Author: Test User

Reading in the US web standards

US web standards crop

Good typography is at the heart of government and public services: it enables access to information, builds trust, and ensures accessibility. This statement will not surprise anyone who appreciated the impact of the redesigned GOV.uk site, and similar efforts in other european countries. Well, now the US government has published its own comprehensive guidelines for the web, to “set a new bar for simplicity and consistency across government services”.

Dig down a bit, and the Reading connection is clear: the two typefaces recommended for all US government websites are Merriweather and Source Sans Pro. Merriweather was designed by MATD alumnus Eben Sorkin, and was based on his research at Reading for his typeface Arrotino. Source Sans Pro was designed by MATD alumnus Paul D. Hunt, as part of his work at Adobe.

It’s a nice thought that, through the work of graduates, a little bit of Reading’s methodology and attention to detail has found its way on sites that can impact so many lives.

Granshan hits the spot

Jae-joon Han at Granshan

Granshan is devoted to the development of typographic awareness in global scripts, through its annual competition and conference. This year Reading hosted the fourth conference, after Yeravan, Bangkok, and Munich. Over three days, the conference touched on the business of type design, training, support for minority and endangered scripts, the development of resources for complex scripts, and severals aspects of design for global scripts.

Victoria Sarapina

A tight schedule combined a dense pace punctuated by generous break times, to allow for new connections. To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the MATD, the first day was devoted to globally prominent speakers who were also graduates of programme.

Adi Stern

Lively discussions followed several presentations, and engaged gatherings continued long after each day’s talks had ended. Feedback for the event was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, creating combination of in-depth but accessible discourse in global typeface design:

The conference included two special events. The first celebrated the Murty Classical Library of India series by Harvard University Press, with a salutation by Tim Jones, and presentations by Fiona Ross, Rathna Ramanathan, and John Hudson. The second was a very special calligraphy duet with Timothy Donaldson representing Europe and Kang Byung-in representing Korea, in an impressively packed studio in Typography.

Granshan calliduel

The conference ended with an after-party organised by the current MATD students. More than twenty countries were represented by speakers, and many more by attendees, underlining the strength and extent of the current network of typeface design.An exceptional AV team produced a liveblog of the conference, and had uploaded most talks before even the end of the conference on the Granshan YouTube Channel.

The conference generated wide coverage and social media recorded very enthusiastic comments by attendees as well as speakers, exemplified by this tweet:

During the closing statements Boris Kochan announced that the 2016 Granshan will take place in Seoul. Follow @GranshanConf for updates!

 

Apple’s new system fonts

Antonio Cavedoni at WWDC

 

There is a good community of Typography graduates working at Apple, and in recent days we got a peek at what they’ve been working on. During the annual World Wide Developers Conference held in San Franscisco MATD graduate Antonio Cavedoni took to the stage to introduce the new system fonts for the Apple platforms.

The talk is an excellent overview of the work that typeface designers do “behind the scenes” to ensure the texts we read on our devices are readable and well-structured – and a superb introduction to the level of detail that typeface designers work every day.

Reading in Eye’s typography issue

Eye magazine cover

The latest issue of Eye magazine, the international review of graphic design, is dedicated to typography and typeface design. The Department is very well represented in the issue: it includes an extensive profile of Fred Smeijers, long-time collaborator of Eric Kindel on research in stencil letterforms, and past External Examiner for the MA Typeface Design programme. Our graduate Paul Barnes wrote a tribute to James Mosley’s contributions to scholarship in typography, and Gerry Leonidas led Beyond Latin, a panel article on typeface design for global scripts featuring John Hudson, Neelakash Kshetrimayum, Kamal Mansour, and Pascal Zoghbi.

