I was just on a directionless Google hunt for information about what I assume to be design projects or individual typography studies that I sometimes see students toting on campus or proudly affixing to a wall. The pieces feature single letters of the alphabet, either in upper or lower case, black printer ink on white paper (though I may have seen a few applications of liquid ink upon various media as well), mounted on black backboards. I suppose I just wanted to understand the name, purpose, and parameters of these assignments.

In addition, this weekend I noticed a lowercase “g” – in the form of the g in the letter anatomy image above -applied to mounted canvas; one side of which was meticulously reinforced/bordered/finished with a few cascading strips of some heavy masking tape which seemed to create nice lines with the “g” present.

I was going to keep this as my secret but what the heck… in case you have not bumped into it yet, have a look at: http://www.paratype.com/help/term/

Thanks for the thoughtful comment, and you’re absolutely right about my CSS file. When recently changing to Helvetica, I didn’t go so far as to change the other fonts to match. That’s now taken care of.

I think as an actual result of reading your comment (I didn’t have time to reply yesterday), last night I dreamt of returning to my student days, and having a conversation about the lack of attention to typography (at least that was my experience). Sorry to learn of the conflict you’re discovering, but I’m very glad you’re enjoying the University of Ulster programme. It’s one I’ve little knowledge about.

I see the anatomical diagram you have above continues this trend, and again, is incomplete, and contradictory to other sources. What’s a VisComm student to do?! It was suggested that we rely more on printed books than websites, yet when the printed books contradict one another, then clearly there’s something wrong somewhere!!

On a postive note, typography is a strong core element of this 1st year 1st semester course (viscomm @ uni of ulster belfast), and I’m absolutely loving working intimately with type.

We watched the Helvetica film last week as well—great/funny quote from self confessed typomaniac Erik Spiekermann —”They are my friends (type), some people like looking at bottles of wine or girls bottoms, I get a kick out of looking at type”

Just to quote Adrian Frutiger:
” If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch,
it has to be the wrong shape.
The spoon and the letter are tools;
one to take food from the bowl,
the other to take information off the page…
When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable
because the letter is both banal and beautiful. ”

Btw, just noticed on your body ‘font family list’, you have “Helvetica,Verdana,Georgia,Sans-serif”. If Helvetica is the look you’re going for, might it be worthwhile actually having Arial in the list after Helvetica, instead of Verdana, as Arial shares the same proportions as Helvetica, being effectively a ripoff. I know Arial is a scourge of the design world, but it is basically Windows ‘default version’ of Helvetica, rather than Verdana (which is ok, but changes the look of your site significantly).

Burak Önal’s last blog post…Google’dan Wikipedia’ya rakip

I laughed when I read Papyrus! Papyrus and Comic Sans are very over used. Luckily I don’t see it often coming from professionals. Just the self-proclaimed designers with MS Publisher at their fingertips. =).