Blackletter Development

To start developing my blackletter design I began by scanning my hand drawn letters to Illustrator and vectorising them using live trace. This creates blocks of solid black, giving the shapes a stronger presence and getting rid of the grey of the paper in the scan. I chose to work with the stippled ampersand, as this is my favourite of the illustrations I had done. Also I felt that the stippling effect helps reenforce the style and the history behind blackletter. I thought also that an ampersand would be more appropriate for just one postcard design, rather than choosing a letter from the alphabet.

As blackletter is often associated with dark and gothic, I wanted to create quite a dark design, and I also felt that white on black would create a more exciting design. I expanded and ungrouped the vector allowing me to get rid of the white space between the letters, and used the fill to turn the black to white. I then placed it onto a deep blue background, as I felt the colour, although dark, would be more appealing than black. At first I wasn’t keen on the plain blue background as I felt it was too flat and the ampersand didn’t sit right on it. I wanted to add some texture to it, and so I found an image of a dusty blackboard from the internet and replaced the blue with it. I preferred this version as I felt the texture helped the ampersand to sink into the background more, and also I think it suggests to a dated, old style, which blackletter traditionally is. One thing I didn’t like was that the colour had been lost, which I think took something away from the design. To fix this I laid the blackboard image over the blue and turned the opacity to 60%. This allowed the blue to show through, whilst still keeping some of the texture that helps the ampersand sit well on the background. I finished by adding in the word blackletter using Didot as the typeface. I felt that, coincidentally, this typeface worked with style of design I was creating and also with the subject of blackletter. I made the text quite small, so as not to take away attention from the illustration, and I used kerning to space out the letters as I thought this gave a darker look to the work, and also puts less attention on the text.

Blackboard image: http://www.blackboarddeli.com/images/chaulkboard_bkgrnd_506x575.jpg

Although I did really like my vectored design, after discussions with my tutor and when reviewing it myself, I did find that when vectorising the illustration, a lot of the detail was lost where the small dots had been merged together into one block of colour. To counter this, I brought the original scan into Photoshop and using the Brightness & Contrast/Hue & Saturation tools I enhanced the contrast to make the illustration the deep, solid black I wanted and separating it from the background. I then selected the background and edited the colour to make it a light, creamy colour. This suggests maybe parchment or older paper that blackletter would have originally been written on, again reenforcing the history behind it. In terms of design, I also feel that the black ampersand sits better on this colour than on plain white. I then just copied the text from underneath into this design in black, placing it in the same position again.

I like this design as I think the black ampersand is more true to how it would be originally made, and I find it interesting how when black on white, it doesn’t seem to need a textured background as it sits fine just as it is.
After looking at this and comparing with my other work, I found that I still really liked the dark design with the white on blue. I feel like that was more eye catching and had more impact as a design. However I didn’t want to lose the detail of my illustration with the vectorised image, and so I continued working in Photoshop to try and tackle these problems together. I took the black illustration and inverted it to be white. I also inverted the background which became almost the exact blue that I wanted. I tweaked it slightly to get it right, and then edited in the blackboard image to add the texture, again reducing the opacity to 60%.

I really like this design and I think I prefer it to the lighter one. This version is more successful as well, as none of the detail is lost, as it was when I vectorised the illustration. I like the strong impact of this design, and I think it successfully shows blackletter in a way that reenforces the ideas, styles and history behind it. One thing I’m not so sure on is that this doesn’t link at all in appearance with my other Didot postcard. I know that they are completely different styles of type, but I think that if they were to go together, it may have been more interesting to find a way to link them together more. If I had had more time I would have also liked to have made more illustrations and played further with drawing out blackletter, using different techniques and processes.

Didot Development

I wanted to experiment with some other ideas that I had, and so I started playing with patterns and tessellating the word ‘Didot’. I think that these were interesting ideas, however I feel that they are too much when put together like this, and I think it overpowers the type, making it lose its meaning and its impact. The colour and layout of these designs feels very playful and fun, which I really like and I think fits with the style of the font really well. I still like the idea of repetition and fitting the text together, although i feel covering the entire space is too overpowering and I think that here, less is more.

 After experimenting with the tessellation idea, I decided that it wasn’t very successful, and so I reverted back to this idea of using circular patterns made from rotated letters. I also took the word ‘Didot’ with the green samples found on the example poster and added it in. I think that it works nicely with the greens in the pattern, and I feel like the circular effect is a more interesting and unusual solution to fitting the text together.

