The Word

I thought for a long time about what kinds of texts are important to me. Reading that sentence literally I realised that messages from friends and family are really important to me – just small gestures that show that someone cares for you and will be there for you. Just a text like “Hey how was your day?” or “I’ve been thinking about you, we should catch up soon.” I think it’s pretty awesome how connected we are these days, but sometimes it can seem like we’re so connected that we no longer feel the need to reach out to people one on one. That’s why those sorts of text matter most to me.

The other meaningful texts for me are letters. I keep every letter I’ve ever gotten, and I’ve built up quite a cool collection over the years. My most memorable one is from my primary school class when I was moving back to America for a couple months. How sweet was it that my whole class came together to make me a card? I love the fact that I have a collection of all my old hand-written cards and letters from people. It’s much nicer than just having a photo or a text of what they wrote. It’s like wow, they really went to all that effort just for me. They must really care

My other experience with words and type has to be with lyrics. I find it so amazing how music can really take you back in time to places and experiences you’ve had before. When I listen to certain songs from old playlists it reminds me of holidays with my family to Bali

If I were a typeface I think I’d be San Francisco which was made by Apple in-house in 2014. I’ve always loved technology, and Apple in particular had a special place for me, their computers were where I created stop motion animations with my dad, they allowed me to listen to all of my parents music on iTunes, and put that music on my iPod to listen to anywhere. They do make really magical products that I think make the world a better place.

San Francisco was designed to be legible, straightforward, easy to understand, good-looking, but also nothing special or hugely unique. It’s just a good font. That’s how I like to treat my life and my design philosophy, just keep it simple, and allow everyone to enjoy it. That’s why I wholeheartedly disagree with Mr Keedy’s response to that idea. That’s what Apple is to me – old people and young people can use an iPad, everyone can use an iPad. It’s simple, it’s to the point. My favourite quote from Steve Jobs is: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”

What I found interesting about this week’s work was that I started questioning what are letterforms? Who came up with these shapes? Who came up with the shapes from other languages, and how far can those shapes be manipulated before they’re unrecognisable? This made me do some research of my own, and I found this pretty awesome New York Post article about where letterforms came from.

That made me think even more though about the evolution of letterforms. Obviously as humans and language & dialect changed so did letterforms. That makes me wonder – could letterforms as we know them today be fundamentally different in the future? For example, in the movie ‘idiocracy’ people all talk in jive or slang language – I wonder if letterforms would be adapted to suit the language of the people, or if we’ve gotten to the point where letterforms will be. I tried to find information online about the last time a letterform was changed, but kept coming up short.

Another thing I find interesting is that languages like Spanish and German don’t have their own unique letterforms – they have macrons, but not really any unique characters. I’d be very interested also in learning why that is, and also why they have macrons. Hopefully we’ll cover that at some point in class.

One thing I’d like to know about in class is how countries like Russia and Asia developed their own letterforms, and where the distinction lies between why they developed their own letterforms and the histories of them.

What I realised is I guess that’s almost what a typeface is about – expressing a form of language through a specific visual representation. Different fonts say different things, and help support the underlying text. As we explored in the text of the Trump wall, there’s different typefaces used for that, as opposed to a Maori typeface, for example. Typefaces allow for context

I wholeheartedly agree with this ‘dumb idea’ – I believe that information should be available to everyone – there should be no barriers to that. If someone is learning english for the first time, wouldn’t it be easier to spell it out for them?

With a lot of these texts we’re supposed to read for CCC over the years, I’ve found it quite frustrating that these texts are saying things in 12 pages that you could read in 3 paragraphs. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing and my generation is lazy, but everyone I’ve talked to agrees with me. Why make such an interesting topic boring an inaccessible for certain groups of people who may not be so educated? Isn’t the idea of design that we should make things better and make things easier? I find Mr Keedy’s response pretty bland to be honest. I don’t think he’s accounting for the fact that a lot of people don’t have the means or are disadvantaged – with time, money, language barriers etc. I think it’s pretty short sighted.

I think the general population would rather read something clear and concise, if it says the same message. Why wouldn’t you? It saves you time and mental load and communicates your idea to people better. Otherwise what’s the point of language? If someone can’t understand you, what’s the point? His response is a great example of some gatekeeping BS in my opinion. I have a personal philosophy when it comes to design. If I make something, someone who’s 5 has to be able to use it, and someone who’s 90 has to be able to use it. There’s a popular term on the internet ‘ELI5’ – explain like I’m 5. I think that’s a perfect example of people trying to be on a level playing field when it comes to access of information and telling people to fuck off or get educated is a super tasteless response. I genuinely thought he would be backing this one up. Design is to make it easy!

