Design Principles Session 1: What is a Book?

BRIEF - Within this session we have been briefed on the new studio task for this module. We will be looking into what makes a book. In doing this I will be creating ten double page spreads that will show my new understanding and knowledge of type, grid and layout. 

For our ten doubled page spreads, we will be starting with accumulating the content for the pages. These need to be '10 things you need to know about design'. This will be done with thorough research. 

We started the session by using the task set of us from the previous session. This was to create 15 questions, 5 on readability and legibility, 5 on type design and 5 on colour theory. We where split into groups and went through our questions to narrow these down into the best 10 we had as a group. We needed these to form the '10 things we need to know about design'. The aim was to get ten interesting questions with a selection from each category i.e. a few questions on colour, a couple on type etc, that will create the content that will go into our spreads. 

My 15 Questions

Readability and Legibility:

- What is the most readable font?

- What is the most legible font?

- What is the sheerest font created that is still readable and legible?

- Out of the origins of type, which one is classed (if any) the most readable and legible?

- Can a typeface be successful if it is either readable or legible but not both?

Type Design:

-  What are the five most popular typefaces used for web?

- What are the five most popular typefaces used for print?

- What is the first typeface to have been created digitally? Is it still used to this day?

- What is the most successful typeface that Erik Spiekermann has created?

-  Is there a difference with readability and legibility between upper and lowercase letters? Is one more clearer than the other, or are they equal?

Colour:

- What are the wavelengths for the three primary colours?

-  With the wavelengths from the previous question, how long does each take on average to travel?

- Do animals have the same amount of rods and cones as a human?

- How is colour blindness i.e. tritanopia and protanopia, found and diagnosed in people?

-  Can the chromatic value work if one of the three elements is missing?

 As a group these where our final ten questions we came up with. These include questions ranging from type design to colour, these will hopefully give enough diverse research to form interesting content:

Within our group we created a plan of who will research what questions and what we expected the research to contain. We split the questions up into groups of which we thought would be the best research questions to go together. For example my two questions are 'How do we see colour?' and 'How do colours work together?'. I feel these are broad enough questions that I can research into and go into depth with. The aim is to get a variety of answers to each questions and feed this back to the people in my group. We will then as individuals, narrow down the information that we find the most intriguing and interesting to put into our own individual double page spreads:

After the session I looked on the website suggested for us to read. This was interesting reading about the golden ration and how this is a basis for grids and paper sizes. It increased my knowledge on the different grids out there:

http://www.thinkingwithtype.com/contents/grid/