When I first read the assignment sheet and I found that I had to do a presentation I was immediately apprehensive about this. I wasn’t very confident that I would be able to perform the presentation effectively knowing that I would be getting grading on my performance. The presentation I did on the colour red I feel went well but I knew it wasn’t going to affect my grades so it did not carry with it the same level of pressure as the typography presentation.

After learning that the typographer I was presenting about was Erik Spiekermann I was keen to learn more about him and the typefaces he had created as I had never heard of him before. After carrying out some research I found a wealth of information about his work and his passion for typography. Seeing is his passion for typography really inspired to continue my research and in the end I think I spent too much time researching and not enough time documenting the evidence of my research.

The finer details, of typefaces, are something I find really interesting. I am now constantly looking at type in newspapers, magazines, adverts and I am trying to identify the typefaces that has been used and often using service such as ‘What the font’ to identify ones I don’t know. Through this I have learnt a larger number of typefaces as, I previously only knew the names of a small number of typefaces and many of these were the web safe fonts.

The design of the presentation was something that I wanted to keep quite simple and clean so that it would have the professional feel that many of Erik Spiekermann’s typefaces have. After seeing the FontFont website and the FontBook I was really impressed by the use of two single colours, black and yellow, to create a clean and professional look that really catches the eye. I used this as inspiration for my design of my presentation and I am happy with end result.

My presentation didn’t go as well as it had during my practice attempts and this was due to nerves. I rushed through some of the slides and this caused me to be under the five minute time limit. My confidence was boosted after the presentation as I answered all the questions correctly.

The questions after were something I was apprehensive about and before the presentation I keep thinking that I would freeze and forget all of the terms and their meaning when I was questioned about them. This, however, was not the case as I was able to answer the questions quickly and confidently.

I was interested by the prospect of the timed tasks as I have never normally placed myself under a strict time constraint when designing. They also presented the challenging of forcing me work under or near to industry timescales. To complete the tasks effectively I knew that my micro planning had to improve and that I needed to think in more detail about the design process that used.

The first timed task, to create and a paint tube for a range of Winsor and Newton called ‘Hokai Oriental Gouache‘. This presented the challenge of designing for a very small document size and ensuring that all the information was correctly and easy to read. I enjoyed this task but looking back now I would change the typeface I used, for the name ‘Hokai Oriental Gouache‘, to something that portrayed the oriental feel. In the end I choice Myriad Pro but this was down to the fact that I didn’t leave enough time to choice a typeface and in the end I had to go with something I knew which had a professional feel to it.

This was the one main reason that I rejected this piece when it came to the final hand-in. The Hokai task was one I enjoyed but because it was the first real timed task I did my time planning wasn’t as effective as I would have like. This didn’t allow me any time towards the end of the task for alterations and experimentation with different typefaces.

To create an advert for a job at Vodafone was second timed task and I felt that this went really well. My time planning was effective and I had around 25 minutes at the end of the task to make alterations to my final design. I am happy with the final result and the only thing I would change about would be to reduce the thickness of the lines from 1pt to 0.5pt.

The Jonathan Gee timed task was the first time I properly thought about designing the layout using a grid. This meant that the planning stage took a lot longer than I expected as I had to think about the measurements more precisely. I decided to create a layout using 8 columns and then splitting the text over tow columns of three leaving a column of space either side of the article. I felt that this allowed the design room to breathe and it also draws the user’s eye.

I like the design as it is something I haven’t seen before in magazines or articles. One thing I would change is that I would add a drop cap to the first letter of the content to lead the reading into the content of the article.

The final timed tasks I really enjoyed. Planning the grid without seeing the content meant that I had to create think about all the different aspects, of the grid, in much more detail. I decided to go with a three column layout as I felt that this provided the enough flexibility to manipulate the look of the document whilst it still maintained a high level of structure.

As well as creating the grid a masthead was also needed. I decided to use a serif font and after experimenting with a few I settled on Bernhard Modern Std as I felt that this typeface represented the jazz theme. When I received the content I was able to create a number of possible layouts and I felt that the column widths suited the amount of text provided very well.

I have really enjoyed this assignment and learning about typography. My knowledge of typefaces has greatly improved on a technical level but also with regards to the face that I can know recognise a lot more fonts than I previously could. This will help when I planning in the future as I will be able visual what the piece will look like using different typefaces.

My presentation skills still need a lot more work and I am eager to receive the feedback from this task so that I can learn from and improve. Overall, I am happy with the standard of work I have produced for this assignment and I feel that I created five pieces of work that are of a good standard within near industry time scales.

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