Saturday, 19 March 2011

TYPOGRAPHY'S ROLE WITHIN COMMUNICATION AND DECONSTRUCTION

Text
  • Main block of text - the body - running text
  • Text is the most important part - rather than the elements which surround it
  • Designers break up text - shortcuts - easier to read
  • Typography - helps readers to navigate through text
  • Spacing arrangement - helps readers to avoid reading- almost reads for you.

Notes and kay points made from Lupton, E (2008) 'Thinking with type'


Errors and ownership
  • Before printing, there was a lot of hand written errors. Took a long time to correct it.
  • Printing was first mass production unit. Errors corrected easier.
  • A book / text changes all the time, as it is manipulated and translated differently by everybody.
  • The invention os printing meant ownership was established, copyright laws came about.
  • Classic typographers page is complete and enclosed. Is finished. Twentieth century contested about ownership, in revealing the openness of text, and corrosiveness of history - the way in which time changes how it's read. 
Spacing 
  • Positive (actual lettering) and negative gaps make up a writers 'art'.
  • Letterpress - Space created by actual physical objects, including leading.
  • Spacing is crucial n order to make a piece of writing flow although being spoken, even though spoken language is perceived as a continuous flow with no audible gaps.
  • Printing created words to be individual objects 
  • Typography made text into a thing to have dimensions and fixed locations
  • Typography manipulates particulars of alphabet, employing habits - punctuation and spacing (seen not heard)

Linearity
  • Barthes argues 'the work' to be perfect in that it has been poof read, and is a neat tidy object - due to the art of printing, but the way in which it is defined and given a metaphor is down to a cultural network.
  • Navigational features emerged - giving a book a fixed sequence of pages
  • Talking flows in a single direction, writing occupies space and time - defined by when it is read
  • The work - Unsure, undeceive, the text - sure, unarguable
  • Typography design in a digital era, serves a new purpose, in all its aesthetics, it serves to distract the audience from ownership.

Birth of the user
  • Type = a mode of interpretation
  • Each typographic attempt to reframe content in a certain way
  • Katherine McCoy - Pictures can be read, words can be seen (perceived as icons, forms, patterns). Trying to elevate the status of designers.
  • Reader has more importance over writer in creating meaning - Barthes - own interpretation
  • Graphic designers in 1980's and 1990's embraced bathes  theory of 'Death of an author'. Interlocking grids, using layers of text. 
  • Typography becomes the mode of interpretation


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