PUBLISHING 2 : Mass Communication | Exercises
Week 1 - Week 9
Wynne Pankusya
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Exercises
LECTURE NOTES
Formats are anything regarding creating the book. Format is the shape which is determined by the content. Book is the oldest format. By creating a book, you need to understand the typography, sense, details, and also software in this modern era.
Innovation almost always shadows technology
This means that new technology creates opportunity. There are different formats used across time in different civilisations around the world, their uniqueness and the possible reasons for their decline.
1. Iran-Iraq = Mesopotamian Civilisation
2. Egypt = Ancient Egyptian Civilisation
3. India-Pakistan-Afghanistan = Indus Valley Civilization
4. China = Han Chinese Civilisation
5. Europe (Turkey & beyond) = European Civilization
For Mesopotamia Denise Schmandt-Besserat (1995) contends in her essay on the token system “Record Keeping Before Writing,” that “It is remarkable that the first writing system developed from a counting technology.” The progression from simple and complex tokens to bullae set the stage for the early forms of pictographic writing on clay tablets.
In the Indus River Valley Civilizations (Harappan & Mohenjodaro) there is not much known about record keeping but we do know they had a complex system. Their writing, cuneiform, was one of the earliest systems of writing. They wrote records about their government, religion, and trade. Cuneiform was written on soft clay tablets by using sharp pointed tools.
The scribes were the only people in ancient Egypt that could read and write Hieroglyphics. The Egyptian scribes wrote on a special type of paper called papyrus. In addition to writing on papyrus the Egyptians also would write on the tomb walls. The word papyrus refers to a thick type of paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant (Cyperus papyrus).
Chinese characters in the early period are written in vertical columns, so a thin strip of bamboo is ideal for a single column. To create a longer document, two lines of thread link each bamboo strip to its neighbour. The modern Chinese character for a book evolves from a pictogram of bamboo strips threaded together. An imperial court eunuch by the name of Cai Lun submitted a report in 105 CE of a new substance; paper. The earliest known printed book is Chinese, from the end of the T'ang dynasty. Discovered in a cave at Dunhuang in 1899, it is a precisely dated document.
Using paper, it is in a scroll format. Paper was invented as mentioned earlier in 179-41 BCE. Printing from wood blocks, as in the Diamond Sutra, is a laborious process. Yet the Chinese printers work wonders. In the 10th and 11th centuries all the Confucian classics are published for the use of scholar officials, together with huge numbers of Buddhist and Daoist works (amounting to around 5000 scrolls of each) and the complete Standard Histories since the time of Sima Qian.
The carving of so many characters in reverse on wood blocks is an enormous investment of labour, but the task is unavoidable until the introduction of movable type. This innovation, once again, seems to have been pioneered in China but achieved in Korea.
Parchment was first invented in Turkey, 197–159 BC, which later spread to Europe. Parchment is made from animal hide. With papyrus and bamboo one could make scrolls but with leather this was not possible as it was to thick and heavy. Around 50 AD, Europeans started making parchment books.
The use of paper would make it slow journey west, from China to Persia-Arab empires and eventually through Turkey vis-à-vis the Ottoman empire to mainland Europe.
Paper becomes widely available in Europe during 1400-1500 CE. The ingredient to make paper changes until 1860s when wood pulp is first used to print the Boston Weekly Journal. While paper made its journey relatively late, the folding format started to take a foot hold in ‘the west’ at the turn of the century. First with wooden blocks with thread sewn to hold them together and then with parchment and later with paper, where paper was sewn, bound and glued together.
Lecture 2 : History of Prints
2nd - 8th Century Ad
The six main classics of confucianism carved in stone. These important texts simply lay sheets of paper on the engraved slabs and rub all over it with charcoal or graphite taking away a text in white letters on a black ground
Korea and Japan : AD 750-768
The world's earliest known printed document is a sutra printed on a single sheet of paper in Korea. Then followed by Japan by a bold experiment in mass circulation. The Hyakumanto Darani literally the One Million Pagodas & Dharani Prayers, is a famous large-scal woodblock printing, the earliest recorded uses of woodblock printing in Japan.