Google PlayBooks have new typeface by Reading graduates

literata typeface

Google’s PlayBooks application features a new typeface family by Type-Together, which was founded by Reading alumni Veronika Burian and José Scaglione. The brief for the new typeface demanded an outstanding reading experience across a wide range of devices and high resolution screens utilising different rendering technologies. Furthermore, the new typeface family was expected to avoid conventions for e-Readers that have roots in the lower resolutions of earlier devices, and demonstrate how e-Readers could provide a typographic environment comparable to printed pages.
The typeface, called Literata, not only had to define a distinct visual identity for Google’s native app, but achieve this across the three scripts required for pan-european coverage. Fellow MATD alumna Irene Vlachou worked on the Greek character set, with support from Gerry Leonidas. Images of the typeface are available on Flickr.

 

Typography tops the bill in the REF

Typography & Graphic Communication is proud to have achieved the highest GPA score (3.51) in UoA 34 (Art and Design: History, Practice, Theory), and the best REF result at the University of Reading.

Our overall score was: 56 per cent 4*; 39 per cent 3*; 5 per cent 2*.

Typography’s research covers the history, theory and practice of ‘design for reading’, with particular emphasis on information design, typeface design and book design. Research submitted to the REF included monographs, papers in refereed journals, type design and book design practice, and exhibition design and curation: 46 per cent was given the highest grade, described as ‘world leading’, and a 46 per cent was thought to be ‘internationally excellent’.

Typography’s high-scoring impact result (70 per cent assessed as 4*) reflected Departmental strategy of developing research projects with direct input from research users or with a clear view of the potential public benefit of the research.

Enriching communities of literacy, on the design of typefaces for world scripts traced how Departmental research has been used by organisations including Adobe, Microsoft and Nokia to create access to communication for large language communities, many of which have not, previously, had access to technology using their own scripts.

Designing information for everyday reading demonstrated how wide-ranging Departmental research into the design of functional documents, both historically and in current applied contexts, provided a knowledge base for collaborative projects with government departments (National Offender Management Service, the Cabinet Office and HMRC) which influenced their practices and brought benefit to the public they serve. Public exhibition of some of the Department’s research has changed perceptions of the development and role of communication in civic society.

Typography student winner of University MA prize

We’re very pleased that Tomoko Yamamoto, who recently completed the MA in Information Design, was awarded the University’s Outstanding Taught Postgraduate Student award at her graduation on Friday.

To be eligible for the prize, a student must achieve distinction-level grades in every one of the modules they study as part of their Master’s programme. The award is then made to the student with the highest mark for their dissertation, and the highest overall weighted average mark. This year competition was fierce, with 20 students from subjects across the University achieving distinction marks in every module.

The award was presented to Tomoko by the Chancellor, Sir John Madejski. Ole Lund, programme director for Information Design, said ‘This award is a wonderful recognition of Tomoko’s hard work and we are very proud of her achievement.’ Professor Peter Miskell, Taught Postgraduate Recruitment Project Leader, commented ‘This clearly reflects well not just on Tomoko’s outstanding performance, but also on the Department more widely, and the calibre of students Typography & Graphic Communication is able to recruit.’

Tomoko, whose dissertation topic was the communication of tsunami evacuation procedures, joined the MA programme to consolidate professional experience she had gathered in medical research communication. She is planning to continue her career in information design research.

Successful undergraduate summer research project

Mel and Peter

Congratulations go to Part 3 students, Mel Towriss and Peter Loveland (pictured above) who, over the summer, took part in the University’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programme (UROP) and worked with Centre for Information Design Research. Their project examined how on-screen text format affected people’s reading speed and comprehension, as well as people’s views on which text formats were most appropriate for different purposes. The texts used for the study dealt with employers’ responsibilities to run a payroll and were drawn from the GOV.UK web site. Mel and Peter found strong agreement among study participants regarding the text formats; for example, what might be appropriate for beginner or professional readers of the information. Reading times for the different formats did not differ significantly across format but there were differences in comprehension of the information they presented. Mel and Peter were runners up in a research poster  competition for all students taking part in the UROP scheme and will be taking their poster to the 2015 British Conference of Undergraduate Research.