Final Poster

My behance link

http://www.behance.net/virulentecstasy

Final Compositions for the Modular Grid

Wolf poster

This is my preliminary poster, so hopefully tomorrow I get some good feedback so I can make it look nicer.

TYPE

Blog Definitions and Stuff

Adrian Frutiger was born in Interlaken, Switzerland on May 24th, 1928.  He was born the son of a weaver, and although he was interested in sculpture his father and teachers pushed him to become a printer. By the time he was 16 he was working as a printer's apprentice, and after his he studied at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. He joined Deberny and Peignot, a type foundry, in 1952 when he moved from Zurich to Paris. Here he helped the foundry move classic typefaces used with tradition printing methods to newer phototypesetting technologies. His first commercial typeface was  President which was released in the same year as Univers. He designed the typeface Univers in 1954 and many other commonly used fonts including Serifa in 1967.  He created many other popular fonts like Frutiger and Avenir, and his most recent font is Vectora created in 1990. Originally there were 21 variations of Univers released but in 1997 Frutiger reworked and created the Linotype Univers version that includes 63 fonts, and a third digit was added to the numbering system.  His work spans from hot metal, phototypesetting, and digital typesetting.  He currently lives in Bern, Switzerland.  Today his typefaces are readily available from many foundries.

Univers is unique because it is the first family to use numbers as a naming system for the various weights.

The Univers grid is a way of labeling type weights without the words bold, heavy and light. However is also tells the amount they are condensed or extended.  Evens are italic, odds are roman, as you move from left to right it gets extended to condensed, and from top to bottom it gets light to heavy.


Deceased Font Designers

Nicolas Jenson lived in France, Germany, and Italy from 1420 to 1480. Charles the twelfth of France sent Jenson to Mainz in 1458 to learn about improvements in printing and movable type.  It was in Venice that he became an established printer and publisher.  He created a few of the first Roman serifs during the Renaissance, that was a change from black letter and calligraphy.  (p. 214 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)

John Baskerville was from the United Kingdom and lived from 1706 to 1775.  He created a printing business and type foundry in 1750.  John Handy was his punch cutter and with him Baskerville created some original Roman fonts.  He experimented with custom inks which yielded rich blacks and with the paper he achieved high gloss effects.  Later he married his mistress and old housekeeper, Sarah Eaves, in 1764 Zuzana Licko's revival of his work was named after her.  (p. 215 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)

Giambattista Bodoni was from Italy and was born in 1740 and died in 1813.  He was the director of the Stamperia Reale which was the official press of the Duke of Parma for 45 years.  Bodoni used ideas from Baskerville's Roman fonts and using high contrast and Firmin Didot's flat serifs, he designed his own Modern typeface in the late 1790s.  When he died in 1813, his widow Paola Margherita finished his    Manuale Tipografico which was a huge type specimen of Bodoni's collection and his own designs. (p. 215 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)

Morris Fuller Benton was born in the United States of America in 1872 and he died in 1948.  He began to work in 1896 at the American Type Founders (ATF) a company established by his father, Linn Boyd Benton, in 1892.  Benton designed more than 200 typefaces which includes a lot of extensions of existing fonts to create comprehensive type families.  He created Franklin Gothic, Engravers, English, Hobo, Broadway, and Bank Gothic just to name a few.  He retired from the American Type Founders in 1937. (p. 216 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)

Lucian Bernhard lived in the United States and was born in 1885 and died in 1972.  He was originally from Germany where he designed posters introducing the Sachplakat style.  The first typeface he made was Bernhard Antiqua that was released by the Flinsch Foundry in Frankfurt in 1913. After moving to America he collaborated with American Type Founders on many typefaces including the Bernhard Gothic in 1929. (p. 218 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)


Living Font Designers


Ed Benguiat is from the United States and was born in 1927.  He worked for Esquire magazine and ran his own studio before joining Photo-Lettering Inc. in 1962 becoming the head of its publishing department and designing literally hundreds of display typefaces.  Benguiat was a part of the rise of the International Typeface Corporation in 1970, and he helped Herb Lubalin launch its marketing publication U&Ic.  He is credited with over 600 typefaces. (p. 219 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)

Hermann Zapf was born in Germany in 1918.  He taught himself calligraphy and lettering using "The Art of Writing" and Writing and Illuminating and Lettering.  His first typeface was Gilgengart, a Fraktur black letter for Stempel AG type foundry and Linotype GmbH in 1938.  He served in the Cartographic Unit of the German army during World War II.  He created Palantino, Optima, Zapfino, and many other fonts. Zapf has been one of the few designers to produced designs in metal, phototypesetting, and on the computer. (p. 219 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)

Matthew Carter was born in 1937 in London, England.  He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He has experience in metal type, phototype, and digital type, he has succeeded in creating many typefaces in the various technologies.  His fonts haves been influencing designers around the world for the last 40 years.  He had an internship for punch-cutting in the Netherlands and after that he freelanced in London for 6 years.  In 1964 he moved to New York and worked as the house designer for Mergenthaler Linotype for the next 6 years.  He continued to travel and work in different places before finally settling in Massachusetts. (p. 221 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)

Zuzana Licko was born in 1961 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. She now lives in Berkeley, California.  She received a degree in graphic communications from the University of California and had no formal training in typeface design. Licko is noted for the creation of uniquely designed coarse bitmap fonts parallel to the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984.  She produced innovation designs like Emigre, Emperor, Oakland, and Universal that allowed for smoother and more traditional designs later on.  Licko's nearly 30 type families represent a very diverse output. (p. 225 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)

Erik Spiekermann was born in 1947 in Stadthagen, Germany.  He now goes between Berlin, Germany and San Francisco, California.  He is a typographer, designer, writer, and font impresario, used his entrepreneurial skills, and he ran a basement printing press to fund his studies at Berlin's Free University.  He traveled between London, San Francisco, and Berlin doing various design jobs.  He created FF Meta, ITC Offincina, FF Info, and FF Unit, which are a range of proprietary fonts for clients such as Nokia, Bosch, and Deutsche Bahn.  He wrote Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works which is a must read for many designers. (p. 226 Gomez-Palacio and Vit)