Butterick’s Practical Typography is an excellent, free, web-based guide to typography.
You should begin with “Typography in Ten Minutes”, which gives you five basic rules for typography.
After reading that, try “Font Recommendations”, the “Summary of Key Rules”, and reading through additional topics of interest from the table of contents.
Read MoreThis text is adapted from John Krygier and Denis Wood’s Making Maps (2011, Guilford Press).
“Effective type in [landscape representation] requires understanding the basics of typography. Of particular relevance are kerning, tracking, leading, and alignment. Careful design of type will make your [representation] more functional and beautiful.”
Kerning
Kerning adjusts the spacing between particular pairs of letters to make them look uniform and less distracting. (Compare to monospacing.) Kerning is automatically adjusted with most digital type placement algorithms in drawing software, but can also be set by hand.
+ Evaluate type on your representation that may need kerning.
+ Kerning is more important for larger type sizes.
Tracking
Tracking changes the spacing between all letters.
+ Avoid negative tracking (scrunched-up, hard-to-read type) in most instances.
+ Sometimes increase tracking slightly for a more open, airy feel in a block of text.
+ Increase tracking by using upper-case letters to label area features.
Leading
Leading adjusts spacing between lines of text.
+ Evaluate type on or around your representation that may need leading.
+ Maintain a consistent leading for similar features labeled on a representation.
+ Avoid reducing leading to reduce the space utilized by a block of text; use a smaller type size instead.
+ Avoid excessive leading within labels or blocks of text, as that may result in such labels being read as multiple labels.
Alignment
+ Avoid left-right justification if it causes distracting spacing problems. (A jagged right edge is generally more visually pleasing than crisp edges with distracting spacing in-between.)
+ Ragged right alignment is the norm, but too much ragged is distracting.
+ Use hyphenation sparingly in text blocks (note that hyphenation is often on by default in InDesign), and avoid it entirely on annotations and labels.
+ Ragged left alignment is difficult to read in blocks, but may be used for annotations referring to symbols or features to the right of the annotation.
This text is adapted from John Krygier and Denis Wood’s Making Maps (2011, Guilford Press).
Ongoing formative evaluation is as simple as asking yourself whether the representation is achieving its goals throughout the process of making the representation. Formative evaluation implies that you will “re-form” the representation so that it works better, or maybe even dump it! It is never too late to bail if the representation is not serving your needs. It is a good idea to ask others to evaluate your representation as well: What do you think of these colors? Can you read the type from an appropriate distance? Does what is most important about the representation actually stand out?
Ask yourself:
+ Is this representation doing what I want it to do?
+ Will this representation make sense to the audience I envision for it?
+ How does the representation look when printed, projected, or viewed in the final medium, and what changes will make it better?
+ Are the chosen scale, framing, coordination system, and/or map projection appropriate?
+ Do the layout of the representation and interpretative annotations, including the legend, look good? Could they be adjusted to help make the representation look better and easier to interpret?
+ Does the most important information on the representation stand out visually? Does less important information fall into the background?
+ Is the representation too general or too detailed, given the intent of the representation?
+ Do chosen symbols, hatches, and patterns make sense? Are they legible?
+ Is the type appropriate, legible, and is its size appropriate, given the final medium?
+ Is color use logical and appropriate, and will the chosen colors work well in the final medium (printed, projected, etc.)?
+ Do I want a series of simpler representations, or one more complicated one?
LAR 5304G Digital Landscape Representation I: Drawing, Cartography, and Notation
Assignment 05: Notation
Description
Working with the drawings produced in the previous assignments as base material, construct a drawing annotated to explain the movement of water through the study territory in both space and time.
Workflow
Work between whatever combination of AutoCAD, Photoshop, and Illustrator you find most appropriate for producing the necessary linework and annotations you will utilize in this drawing.
Deliverables
+ A single drawing (which may be a composite of multiple smaller drawings, as in a small multiples series) showing the movement of water through the study territory as it would be effected by the construction of the control infrastructure proposed by CWPPRA.
+ Utilize at least one of the eight basic techniques for notating movement described in the Week 12 handout, however you may not use arrows in your drawing except as part of a field (technique 2).
+ Include:
+ attributions, including citations for data, projection method (if appropriate)
+ graphic scale, north arrow
+ legend
Sources
Throughout every assignment for this course, you are expected to demonstrate good sourcing practices, for all visual, written, and intermediate products. This means both tracking your sources as you research and properly sourcing on all presented products. Sources should be clearly attributed directly on drawings.
LAR 5304G Digital Landscape Representation II: Static, Dynamic
Assignment 05: Animation
Description
Building on the narrative outlined in your storyboard (Assignment 03), use the native animation and atmospheric simulation capacities of 3ds Max to represent motion through space and/or the passage of time within the study landscape.
