In these exercises, I really wanted to
I needed to have more type setting exercises, because my text was set in size 12 and Garamond is readable even at a size 9–10. I realized that Garamond is much more beautiful when set in a smaller and appropriate size.
Re-doing typesetting
I realized that Garamond is legible even from a very small font size and leading, so I took a small part from my excerpt and experimented with font sizes 9–11 and leading 10–12. I thought a larger leading would not be necessary and leave too much whitespace in between lines, so I decided to go with a 9.5/11.6 typesetting.
I was really obsessed with adding a huge letter — either a or g. This was the beginning of me using color in this spread, but while talking about this to Vicki, I learned that using a huge element and applying a strong color like red to it takes away all of the viewer’s attention to it, so since this not part of the actual textual information being communicated, it should be positioned in a much lower visual hierarchy.
Although I enjoyed the simplicity of the black and white design, I thought I could add a secondary color to add depth to the spread. Some colors I have in mind are:
- light mint, mustard, grey, but I need to experiment more which one retains the elegance of the typeface.
I wanted to portray versatility by writing the different adjectives in different weights, but when I talked with Andrew, I learned about what type specimens are, and wanted to incorporate them to show the versatility.
The red vertical line separating the adjs and the body text doesn’t add much meaning to the composition, and I think I’m starting to stare into the white space between them, which is quite misleading.
I wanted to show all of the weights in the Adobe Garamond typeface, so I tried to add set the word “old-style serif” in the different weights.
I realized that later when I add the page number and chapter number for this spread, I would want to add the “old-style serif” to the chapter name, so I would write the different weights with the name of the typeface.
