In approximately 500 words, summarise the above text highlighting the key points it makes about typography, and the role of typography in creation of meaning. Use these key points to write a brief critical analysis of one deconstructionist work of Graphic Design focusing on the aims of Deconstruction in Graphic Design.
Possible designers to look at could be Richard Eckersley, David Carson, Allen Hori, Ed Fella or David Frej.
The essay 'Deconstruction & Graphic Design', by Ellen Lupton, may also help.
'Thinking With Type' is a direct deconstructive analysis of what a text is in relation to typography and how designers work with typography and also around it. The First point the text makes is that designers use typography in a way that makes reading a text easier. Typography's main function is 'to help readers avoid reading' so it becomes effortless when communicating to people. Bodies of text are broken down by designers so we can quickly glance over them and pick out the relative information from the masses of other texts making our processing of the information much smoother and efficient. They do this through use of search engines or hypertext links that can jump to another location, ultimately using the typography to navigate the flow of content easily when the user could be searching for something specific and struggling to quickly process the content and extract the relative information for immediate use.
Before the introduction of printed typography and proofreaders texts were written by hand and often contained mistakes and copies were copied from copies which each time done made more errors and gaps bringing with them new meaning and readings. Once printing with movable type came about it enhanced the efficiency of reproducing a body of text and with proofreaders each copy would be speaking to the user as the author intended it to.
The spacing in a text is more often than not over looked as we do not perceive our words to have a space between them as we speak because they are just sounds that we make to represent certain things, only when printed do we see the space that a word takes up. The Alphabet itself is a physical representation of the sounds that we use to speak and with it comes spacing otherwise readingalineoftextwouldbecomedifficultandreductivetowardstheaimofcommunicating.
Roland Barthes asserts the importance of the reader over the writer in drawing meaning from a text. The birth of the user brought around the theory that 'the author does not control its significance'. The spoken word gives a particular tone of voice that the speaker intends the audience to hear and contains qualities that text does not such as accent and intonation. Typography, however, allows the user to create their own meaning in relation to what they perceive the tone of voice to be and when things are read and reread they may discover new meanings. This gives a sense of control to the reader and they can take the meaning in which ever way they see fits.
 |
| Hori A (1989) 'Typography as Discourse' poster http://www.webdesignstuff.co.uk/hp005/2011/01/26/deconstruction-and-web-page-design/ |
This poster is an example of the typography that Lupton discusses in 'Thinking With Type', however it does not fit under all the topics discussed about text. Hori choice of layout allows the user to pick and choose where he or she begins when reading the discourse of the typography. This gives the reader control over how they bring meaning to the poster and decipher its purpose.
however, juxtaposed to this, the composition fails to enhance the simplicity to how the user will read it. The disruption in the arrangement of the typography with words printed diagonally, backwards and with some inconsistent spacing it causes a struggle to navigate the text and get a proper reading of the text. Lupton states that 'one of design's most humane functions is, in actuality, to help readers avoid reading', this poster almost does the opposite as the text seems to avoid being read.
The fact that the posters content is in such an unconventional disorder allows the reader to take in the information at their own pace and process it in a different manner to a typical body of text, this is giving the user a sense of control and enhances the interaction and engagement of the user with the artwork. They may even develop a personal take on the work as each user would navigate it differently bring with them different meaning, or perhaps the same meaning in a different order.
Overall this piece of typography succeeds in giving the user a sense of personal empowerment with its layout but at the same time makes it more challenging to read than it does simplify the porcess.
No comments:
Post a Comment