After the readings, I discussed this with a fine artist friend of mine a question I had. Even after the readings I was confused: Is modernism/postmodernism a time period or a personal way of life for artists and designers? And: What period are we in now? He wasn’t sure himself – so I decided to do some of my own research. I watched two great videos about modernism and postmodernism. They try to summarise the ideas within two minutes:

Modernism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDCEtnXlA4Y

Postmodernism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKomOqYU4Mw

Here’s what I think after doing my own research: It’s both. I know, helpful right? I think that modernism and postmodernism are indeed personal ideologies – however, those ideologies were spread and manifested during certain specific time periods.

So what are they?

This is my *very basic* understanding so far. I know it’s probably not right but it’s what I think so far, hopefully as the course progresses I get a better understanding.

Modernism

Modernism was a time period just after world war 1, so 1920s. Things were pretty bleak at the time. A lot of people probably thinking “what the fuck just happened?!” and a period of self reflection of the human race – at least that’s how I’d feel. It seems like a lot of the artists at the time went through a sort of analyzing spree – what does it mean to be human? What is the world? Can we change the way the world works? Why are we the way that we are?

This was the period of the ‘isms’ symbolism, expressionism, dadaism etc – however, it rejected realism in art. It was almost about mockery, and self exploration – irony of oneself. What if someone's face wasn’t drawn super life-like? What if I drew someone’s face as a bunch of cubes?

It was also a period of extreme change – the industrial revolution was changing society massively. So a lot of people were thinking “how can we make this better” or “how can we all make the world better” and I think there was also a lot of denial of the war, that we should look at the good things in the world.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism came after modernism, and basically disagrees with everything in modernism. People thought that modernism was too idealistic, it showed too much of the good things in the world without showing what’s true. Postmodernists also believed modernism was pretty boring in general, nothing really visually interesting or stimulating.

State of play now

It’s interesting, because if I had to pick between the two I think I’d lean to postmodernism. It seems to deal with issues and show the true picture of society. I feel as if these days, modernism is still very prominent – for example, banksy strikes me as a very postmodern artist. For example, recently his artwork was sold at auction, as soon as it was sold it was torn to shreds – his philosophies remind me of the ‘Fountain’ artwork by Marcel Duchamp. Basically asking “what is art?” and sparking discussion.

‍

I remember the first typeface i really studied in detail was on the first iPod I ever owned. The screen resolution wasn’t great back then, and I had never really held a computer that close to me before, so I hadn’t really noticed the pixels. I remember being so curious how those letters were drawn on the screen – what makes some pixels black and what makes some white?

Funnily enough – I also remember wondering that if the resolution was any lower, would the text still have been readable? Where is that threshold? It’s a lot like what the author was alluding to with the ‘A’ analogy.

When I saw the talking heads album cover as one of the images I could research I instantly thought that would be the one I wanted to do. I love the talking heads, but I had no idea the meaning behind any of their album covers.

After doing some research I found out that the album cover listed in the presentation wasn’t actually designed by Robert Rauschenberg as it says. He designed the original version of the album cover, but the popular one (and the one that’s listed on the presentation for class) was actually designed by the band's lead singer David Byrne. Source: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-the-story-behind-robert-rauschenberg-s-iconic-talking-heads-album-cover

What was even more interesting than the cover Byrne designed was indeed the Robert Rauschenberg cover – which was actually a see-through vinyl which was apparently extremely hard to manufacture, and even might’ve contributed to the albums delay. The original Rauschenberg cover was only made 50,000 copies of, and Andy Warhol himself purchased one. The artwork that ended up on the vinyl was one of Rauschenberg’s earlier works – which mimicked the CMYK printing process, by having spinning transparent disks, each with graphics in both Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow layered together. When the viewer pressed a button on the artwork, small motors in the base would spin the disks, which revealed an image – which you weren’t able to see without them all being layered together.

The reason Rauschenberg ended up doing the cover was because Byrne saw some of his work at an art gallery and instantly wondered what he could do for the band. The reason there’s a yellow version of the album cover was because the see-through cover Rauschenberg designed was so hard to manufacture that Byrne decided to make an easier to manufacture cover.

