2Q Block Text Designs

Thinking of designs that conveyed different emotions by only using text was much more difficult than I first expected. I found that the first drafts of my designs where all very similar, and they did not capture the subtle differences between similar emotions such as fear and anger or friendship and happiness. I tired to play with different fonts, sizes, and positions of letters to suggests different feelings. Bold, dark type seemed to have a more aggressive affect that drew that eye into the design, whereas a lighter color would help represent more passive, peaceful emotions. The gray-scale design was more difficult than the one with color, because by using color, emotion was much easier to represent, because of the emotional connection to certain colors. The viewer can somewhat feel peace when there is small white text on a black background, or feel love or happiness when seeing bright colors with round letters. These same emotions are much more difficult to convey without color, since basic choices in type, size, heaviness, and position are the only things determining the emotion of the design. Overall, I feel I was successful with both designs, but I definitely prefer the design with color.

Type Anatomy Vocabulary

Baseline- The line that letters sit on.

Meanline- Another imaginary line that lies on top of lower-case letters.

X-height- The height of the lower-case letters. The distance between the baseline and meanline.

Cap height- The distance between the baseline and the top of upper-case letters.

Ascender- The part of a letter that goes over the meanline and past the x-height.

Descender- The part of a letter that goes below the baseline.

Serifs- The little “feet,” or extra stroke at the bottom of character.

Stem- The Body or main lines of a letter.

Bar- Horizontal or diagonal lines of a letter that are not the stem. They are open on one side.

Bowl- The closed circular part of a letter.

Overhang- The part of a letter that goes over the baseline because of it’s curve

Ligature- When two or more letters are combined

Finial- The tapered end of a letter.

Terminal- The end of a stroke.

Spine- The middle connecting part of an “S.”

Apex- The point or top of a letter.

Superscript- Characters that are higher than the other characters

Subscript- Characters that are lower than the other characters.

Diacritic mark- Marks that are added to letters like accents.

Counter- The space that is enclosed by a letter.

Small capital- A capital letter that is the same height and size of a lowercase letter

Proportional oldstyle numerals- Having the majority of the number on the baseline.

Uppercase- BIG LETTERS THAT ARE CAPITALIZED

lowercase- small letters that are not capitalized