Design Studio: Typography (Project 3 – Body an soul)

Kassy
31 August 2016
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7 years

Brief:

This project requires you to typeset and recreate a page of copy that faithfully reflects an existing page layout.

Suggested process

Select multiple source examples – small, medium and large format publications – special-interest magazines, journals, and books serve as good starting points.
Select one example in consultation with your eLA. The main criterion for suitability is that it is considered to be an example of ‘good typesetting practice’, and it demonstrates use of multiple levels of typographic hierarchy.
Begin typeface identification.
Measure and ‘deconstruct’ the example page layout and grid.
Take initial typesetting measurements: pt size, leading column width, paragraph indents etc.
Create an InDesign document which uses the example page’s specifications.
Identify and activate fonts as required.
Use Universal Type Server to access the Adobe Open Type Library.
Import your copy (provided).
Begin setting the text to initial measurements
Print, compare to original example and critique your work in progress.
Make corrections and modifications as required.
Continue to print, review and correct until your version faithfully reflects the original example in typographic style and (to a lesser extent) page layout.
Prepare a type specimen sheet using the InDesign template provided.
Create and apply typographic/document ‘Styles’ that accurately match the sample setting.
Save your InDesign file. Package and Zip the file for upload to Blackboard.
Document your design process following the guidelines in the Design process document brief (AdditionalResources/Design-process-document-brief.html) for upload to Blackboard.

In week 6 I completed a number of steps for Project 3, that involved measuring, identifying typefaces and reconstructing the layout. This week I will refine and finish the project, aiming to have a recreated document that uses the style and layout of the original as closely as possible.

It’s important to note that I contacted the type foundry that provides the Miller font family and was able to be provided with a trial license of the Miller Text and Miller Headline families. Because of being able to use the correct quality typefaces, a number of my measurements did change, because of the way the dimensions of the typefaces actually work. Below is the revised version of the measurements.

– Import your copy

Using the provided text, I imported this into my document and created the headings as appropriate. It is important to note several things that I discovered here.

I had not realised the importance of measuring or counting the number of lines that were within each paragraph. I went through the original scanned document and counted the number of lines, so I was able to more faithfully replicate the design.
In the previous attempt of this recreation I had assumed that each paragraph was split into individual text boxes and I was not sure how this could work. I was very wrong about this. I was mainly confused because of the vertical justified alignment of the text. It turned out, that if you are following the number of lines, and layout of the original very similarly that if you create one text box, placed into three columns and a 5mm gap, that once you have all the text inputed you can align it with vertical justification and everything will align as is demonstrated in the original.
I had also discovered previously that each paragraph had a slightly different tracking, because of the size of the various text within. So, to make sure that I could keep this as close as possible, I made character styling options for each paragraph.

Print 1

I printed out a copy of the important design and used the printed type gauge to identify a that the size of the heading was actually incorrect. I also used a ruler to measure out each section and found that there were many inconstancies in the spacing.

After participating in the collaborate session it was discovered that the heading/subheadings and some areas of the document were actually using a different typeface to what I had thought. The titles are actually using Miller Display. I have re-labelled the document.