Publishing 2: Project 1

Week 1-5
Chia Yee Hsean (0322352)
Publishing 2: Mass Communication
Project 1: The Book (Content Generating)

Lecture:

30 March 2017 (Week 1): Formats Throughout History

We were given a lecture on historical formats of books, specifically the many different formats used across time in different civilisations such as Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. 

1. Mesopotamia (Iran/Iraq)

Early forms of record keeping in Mesopotamia led to the development of the first known writing system called cuneiform. These clay tokens were used to represent individual commodities. The progression from simple and complex tokens to bullae set the stage for the early forms of pictographic writing on clay tablets. 

2. Indus (India-Pakistan-Afghanistan)

The Indus civilisation developed one of the earliest writing systems, that is cuneiforms. These cuneiform were written on soft clay tablets by using sharp pointed tools, and were used to keep records about their government, religion, and trade. Palm leaf manuscripts were also common across South Asia.

3. Egypt

The scribes in Ancient Egypt would write hieroglyphics on papyrus paper and tomb walls. The papyrus paper was made from the pith of the papyrus plant (Cyperus papyrus). The Egyptian cursive form of hieroglyphs, hieratics, were also used and written from right to left.

4. Han-China

Chinese characters in the early period were written in vertical columns, so a thin strip of bamboo is ideal for a single column. Multiple bamboo strips were threaded together to create a longer document. The first printed book is Chinese, called the Diamond Sutra (868 CE). It was discovered in a cave at Dunhuang in 1899, and is a precisely dated document in scroll format.

5. Europe (Turkey and beyond)

Parchment was first invented in Turkey (197–159 BC), which later spread to Europe. Parchment is made from animal hide, and around 50 AD, Europeans started making parchment books.

3 April 2017 (Week 2): History of Print

2-8 AD

The emperor of China commanded that the six main classics of Confucianism carved in stone. Confucian scholars eager to own these important texts simply laid sheets of paper on the engraved slabs and rub all over it with charcoal or graphite, taking away a text in white letters on a black ground. This concept of transferring something to another surface would soon lead to the development of printing.

750-768 AD

The invention of printing underwent tremendous development among Buddhists in East Asia, with Korea taking the lead. The world's earliest known printed document is a sutra printed on a single sheet of paper in Korea in 750 AD.  

In Japan AD 768, a devoutly Buddhist empress of Nara, commissions a huge edition of a lucky charm or prayer, known as Hyakumantō Darani, literally the One Million Pagodas & Dharani Prayers. It is a famous large-scale woodblock printing, making it the earliest recorded uses of woodblock printing in Japan. It is said that the project took six years to complete and that the number of copies printed, for distribution to pilgrims, is a million. Many have survived.

868 AD

The Diamond Sutra from China is the earliest known printed book, from the end of the T'ang dynasty. Discovered in a cave at Dunhuang in 1899, it is a precisely dated document which brings the circumstances of its creation vividly to life. The first sheet in the scroll is the world's first printed illustration, depicting an enthroned Buddha surrounded by holy attendants. 

10 - 11 AD

The Confucian classics are published for the use of scholar officials, together with huge numbers of Buddhist and Daoist works (amounting to around 5000 scrolls of each) and the complete Standard Histories since the time of Sima Qian.

11 AD 
Movable type is experimented with in China. But two considerations make the experiment unpractical. One is that the Chinese script has so many characters that type-casting and type-setting become too complex. The other is that the Chinese printers cast their characters in clay and then fire them as pottery, a substance too fragile for the purpose.

1380 AD

The first type foundry is established in Korea. Foundry, at the time, were metal casting workshops. Koreans cast their type in bronze instead of clay, making it last longer and strong to reuse.

1443 AD

The Koreans invented their own alphabet, the Hangul. Coincidentally, this century was also when Gutenberg started experimenting with movable type in Europe. In the east, the market for printing was religious people, selling drawings or images of holy figures to pilgrims. In the west, however, playing cards were popular.

1439 - 1457 AD

Gutenberg's development of the printing press, capable of applying a rapid but steady downward pressure and his skills with metal enabled him to master the complex stages in the printing with movable type.