I find it hard to place Rauschenberg between modernism and postmodernism. Doing some research it seems like he’s a self proclaimed postmodernist, however I almost object that, if I may. He’s known for being an innovator in terms of art styles and techniques, which to me sounds quite modernist – during the industrial revolution there was a lot of exploration in technique and trying different ideas and methods of art. His art (revolver II) in particular reminds me very much of a picasso artwork – almost collaged, morphed images stitched together. Equally though, I can definitely see the resemblance of pop art – bright colours and screen printed techniques.

Overall, super interesting stuff, and I never knew about the whole secret album cover that Rauschenberg created.

Trump shut down the government from the 22nd of December until 25th Jan, it was the longest government shutdown in history – affected 200,000 American government workers

Basically, the the government made a budget for 2019, which said they wanted $5 billion for the wall – congress said no, and the republicans largely seemed to appear fine with the denial – until Trump was criticized from right-wing media outlets which said he was backing down on his promise. So he changed his mind, and said he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. This meant that there was no resolution about the funding, and under the Antideficiency Act the government was not allowed to continue operations until funding had been made. In the process, 800,000 government workers missed their paychecks for a month, at an estimated economic value of $11 billion.

On the 25th of jan, trump agreed to approve a stopgap bill, which allowed funding for the government for 3 weeks until the 15th of feb. This meant those 800,000 people got payed temporarily. Trump threatened that if the democrats had not signed the budget by the 15th he would declare state of emergency.

By the 15th of feb, the democrats still hadn’t budged, which meant that trump declared state of emergency. State of emergency basically means the government can perform actions that it’s not normally able to do – in other words, gives trump super powers. It’s like real life cheat codes, where he can use laws that normally aren’t available to him in order to get his wall money. National emergencies act of 1976 – no definition of what constitutes an emergency.

People are currently wondering what kind of laws he could use to get his money. Some people think it could be by relocating money already set aside for the military to create the wall, which means the military directs its attention to building the wall until its completion – as if there was a real emergency.

Another option would be to declare a state of immigration emergency, which is a set-aside pool of money for if there is a world war, or disaster that means many people from around the world would seek America as refuge –  but apparently is “vaguely worded enough to permit an edgy interpretation” and potentially allow trump to do that. The only thing is that there’s only $20 million set aside for that, so it seems like he’d have to use a bunch of different funds.

But law people reckon it won’t happen, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) in an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union said the idea was a “nonstarter.” Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano said in a Fox Business appearance that the president “cannot spend money unless it’s been authorized by Congress.”

True TLD;DR

Trump promised the wall in his election campaign

Trump gave congress 2019 budget, included the $5b wall

Congress said no

Argued by trump

Budget wasn't cleared, no one got payed

People got payed for 3 weeks

National emergency declared

Trump super powers

Who knows what laws Trump will use

Can still (probably will) get blocked by the senate

“The more one thinks about what a typeface is, the less simple it becomes.”

One thing that stuck with me was when he alluded to the fact that typefaces are like people – they have faces, the faces resemble all of the faces of their family is some way – and some families are extended – they have bold, italics, mediums. And there’s different families of eras of typefaces – just like family generations – all affected by historical and cultural circumstances.

Something I didn’t know: Bold and Clarendon were synonymous years after bold typefaces had been designed.

If I understand correctly, the history of German and Swiss typefaces was such that ‘Kursiv’ typefaces were an entirely different family with a similar style. Contrasted by roman typefaces which combined italics and regular typefaces and accepted them as one.

Something that got me to think twice was when the author posed the question: What makes up the letter A? There’s no scientific rule for what makes up the letter A. Is it just recognition? But what if some people recognise it and some don’t? For instance, if the line in between the A that joins the two sides (the cross bar as I’ve learned). How much can the line shrink before it’s no longer recognizable?

Another interesting thing to think about brought up in the article was that of simplifying a typeface – at what point does it lose its originality and identity?

Again, another great point – as a designer you have to design for all mediums that the typeface might be viewed at. Something I was thinking about as I was reading this on my iPad was that the type that I’m reading through my screen has had so many layers of abstraction and digital-analog transfer, that it becomes almost disintegrated – or a new typeface altogether.

Here’s the image of what I’m, seeing on my screen, enlarged.

Consider: The typeface designer probably designed this using metal, then it was turned into a mass production printing method, printed on a printing press into the book, scanned into the printer, arranged as bits in the computer, and displayed on my high resolution iPad screen.

My interesting question: I wonder if you can put a typeface through rounds of this transfer, and come out with something that looks like an entirely different typeface. Certainly I would assume that you could distort the image through the process so much that it might look the a bolder, or lighter version of the typeface – but a new family all together is something interesting to think about.