An Interlude with Type
Until June or so, I’ll be working on a rather large project for an organization in Seoul, so blog time will be spotty at best and nonexistent at worst. Before starting the project, I want to introduce entertaining ways to help hone one’s typography skills.
Identifying Type
If you don’t know your Albertus from your Eurostile, then spend some time with Deep’s font game. It isn’t exactly a primer on type identification, but it is an enjoyable addictive way to practice type identification for those all-too-frequent occasions when you are faced with six seconds to identify a typeface.
As an aside, do you know how many times I had to refresh the page so the first image said “Shoot Comic Sans”? Far more than I’m willing to admit, but I’m sure someone out there will appreciate the effort.
Getting in Shape
After mastering the art of identification, test your skills at recreating some of the distinctive shapes that give typefaces their unique character. Mark MacKay created an online letter shaping game that gives users a chance to practice adjusting Bézier curves to manipulate letterforms.
Learning Kerning
With identification and shaping under our belt, it is time to focus on kerning, the art of adjusting the space between individual letter pairs to create an even look and to maximize readability. Again, Mark MacKay comes through for us with an online kerning game. The object is simple. When presented with a word, users move the letters left or right to adjust the spacing. Just as with the letter shaping game, a percentage score is returned after completing each word and a composite score is given at the end.
Match Making
Of the type games introduced in this post, Type Connection is by far the most useful in terms of gaining actual knowledge.
Set up like a dating game of sorts, Type Connection encourages users to focus on key attributes of type to determine whether the typefaces will go well together. It is worth checking out, and be sure to visit the unusually thorough resources page.
Conclusion
Hope you enjoy the games. I’ll post again as soon as I can.
Browsing Gems: One
Like most people browsing about the Internet, I often come across little gems — things that are just so well done that their existence alone begs for them to be shared. I’ve decided to have periodic posts called Browsing Gems, where I can share and comment on these little pockets of genius.
For my first installment, I’d like to introduce the work of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, a creative duo that produces art using photomontage and painting techniques. The images in this post are representative of the work found in The Architect’s Brother, one of their most famous collections. In this collection, they portray a surreal relationship triangle that involves humans, nature, and technology. The narrative created by placing the “Everyday Man” in interactive situations with improbable technology and impossible landscapes materializes in an unsettling ambiguity that borders on the poetic.
It is important to note that these are not digital manipulations; they were created using analogue processes. As Robert ParkeHarrison explains,
Photoshop was not used on [The Architect’s Brother]. We merged multiple images through an adapted form of the paper negative process…. Once a final image was completed, we then mounted it and painted on the photograph. This painting process consisted on many, many layers of washes.1
Knowing the technical processes behind the work makes the images that much more intriguing, bringing an extra layer of meaning to the thematic triangle found throughout the collection, where the artist equals human; the props, nature; and the process, technology.
If you want to be wowed, check out The Architect’s Brother and their other work at parkeharrison.com
- 1. “Robert And Shana Parkeharrison — Insight,” by Jonathan Stead, jonathanstead.com, http://www.jonathanstead.com/parkeharrison.html. (accessed 28 March 2012)