February 7, 2012

1. Notes

February 7, 2012

Timeline

·      Lascauz

·      Sumerian Cuneiform

·      Early Phoenician

·      Greek

·      Roman

Cuneiform

·      Cave painting as pictorial, elemental, abstract.

·      Cuneiform shows us pictures.

·      Become glyphs.

·      Capitals Quadrata – Square capitals.

·      Capitalism Rustica – Rustic capitals.

·      Caroline minuscule from the Alcuin bible.

·      Book of Kells created around 800 ad.

·      Xylography – wood printing, (xylophone made of wood)

·      Ars Memorandi -  deathly, instructions on how to die.

o   Books using block printing

o   Textura, black letter, gothic

·      What style of lettering did Guttenberg use? Gothic

o   Why? B/c that’s what people were using at that time.

·      Typographc printing

·      Growing middle class, student at universities, money taken from church. King of France not in favor of printing.

·       Mergenthaler gives us the linotype

·      letter of Indulgence – early example of letter press printing.

Xylography – ?

Ligature – letter forms cast as single character

Incunabula – first 50 year of printing

Fleurons – flowery, decorations

Caldarium – calendars, science, mathematics.

Steven Daye – amateur, printed book of psalms.

French Rococo

o   Rococo lent itself to copperplate engraving. You could draw directly on the plate with a stylus and have contrast between thick and thin.

Bodoni – modern

Posters

o   Decisions based on pragmatics, what will fit and what do I have enough of

Point size – highest to lowest

Leading – baseline to baseline

Ephemera – wasn’t intended to be preserved. Movie tickets, calendars, printed picture materials.

o   Scrap – meant to be thrown away, unimportant.

Trample effect – pages overlapping

Ladies home journal and The Practical Housekeeper– respected journal for women of the day. Had an interesting idea. When they write articles, not to mention products b/c they wanted them to believe them and trust them.

Books that are meant to entertain – most of it is about entertainment, maybe teach you something.

Bibles were sold by subscription.

Thomas Nast – did editorial illustrations of what was going on. Offered 500k from Bost Tweed.

Bicycles was used in ads back then b/c it just came out.

John Henry Heinz released a line of prepackaged foods, ends up with 57 pieces of food. Erects one of the largest signs in New York, corner of 5^th and 23^rd. One of the first people that employees are your marketing. Hire lots of young girls, display windows for people to see the girls working. Had a company store for women to buy clothes, and had a swimming pool and deck to be fit and tan.

2. Personal Thoughts

I thought that this class this week was simply a repeat or overview of the past notes with a couple new elements to the lesson. We took a test that I didn't do too well on, but I am a bad test taker. I am looking forward to learn more about type faces and what type faces started where and why. I just wish that there were more words on the slides for me to copy instead of trying to type while you are talking. It's difficult to get a lot of the information.