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?
Location: 601 Prince Street
Time: We will begin at 7:30 and finish by 10:30.
Prints: All drawings assigned thus far (except animations, which only Mandi will have at this point) should be printed and pinned up. The short edge (minimum dimension) of prints should be at least 24″. (For Intermediate Assignment 03: Storyboard, all of the storyboard frames should be arranged and printed on a single sheet of paper, as described in the assignment.)
Schedule: Each student will have at most five minutes to present, allowing a minimum of ten minutes of comments. To ensure that we finish on time, each group should be fully pinned-up at the start of the scheduled pin-up time (e.g. Group 1 should be fully pinned-up at 7:30).
Group 1
07:30 Brian
07:45 Mahkam
08:00 Lama
Group 2
08:30 Yasaman
08:45 Dasha
09:00 John
09:15 Mandi
Group 3
09:45 David
10:00 Eliana
10:15 Navid
Notes:
1. I recommend carefully reviewing the instructions for each assignment to make sure you are producing drawings which meet the requirements of the assignments. Your grades will depend on doing so. If you have any questions or are uncertain about what a part of the instructions means, email me. The assignment instructions are:
Basic:
01 Detail Plan
02 Section-Elevation
03 Perspective
Intermediate:
01 Network Plan
02 Axonometric
03 Storyboard
2. In general, I will be looking for drawings that are:
+ Beautiful
+ Creative
+ Selective and judicious in deploying color, texture, and lineweight to emphasize important aspects of the landscape being depicted.
+ Clearly annotated — particularly in drawings such as perspective and storyboard where annotation is often not used.
3. For intermediates, given that we have focused in class thus far primarily on working in Rhino and 3ds Max, it is particularly important that you not only output renders from 3ds Max, but also overlay those renders with additional information in Adobe CS to produce finished drawings.
4. After Thursday, you will need to submit your work to me digitally by placing it on the server. (We’ll go over the location for this when we meet Thursday.) Once I have your work, I will give you interim grades and feedback on the drawings. You will have the opportunity to revise your drawings based on the comments you receive at the midterm and the feedback I give you. (Final drawing submissions will be after the final review.)
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