I thought that the previous design was a bit too plain, and i didn’t really like the amount of white space above the text, and so I added in another pattern behind the first. The transparency of the patterns allows the darker one to show through slightly, helping to blend them together and bringing the whole design into one. The use of the same colours in the patterns and the type also connects them together, bringing the design together even across the white space. I really quite like this design, and I think it is a successful solution to the brief. However I do feel that I could probably have done slightly more with it and taken it further, maybe using different media or techniques, to make a more creative outcome, if I had had the time

Postcard Reverse

For the reverse of my postcards I didn’t want to add too much detail or decoration, as the back of postcards never do and it would be impractical to fill this space with colour or decoration. I used a small, sans serif font (Gills Sans Light, 7pt) for the text and just added a dividing line in the middle and some lines for an address to be written on. I think that holding the information at the top of the page rather than the bottom helps to create a more balance design. also I think that if it were at he bottom, the white space above would look uncomfortable, whereas underneath it sits better and is not as obvious.

Postcard Blurbs

For the text on the reverse of my postcards I wanted to keep it simple and just include some basic information about the subject. This serves as a sort of introduction to it, without giving away too much and inviting the audience to look further into the subject and the Conference at the Library.

 

Didot is a French typeface based on a collection of similar fonts developed by Firmin Didot between 1784-1811. It utilizes high stroke contrast with increased stress, taking inspiration from John Baskerville’s experimentation with this style. This was very similar to the work of Giambattista Bodoni in Italy at the time.

 

Blackletter, also referred to as Gothic script, was a calligraphic script, widely used throughout Western Europe from around 1150 – 17th century, and is still often used in design today. Blackletter comes in different forms known as:

• Textualis

• Schwabacher

• Fraktur

• Cursiva

• Hybrida

• Donatus-Kalender

• Rotunda

Experiments and Colour

I found this example of a poster based on Didot. I thought the design was quite interesting, and it is a clever solution. However the aspect that I was most interested by was the colour scheme, I love the different greens that have been used, and the way that they overlap and create new greens where the letters are slightly transparent is amazing. This is definitely a colour scheme that I will consider using, or use to inspire my own colour scheme. I also want to use the opaque text in my own design as I think it is a very successful technique and is very fitting with the style of Didot.

 

Taking this colour scheme, I quickly mocked up a simple design showing the name of the typeface, with a selection of the greens from the poster design. I don’t think this is a very successful design, and I think the coloured blocks are too much. However, this design does show that the range of greens work together successfully in this way, and I think the different greens for each letter of the word is very strong, and is one aspect that I will consider taking forward in my work.
 After this I wanted to start experimenting with patterns and fitting the text together in interesting ways. I started to take different letters from Didot, and using the rotate tool I copied the letter for every rotation, giving these geometric, circular patterns. I took colours from the example poster and I lower the opacity on each of the letters. These allowed the shapes of the letters to show through in the centre of the patterns as well, giving an intricate looking design. I think these geometric patterns are very successful and present the typeface in an unusual but exciting way.

Initial Ideas

Before jumping onto a Mac to start designing, I sketched out a few ideas and thoughts I had about my designs. This helped clear my head and then led to further ideas that I can use. I also decided that I wanted to hand draw some examples of blackletter using fineliner pens. I think my drawings work well, and give a more realistic look, rather than a clean letter typed digitally. I think the sometimes uneven lines and the hand drawn look links well with blackletter, and also I think looks much better than if it were created digitally. I want to experiment with these illustrated letters using digital techniques to enhance and arrange them into working designs, and so I will scan them in to a Mac and take them further using digital processes.

Blackletter Inspiration

I felt that I needed some inspiration for my historical postcard, and so i took to Pinterest to look at different styles and interpretations of Blackletter, all using different processes and materials. These are some of the most exciting and aesthetically pleasing examples I found. I love all of the decoration that comes with blackletter, I think that it suits the style of type very well, fitting with the contrasting strokes and bold, beautiful marks in the letters. One of the most interesting aspects I find with blackletter pieces is the way that the text seems to fit together perfectly, utilising the diagonal, angular strokes to place the text closer, fitting it together into one beautifully arranged design. Looking at these examples has given me a bit more insight into what can be done with blackletter, not only with style and design but with process and materials. I think this has definitely widened my thinking about this postcard, and opened my eyes to a wider range of possibilities with my design.

Anatomy of Type

As I am a design student studying, and with a great interest in typography, I thought it would be very useful to begin learning the anatomy of, and terminology associated with type.