10 April 2017 (Week 3): The Grid

The grid is a systematic approach to design. The use of a grid (or lack thereof) is the expression of a mental attitude as it shows how the designer works; perhaps the grid can even be seen as an extension of the designer's personality. Brockmann says that the grid "is the expression of a professional ethos: the designer’s work should have clearly intelligible, objective, functional and aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking".

The grid divides a two-dimensional plane into smaller fields or a three-dimensional space into smaller compartments. These field of compartments may be equal or vary in size. 

By arranging the surface and spaces in the form of a grid, the designer is favourably placed to arrange his/her texts, photographs and diagrams in a coherent and functional manner. This creates a sense of compact planning, intelligibility, clarity and orderliness in the design. Information that is presented in clear and logically defined titles, subtitles, texts, illustrations and captions will not only be read more quickly and easily, but the information will also be better understood and retained in the memory.

The grid system is modular and should not be viewed as a constraint. But however modular the grid system is, there should be a limit to the varieties of grid layouts within a book in order to maintain a certain amount of continuity or coherence. 

A book can range from one that contains body text and visuals, to body text visuals, charts, diagrams, sub-text and more. A grid allows the designer to systematize the information so that it becomes easy to read and understand. It also helps make the user experience seamless, in which it works subtly in the background while presenting the information in an elegant and intelligent manner. 

17 April 2017 (Week 4): Typography Redux

A serious crash course in the dos and don'ts of typography. Besides reintroducing us to ligatures and weights in a typeface, we also learnt about legibility, underlining, small caps and all caps, special-purpose style, type size, line length, line spacing, tracking and kerning, alignment, paragraph spacing and indent, hyphens, en-dashes, and em-dashes, among others. I've recapped a few important points:

• Good underlining is when the underline does not touch the character descenders.
• Small capitals are good for subheads or for the first line of a paragraph. Text set in All caps should be used in short headlines or subheads. All Caps should never be used for long sentences and for emphasis.
• Avoid distorting the typefaces like the plague.
• Avoid outlines and shadows styles like the plague.
• A column of type is usually about 50 characters across, and no more than 65 characters. 
• Some fonts require more line spacing than others to keep their ascenders and descenders from touching.
• Longer lines require more leading for easier reading.
• The larger the type size, the more line spacing is required. This rule mostly refers to body copy; headlines, which are normally set larger, may actually be set with tighter line spacing.
• It is recommended that the leading be 3 pts. higher than the type size.
• The main purpose of tracking is to make type fit a required space without altering the type size or line spacing.
• Consistent word spacing provides an even typographic “colour” a term referring to the overall lightness and darkness of the text.
• Flush left, ragged right produces very even letter and word spacing, and because lines of type terminate at different points, the reader is able to easily locate each new line. This is perhaps the most legible means of aligning text.
• Avoid centered alignment like the plague.
• Using both the indent and paragraph space within a single paragraph is overkill.
• A widow is a single line of text at the top of a page or column, separated from its paragraph, and an orphan is a single line of text at the bottom of a page or column, separated from its paragraph. 
• Hyphens are usually used only to divide words or numbers, but they also are used to break words from one line to the next. Headlines and subheads should never be hyphenated at a line ending.
• En-dashes are slightly longer than hyphens (usually, the width of the letter “N”), and are used to separate ranges of items, such as dates, quantities, and time. As a rule, if you can substitute the word “to” or “through”.
• The em-dash is used in place of a comma to set off a section of the sentence that requires special emphasis. However, it does have other uses, such as preceding the attribution of a quote. Typically, em-dashes are the width of the letter “M”.
• It is a good practice to maintain a leading that is similar to the main body text for the sidebar, despite the smaller font size.

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PROJECT 1 (20%)

The Brief

The Book. (Part 1: Content Generating)

Duration of Assignment

4 Weeks (Briefing on Week 1)

DEADLINE

Week 5 (3rd Apr 2017- part 1, 24 Apr 2017, - part 2)

Description

In this project you will be asked to create and design a book of 32 pages that is smaller than A4 but bigger than A5. Your task will be to:

1. Write 3000 words (English/Malay) on any subject that you are familiar with, for example: yourself, your family, someone who inspires you, your hometown, or an experience or an idea/belief that you feel strongly about, etc. The text content must be divided into 3 chapters minimum, it must also have 3/4/5 subtexts (sidebars) and one caption per chapter. You have 1 week for this.

