Typography

Lecture Review

Kristoffer Soelling shares some interesting detail and the history of the type. It seems much of the work is digital now. However, it helps to understand the typographical terms. I will adopt a visual approach and an intuitive approach to this project. Poetry is a creative expression of words, and I’m excited to work on this task.

The poet and the visual approach will inspire the process I will adopt. I am currently travelling with an artist with whom I have brainstormed ideas to express the poem’s meaning through types and painting. I have a short window to complete, and I may need to skip some of the non-digital aspects of the project. I time is with me, then I will include some hands-on art with acrylic paint. I have created a pinterest board for week 10 to add visually pleasing aspects to typography as inspiration.

Task: Compose a Typographic Composition

Mary Oliver is one of my favourite poets, there’s a depth and mystery, and when I read, I sense a receptive love of the world through her writings.

― “oxygen

Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.”

― Mary Oliver

Inspiration

“One needs to be open to its expanded repertoire of hybrid, hyphonated practices: Not only type as text but also type as images.”

(Williams. Kubel 2015)

Approach

I will explore and research the type of the periodic table and use InDesign to investigate ways to demonstrate the spacious and entropic nature of oxygen and experiment with the type set, type placement, and text frame.

New Learnings

Colour gradient

Final Piece

Reference (examples to change)

Mary Oliver.2023. https://maryoliver.com/ [Accessed 8 May 2023]

Tom Siegfried. 2019. ‘Science News’. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/periodic-table-history-chemical-elements-150-anniversary [Accessed 5 May 2023]

Williams, S. Kubel, H. Henrik, S. Kubel. 2015. ‘New Perspectives in Typography’. pp.47. https://content.talisaspire.com/falmouth/bundles/5be0688b69df5066f748aab4 [Accessed 06 May 2023]

RSC. 2023. ‘Our Periodic Table to download and print, now including the four new elements’. https://edu.rsc.org/resources/updated-periodic-table-printable/1469 [Accessed 8 May 2023]