laws of the letter // fiore

Part I

I found the most intriguing part of the reading to be the section entitled “Laws of the Letter.” Typography, like other aspects of art, undergoes cycles and trends over time. For example, the fonts on the original Gutenberg press were intended to mimic handwriting. From that style, typographic trends tended toward more geometric forms like Bodoni and Didot to purposefully distinguish them from the handwritten style. Similarly, trends in typography exist in the modern world as well. For example, many current designs favor clean sans serif typefaces like Univers , Helvetica, and Gotham, and several identity redesigns in the last decade have employed such type choices. Another trend that exists in modern typography is the use of hand-drawn type, most commonly seen in headers. The hand-drawn style accompanied a movement toward more hand-produced goods in America, which aimed to avoid the industrial feel of modernism. This is particularly interesting because hand-drawn type emphasizes a return to the more organic style from which typography initially veered with the introduction of geometric typefaces. In some ways, typography has become a commodity in that certain typefaces have become extremely popular and show up in a variety of media, which was the case with Helvetica and also occurs with many Hoeffler Jones typefaces like Archer and Gotham. These trends will undoubtedly perpetuate as type designers strive to create the next great typeface and as the trends in design shift to reflect the times. The images I chose represent two identity redesigns that incorporate sans serif fonts, both of which represent a typographic trend, and an example of hand-drawn text.

Part II

In “Massaging the Message,” I thought it was interesting to see some of the innovative design that Fiore used in creating the book. The layout of the book provides a variety of grid structures and compositions. Some pages contain little or no text, while others contain full bleed images. This design was innovative and original for the time, but he repeats a lot of his compositions and now this kind of style is simple and straightforward. His most interesting layout design, in my opinion, was that of “I Seem to be a Verb.” Here, you can see the evolution of his style as he incorporates different compositions and sets type in an interesting way. In particular, the line of text that runs throughout the book and then circles back to the beginning is innovative and intriguing, and it gives the reader a reason to flip back through previous pages. In this way, Fiore brings another level of interactivity to his design. The image I chose to accompany this passage is an image of a series of spreads from a book. In general, the structure of each page is simple. The compositions vary from page to page, with some of the blocks of text overlapping the illustrations. In particular, the center spread is unique in that it breaks the grid structure with the introduction of the illustrated form that crosses over the gutter. I think this book depicts an interesting layout design.