Thursday, August 16, 2012

Syeda N Ali - Chapter 7 Summary


       Chapter 7 talks about typographic technology and how it has changed through the years. In the beginning, the chapter talks about how the invention of typography industrialized advertising in that time. The designs of typography have been a huge part to the evolution of the technology. The chapter informs us on how typography has been a hand composition for centuries. As the chapter talks about the earliest mechanism of handy craft, which is the hand lettering of books. It is also interesting to learn that similar thought processes existed in that era as well that exist today. For instance, the proper kerning and weight of alphabets had to be balanced and on a particular level of equilibrium. However, today things had changed and several online and purchasable software’s have evolved. Especially in the world of photography and graphic design. A lot of work was done manually previously, which is now much more faster than before due to the invention of these software and computer aided design.
           However, the existence of the computers does not make the process better in any way as each letter has to be carefully designed through software and specific details must be kept in line. One particular thing that caught my attention in the chapter was that it is much more easier and faster to transform typographic images through a designers computer work station, but if a minor change had to be made before the existence of the machines, the entire framework had to be re-done by hands.
          As much as the computer software can make the work easier, they can also be a confusing point for beginners and even experts at times. Lastly, in my personal opinion I feel that although due to the presence of software, typography has taken a revolutionary change in the form of digitization, it has to some extent made humans creativity much more dependent on software only. Thus, I feel that some level of manual typography such as hand drawings should be practices.

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