The First Printed book : Ad 868
The earliest known printed book is Chinese, from the end of the T'ang Dynasty. It's a scroll, 16 feet long and a foot high, formed of sheets of paper glued together at their edges.
Chinese publishing : 10th-11th century
Introduction of moveable type to avoid carving so many characters, but seems have been pioneered in China but achieved in Korea.
Moveable Type : from the 11th Century.
Moveable type (separate ready-made characters or letters which can be arranged in the correct order for a particular text and then reused) is a necessary step before printing can become an efficient medium for disseminating information. Experimented by China but the Chinese script has so many characters and Chinese printers cast their characters in clay and then fire them as pottery.
Type foundry in Korea : c.1380
Korea created their own national alphabet which is han'gul.
Saints and playing cards : ADc 1400
More than six centuries after its invention in the east, the technique of printing from woodblocks is introduced in Europe. Later in 15th century, technical advances are made in Germany which rapidly transform printing from a cottage industry to a cornerstone of western civilization
Gutenberg & Western printing: AD 1439-1457
The name of Gutenberg first appears, in connection with printing. Witnesses, asked about Gutenberg's stock, describe a press and a supply of metal type. Guternberg's great achievement in the story of printing has several components. One is his development of printing press, capable of applying a rapid but steady downward pressure. The concept of the press is not new. The significant are Gutenberg's skill with metal (his original trade is that of a goldsmith).
The World's Largest Book
The world largest book stands upright set in stone, in the grounds of the Kuthodaw pagoda at the foot of Mandalay Hill in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma).
In conclusion, paper was invented in China 179-41 BCE. It is probably one of the most important ingredients in the the process of printing.
Transfer was initially done via rubbing (stone to paper), hence mass production was enabled. The earliest printed document was in Korea, wood block printing in Korea & Japan takes place around 750–768 CE, text carved into wooden blocks. These were great achievements of the Buddhist era.
The introduction of moveable type was introduced in the 1000-1100 CE. This innovation was pioneered in China but achieved in Korea (Diamond Sutra). In the late 1300-1399 CE, several decades before the earliest printing in Europe (Guttenberg’s bible 1439), the Koreans establish a foundry to cast movable type in bronze.
Lecture 3 : Typo Redux
Typography is the art or arranging and composing text, it is also a medium for expression and most importantly communication. It plays a central role in any design work.
Characters in typeface consist of
- Small Caps
- Numerals
- Fractions
- Ligatures
- Punctuations
- Mathematical signs
- Symbols
- Non aligning figures
If the goal when working with type is to make
a body of text more readable, then heeding established legibility guidelines is of utmost importance. Today with a computer we are able to do many things when we are type setting (formatting text). With this came abuse as many people weren’t aware of the typographic conventions (rules) and flagrantly violated them at the expense of the reader.
a body of text more readable, then heeding established legibility guidelines is of utmost importance. Today with a computer we are able to do many things when we are type setting (formatting text). With this came abuse as many people weren’t aware of the typographic conventions (rules) and flagrantly violated them at the expense of the reader.
Small Caps & All Caps: Small Capitals are good for subheads or for the first line of a paragraph. Text set in All Caps should be used in short headlines or subheads. All Caps should never be used for long sentences and for emphasis.
Special-Purpose Style: Many formatting styles exist within software's for making footnotes, references, and mathematical formulas. These tend to be embedded or nested within the tools sections and a lay user may not be aware of its functions.
Text Scaling: Some program allow for the user to create a pseudo-condense or pseudo-extended font by horizontally or vertically squeezing or stretching a font. This distorts the original design of the font. You should never do this, it distorts the font and makes the messaging appear cheap – trust me, you don’t want that.
Outline & Shadow: Another style that tends to be abused a lot is the outline or shadow styles. This happens when deluded individuals through a flick of a mouse, and the aid of a software, think they can do magical things. Its takes many years of practice and many more years of experience before one can format text beautifully and effectively. Please avoid outline and shadow as far as possible.
