Thinking about type

When we meet for the first time next week, we will be looking at a short history of type and how this relates to screen based fonts and moving type. You might want to look at a few things first to familiarise yourselves with the area. A great resource is the one at fontshop and they keep adding to it. (See links at the bottom of the blog page)If you want to try building your own font using grid structures try the font builder at FontStruct.com for hours of fun making your own. Beware it can be quite addictive. For a good typography blog follow ilovetypography (again the link is at the bottom)not just for information but to look at in terms of how a blog might work.Once we get into moving type, which will be the second week (hopefully) title sequences will become important and art of the title is a good place to look. I am asking Mike to post some resources and other stuff on moodle for people to look at as well, so again, if you have time, cast your eye over what is available. We will be going through this stuff in seminars though, so dont worry if you havnt got time.
I was thinking about the things we are supposed to do during the course of the module and one of these tasks is to annotate a text. The image at the top is of an annotated page and it seems to me that this page itself is interesting in terms of how it visually communicates. The contrast between hand written text and the type set page, the introduction of colour to highlight certain elements that are important etc. all combine to make an image that communicates interrogation of a text. Perhaps we can look at tasks that make visual images, at the same time as making academic sense. For instance could we work on creating examples of moving type using simple technology within a seminar session. I would be interested to hear your thoughts.