2. Identify 16 areas in your written text for visualization, you may use any medium that is suitable for your topic/direction, for example: illustration, photography or mix-media. You have 3 weeks for this (after completing your 3000 words).

As you proceed through the stages of the project you will be given exercises that will help prepare you for the following or the current stages of the project. Project 01 must be finished within 4 weeks.

Requirements

The student must document the above progression in their e-portfolio and A4 hardcopy portfolio. The results of the two phases must be collated and presented in the sample format shown in class. The 3000 words is to be formatted and submitted on A4 paper, at 9pt Helvetica, 11pt leading, consisting of all textual information of the book from front cover to back cover. A thumbnail printout of all 16 visuals as shown in the sample produced in class.

Submission

1. All gathered information (failures, successes, epiphanies, sketches, visual research, printouts, websites, images, charts, etc.) documented logically and chronologically in the A4 Clear Sheet folder. The works must be labelled and dated.

2. All gathered information (failures, successes, epiphanies, sketches, visual research, printouts, websites, images, charts, etc.) documented logically and chronologically in the e-portfolio for the duration of the project in one post.

3. Typed content of 3000 words, formatted on A4 paper. (Left Aligned, 9pt Helvetica, 11pt leading, consisting of all textual information from front to back cover).

4. All 16 visuals placed in InDesign, using the predetermined page size and printed out in colour in a thumbnail printout.

Objectives

1.     To develop students ability to generate own content.

2.     To develop intimacy with content generated.

3.     To develop students ability to communicate visually.

Progress

Final Submission

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Books: 

1. Typo Mag: Typography in Magazines by Laura Meseguer

Typo Mag: Typography in Magazines by Laura Meseguer was a really good reference to good publishing efforts all over, especially in their use of typography. Magazines are the one of the best examples of the marriage between image and text. Luis Mendo who gives the foreword mentioned how radio shows, in an absence of images, use a variety of accents, sound effects, and changes of rhythm to differentiate the many characters in a story. Similarly, type treatment in a magazine can help us better understand the content of an article, its tone, as well as important information through type hierarchy. Type can also function as an image. The qualities of a typeface can extend into the identity of the magazine, and further distinguishing the magazine’s personality. 

The book looked into the use of typography in a wide genre of magazines, from Monocle (personal favourite) to Architectural Review. I found the analysis really insightful, as it explains each layout and typeface choice; what works and what doesn’t. 

2. Experimental Layout by Ian Noble & Russell Bestley

I really enjoyed the authors' insights and the featured work in this book. The authors not only explores experimental layout and graphic design, but also introduces concepts and contexts that influence the design and layout in publishing. 

I particularly liked the statement that the "embracing of the idea that design itself could both empower and act as an agent of social change is documented in the optimism and spirit of the early manifestos produced by designers associated with movements such as he Bauhaus..". That, for me, really gives new context and meaning to the movement; what led to its existence and lasting influence. 

Another interesting point for me was about the emergence of research about graphic design, "the determination of the grounds of knowledge of the discipline and the professionalisation of the subject". We may know a piece of graphic design is successful, but theory helps to explain why it is successful. Therefore, the research of graphic design, or the questioning and debating of its activity, is extremely important.

A lot of experimental work was featured, with interesting manipulations of pages and typography, among others. Safe to say, I took a lot of pictures for future reference.

3. Grid Systems by Josef Müller-Brockmann

This whole book just screamed German because it talks about grid systems and also because there was German text alongside the English text. 

It's a very informative book (written by a very informative, very German author), covering topics from grid and design philosophy, margin proportions, type and picture area with 8/20/32 grid fields, and the grid in three-dimensional design. The author includes a lot of examples for each topic, with clear guidelines and explanations. I for one really liked looking at all the possible ways to tackle the 32 grid fields. 

One of the many, MANY, pages of examples.

It makes for great reference, I'll give him that. And I guess learning about the "rules" of the grid system will help me in learning how to break them too.