New book, New blog

This is base on the lessons of Designing with Type

ABC's...
What they don't teach you in preschool

Thinking back to my early days of education, I can recall the moment in when I first learned the alphabet through song. As time went on, I went on using the language without fully understanding their forms, purpose, history and aesthetics. In doing so I have neglected myself the ability to communicate effectively and their potential in communication. Now I find myself in the university level, relearning one of my most basic lessons the same purpose. As they say, the masters practice the basics...I guess students should do the same.

While learning the ABC's through song was simple, its history was complex, and did not came from one source. Early communications can be traced to the most primal form, pictographs. They were an abstracted image of an object, but as time went on they soon became ideographs. Images began having more than one meaning, and this pre-writing system became the foundations for many forms of writing, including our modern day Alphabet. Around 1200 B.C.E, the Phoenician simplified their writing system for their trading and business purposes. They took their existing images, and converted them to symbols for each sound. This system of writing was much more simpler, however it was also limited. By 800 B.C.E, the Greeks adopted the Phoenicians system, and modified it so that it was not just contained within business purposes. They added five vowels and formalized the letterform. This version was then adopted by the Romans, who also contribute made it what it is today. The Romans modified letters (C,D,G,L,P,R,S,and U), added the letters F and Q, and changed their names to a much more simpler sound. The alphabet has evolved as we have, and while most of us may never learn its history, even few were would learned of its aesthetic characteristic.

When it comes to understanding typography, and even designing, learning the characteristics that make up forms and function is essential. Characteristics are not just limited to uppercase and lowercase. They also consist baseline and meanline, which are the invisible lines in where the letters rest on and lowercase letters reach. In between them is the x-height, which is the height of the body or entire letter of lowercase family. In additions, there is also descenders and ascenders, which are parts of the letters that fall below the meanline and transcend the meanline. Counters, which are the small spaces within letters like e or o, are also an aesthetic characteristic. Serifs are the finishing stroke on a letter, and sanserif refers to be stroke free. There are other different type of characteristics that provide the form of a letter, which determines how well the letters work to express a word. In addition to letter characteristics, type phase and style can also give a word its aesthetics and ability to communicate effectively. Thanks to modern technology, designers have a variety of typephase, such as Century or Ariel, at their fingertips. Furthermore, they can be altered by typestyle, which can consist of Bold, regular, or italic. However, knowing aesthetics is not enough. Essential and basic writing skill are important to graphic designers because its a career that involves communications. And it becomes difficult to communicate, when you cannot use comma, colons, question marks, and more correctly. As designers, studying typography and and writing skills are one of the most important lessons we will learn in order to become great communicators. We work with both words and image in order to communicate. to a designer, the right word can change the world, its form can change its meaning.