Responses Week 2

Paul K

This reading talks about the laws of the letter and how letter and language are essential to our communication. It talks about the different kinds of typography and how it has an impact in how we communicate with others. Lets look at the very first page of the reading where there are a lot of different Os. What do each of those Os mean to you. Or, another way to put it would be to read each of those Os out loud. Chances are that you would pronounce them all differently. But they are all Os right? Right, but the font is different for every single one of them. You could also look at the set of Os as a progression from a high pitched O on the top left to a very deep low pitched O on the bottom right. I read a lot of comic books so this is something I always look at. How a word is written. Is it small in italics, or is it bold and taking up the entire page. The most interesting quote I found in this reading is “The meaning of a sign does not resign in a sign itself, but is generated from the surrounding system. For instance we have the word ball, which alone is a circular object. Now lets make it a small red ball. This puts an entirely different image into our head than just the word ball alone.

What I find really interesting about graphic design is how different it is now to how it was in the past. The reading talks about a few different graphic designers and their influence in the industry. Truth is it was such a hard and tedious process back in the day. However, because of computers and the internet, it has become much more accessible. This is mostly due to Adobes programs that are so popular today. Look at it from my point of view. The first time I used Photoshop was when I was around 11 I want to say. Before that I used much simpler kid programs like Kid Pix. Either way, it’s a program I am very familiar with as I have used it for half of my life at this point. Looking back I probably could have put on the internet that I was an 11 year old using Photoshop and that would have gotten me a following, but social networking was not as big then as it is now. There had to be so much precision in ones work, and mistakes were a lot easier to make. Now Photoshop and illustrator have rulers and grids that you could snap to if you’d like, or just move around and resize if you make mistake or wish to change something. Overall I feel like people in general can express their creativity in a much easier way now, which is really interesting, especially if we look at the ways we communicate using computers.