.

http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-26227.htmlDevroye, L., n.d. Erik Spiekermann. [online] Luc.devroye.org. Available at: <http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-26227.html> [Accessed 22 September 2020].

“‘WORK HARD & BE NICE TO PEOPLE’ began life as a paperback version of MAKE IT NOW! and developed into a completely refreshed edition. Inspirational aphorisms and sound advice for the real world.”

I enjoyed looking at Burrill because of the simplistic style of his work. Although it looks basic in the limited colour palette, size and shape, his work is thoroughly effective. I take better so this kind of outcome rather than a colourful, bold one but, this is not to say I can’t appreciate them all. I just feel that this has more of an impact for me than anything else.

Burrill, A., n.d. Anthony Burrill. [online] Anthony Burrill. Available at: <https://anthonyburrill.com/showcase/work-hard-and-be-nice-to-people/> [Accessed 22 October 2020]. 

I also chose her to look at because, although I appreciate the work, I wouldn’t say that I like it. I am not drawn to it as an aesthetic and this is important to take note of when researching. Knowing what you don't like as much as what you do.

Myerscough, M., n.d. Kindness - Morag Myerscough. [online] Moragmyerscough.com. Available at: <https://www.moragmyerscough.com/things/where-s-your-head-at> [Accessed 22 October 2020].

Myerscough, M., n.d. Sun Dance - Morag Myerscough. [online] Moragmyerscough.com. Available at: <https://www.moragmyerscough.com/things/sun-dance> [Accessed 22 October 2020].