Workflow
+ Set up a path constraint for your camera in 3ds Max. (See tutorial 9.1 in Cantrell and Yates.)
+ Make additional modifications to the movement of the camera as desired.
+ Adjust the length of time for your animation to 900 frames.
+ Output the animation as a .avi file using the Render menus. (This will take the computer a while.) See also tutorials 26.3 and 26.4 in Cantrell and Yates.
Deliverables
+ One short animation with a clearly-considered narrative intent.
+ format: .avi animation file, 30 seconds/900 frames @ 480×270 pixels
+ Consider in particular:
+ The relationship between camera and target
+ Zoom and focus
+ The different kinds of camera movements outlined in Cantrell and Yates Ch. 9
+ The speed with which the camera moves, whether consistent or variable
+ Camera height
+ What is included and what is excluded from the viewframe
+ Whether you will use a single tracking shot that lasts 30 seconds or splice together several shorter shots from various positions
+ Whether atmospheric effects such as the settings of the daylight system or fog remain consistent or are variable across the animation
LAR 5304G Digital Landscape Representation II: Static, Dynamic
Assignment 04: Site Systems Section-Perspective
Description
Using the terrain model constructed in earlier assignments as a base, produce a section-perspective cut through the study landscape and annotated to describe the function of a relevant site system, such as hydrology or sedimentary flows, particularly as that site system interacts with the proposed constructions of the study restoration project.
Workflow
+ Prepare the section-perspective as a view in 3ds Max.
+ Do any additional modeling necessary for the accuracy of the section-perspective in Rhino or 3ds Max. Import to 3ds Max if necessary. (For instance, you may find that the levee section generated by surface deformation using the DEM is insufficiently accurate for the purposes of the section-perspective, suggesting modeling the levee as a separate object.)
+ Add materials and lighting in 3ds Max as necessary.
+ Output raster rendering(s) from 3ds Max/MentalRay.
+ Annotate the rendered section-perspective in Adobe CS (Illustrator or InDesign). See the “Z-Axis” lecture slideshow for examples of annotated section-perspectives.
Deliverables
1 Section-Perspective: a single representation containing both a section through a critical portion of the site and a perspectival representation beginning seemlessly at the location of the section cut. The section-perspective should:
+ show the material conditions of both landscape context and constructed object through the use of materials in 3ds Max
+ be realistically lit using the daylight system in 3ds Max
+ be annotated to clearly describe the functioning of the selected site system (such as hydrological flows), particularly along the z-axis and x-axis (i.e. in section)
Sources
Throughout every assignment for this course, you are expected to demonstrate good sourcing practices, for all visual, written, and intermediate products. This means both tracking your sources as you research and properly sourcing on all presented products. Sources should be clearly attributed directly on drawings.
LAR 5304G Digital Landscape Representation I: Drawing, Cartography, and Notation
Assignment 04: Cartography
Description
Beginning with the large-scale orthographic base map produced in Assignment 01, construct a map showing topographic, hydrological, urban, infrastructural, and ecological conditions within the full extent of the area affected by the study restoration project. Students will learn basic operations in ArcGIS and continue to explore Illustrator and Photoshop.
Workflow
+ Display base layers at scale within ArcGIS.
Useful sites for downloading GIS shapefiles for Louisiana include:
+ Louisiana Economic Development Data Download
+ Louisiana Geospatial Metadata Catalog
+ LOSCO Data Catalog
+ Export raster and vector layers from ArcGIS to Illustrator and Photoshop.
+ Clip and edit raster layers in Photoshop as appropriate.
+ Combine raster and vector layers in Illustrator.
+ Finish drawing with appropriate annotations in Illustrator.
Deliverables
1 Regional Map: an orthographic plan showing the full extent of the area affected by the study restoration project. The map should:
+ effectively communicate the topography of the depicted area
+ show the bounds of the effects of the study restoration project
+ show the position and extents of, identify proposed elements of the study restoration project
+ show the context of the study restoration project by depicting at least (2) of the following (6) conditions:
+ hydrology
+ human land use patterns
+ transportation infrastructures
+ ecologies
+ soils
+ geology
+ make effective use of the formal elements of cartographic representation:
+ line
+ value
+ hue
+ pattern
+ symbol
+ text
+ include:
+ attributions, including citations for data, projection method
+ graphic scale, north arrow
+ legend
Sources
Throughout every assignment for this course, you are expected to demonstrate good sourcing practices, for all visual, written, and intermediate products. This means both tracking your sources as you research and properly sourcing on all presented products. Sources should be clearly attributed directly on drawings.