Strokes
A stroke is the element of a typeface that defines the structure of the type. The idea behind and instroke and outstroke originates from calligraphy. The instroke is where an inward motion of the hand would be made in a hand-written letterform, whereas an outstroke  is where an outward motion would be made.

Finer elements & Terminals
The finer elements are simply defined by their position within the letterform. The terminals of instrokes and outstrokes are usually named after their form e.g. tear-drop. Serifs are also considered terminals.

Source: http://typomil.com/anatomy/index.html

 

Blackletter

Blackletter in a Latin Bible, 1407 AD

Blackletter, also referred to as Gothic script, was a calligraphic script, widely used throughout Western Europe from around 1150 – 17th century, and was still used for the German language until the 20th century. Blackletter can also be called Old English, although it has nothing to do with the Old English language, which actually came many centuries before. Blackletter is developed originally from Carolingian, to adapt to the increasing literacy of Europe at the time. Carolingian was legible, but very time consuming and hard to produce, and its size took up a lot of space on a page, when writing materials were expensive. With new universities being founded and more people becoming literate, many new books for business, law, history and other subjects were being made. They needed to be produced fast and so different forms of Carolingian were being used and developed, allowing to be written more quickly to meet the demand for new books. This resulted in the birth of Blackletter.

Example of Carolingian minuscule

Blackletter comes in different forms, each with different characteristics and styles. They are known as Textualis, Schwabacher, Fraktur, Cursiva, Hybrida and Donatus-Kalender.

Textualis
Textualis, also known as textura or Gothic bookhand, was the most calligraphic form of blackletter and is the form most recognised as Gothic. It was most widely used in France, England and Germany. Some of its characteristics include:

• tall, narrow letters
• letters formed by sharp, straight, angular lines, unlike the typically round Carolingian
• ascenders are vertical and often end in sharp finials
• when a letter with a bow (in b, d, p, q) is followed by another letter with a bow (such as “be” or “po”), the bows overlap and the letters are joined by a straight line (this is known as “biting”)
• the letters g, j, p, q, y, and the hook of h have descenders, but no other letters are written below the line
• the letter ‘a’ has a straight back stroke, and the top loop eventually became closed, somewhat resembling the number 8. The letter ‘s’ often has a diagonal line connecting its two bows, also somewhat resembling an 8

Johannes Gutenburg, who first introduced printing to Europe, carved a textualis style typeface when printing his famous 42-line Bible. Textiles, however, was very rarely used after that.

Schwabacher
Schwabacher was a form used mainly in early German printed typefaces. It was still used occasionally up until the 20th century. Its characteristics are:

• The small letter o is rounded on both sides, though at the top and at the bottom, the two strokes join in an angle. Other small letters have analogous forms
• The small letter g has a horizontal stroke at its top that forms crosses with the two downward strokes
• The capital letter H has a peculiar form somewhat reminiscent of the small letter h

Schwabacher lettering

Fraktur
Fraktur was a form that became the most common German blackletter typeface by the 16th century. It was so common that any blackletter form is often referred to as Fraktur in Germany. Its characteristics are:

• The left side of the small letter o is formed by an angular stroke, the right side by a rounded stroke. At the top and at the bottom, both strokes join in an angle. Other small letters have analogous forms
• The capital letters are compound of rounded c-shaped or s-shaped strokes

A Fraktur alphabet

Cursiva
Cursiva refers to a wide range of blackletter forms, and there is no standard form for it, much like modern cursive writing. It developed as a simpler form of textiles in the 14th century. The main reason for its development was the introduction of paper, which was much smoother than parchment and therefore easier to write quickly on. Descenders are more frequent in cursiva, especially in the letters f and s. Also most ascenders are curved and looped, rather than vertical and straight.

Hybrida
Hybrida, developed in the early 15th century, refers to a hybrid form of blackletter, made up of textualis and cursiva. From textualis it borrows vertical ascenders, whilst from cursiva it borrows long f, single-looped a, and g with an open descender.

Donatus-Kalender
The Donatus-Kalender is a form of textura and refers to the metal type design that Gutenberg used in his earliest surviving printed works from the early 1450s. The name is taken from two works: the Ars grammatica of Aelius Donatus, a Latin grammar, and the Kalender (calendar).

Modern interpretation of blackletter script in the form of the font “Old English”

After looking into the origins and styles of blackletter, I’ve decided to use this as the topic for my historical postcard. I have found it to be quite exciting, and something that i feel I really want to look further into and experiment with myself. I really love the classic look that it holds and I admire the skill that it takes to successfully produce these styles of type.