Text that flow naturally when read, is achieved when a harmonious relationship exists between type size, line length, and spaces between lines of type (line spacing or leading)
Even well designed typefaces suffer from legibility impairment when just one of these aspects is out of balance.
A column of type usually is about 50 characters across, and no more than 65 characters. Type that is too small will “cram” too many letters per line and make the copy hard to read. Remember, type that is hard to read may not be read at all. Font size, determines line length, which in turn determines line spacing. The following below showcases the appropriate line length for the font size. The number of characters per line is at 50. This as you now know is the suggested number of characters a column of text should have.
Many times, simply typing in the text and formatting the font, size, and line spacing is enough. However, depending on the program used, extra attention is needed. Larger type sizes need adjustments to the space between characters; and paragraphs need to be adjusted to eliminate “widows” and “orphans.”
Kerning: Inter-character spacing, known as kerning, creates a more pleasing look to the text. Most word processors do not allow kerning adjustments and most page-layout programs apply kerning auto-matically; however, certain letter combinations may require manual adjustments.
Tracking: The adjustment of word spacing is called Tracking. It is similar to kerning but refers to the adjustment of a selection of characters, words, and spaces. Its main purpose is to make type fit a required space without altering the type size or line spacing.Tracking can be either negative, making the words closer together; or positive, making the words farther apart. An important use for tracking is to fix single words (or 2–3 short words) at the end of a paragraph (sometimes called orphans or danglers).
Italics:
Italics and oblique type should be used with prudence, for large amounts of slanted characters set into text impede reading. Italics are best suited to create emphasis within text rather than to function as text.
Capitals:
TEXT SET IN CAPITAL NOT ONLY CONSUMES MORE SPACE THAN TEXT SET IN LOWERCASE, IT SEVERLY RETARDS THE READING PROCESS. LOWER-CASE LETTERS IMBUE TEXT WITH VISUAL CUES CREATED BY AN ABUNDANCE OF LETTER SHAPES, ASCENDARS, DESCENDARS AND IRREGULAR WORD SHAPES. TEXT SET IN ALL CAPITALS IS VOID OF THESE CUES, FOR IT LACKS THIS VISUAL VARIETY.
Special formatting
Hyphens are usually used only to divide words or numbers, but they also are used to break words from one line to the next. Headlines and subheads should never be hyphenated at a line ending.
Dashes come in two varieties: the en-dash and the em-dash. En-dashes are slightly longer than hyphens (usually, the width of the letter “N”), and are used to separate ranges of items, such as dates, quantities, and time. As a rule, if you can substitute the word “to” or “through”
En-dashes are slightly longer than hyphens (usually, the width of the letter “N”), and are used to separate ranges of items, such as dates, quantities, and time. As a rule, if you can substitute the word “to” or “through” in place of the dash, then the dash is used correctly.
The em-dash is used in place of a comma to set off a section of the sentence that requires special emphasis. However, it does have other uses, such as preceding the attribution of a quote. Typically, em-dashes are the width of the letter “M”.
Drop caps are used to start off new chapters and special sections of a report. You can create the cap, then alter the font, the style, and the color of the character through the use of a Character style. Many programs have settings to automatically create the drop caps; if the program does not have automatic settings, drop caps should be avoided.
A sidebar is the text that accompanies the main body copy. It is usually an added description that has some relation to the main narrative but isn't important enough to be part of it. I is sometimes used to highlight alternate narrative's or facts or to describe an image used alongside the main body text in line with the sidebar. It is a good practice to maintain a leading that is similar to the main body text despite the smaller font size.
Character Styles refers to the formatting controls that are specific to the character/Fornt; Point Size, Leading, Kerning, Tracking etc.
Paragraph Styles refers to the formatting controls that control the formatting of entire paragraphs; Alignment, Indentation, paragraph spacing, paragraph rules, etc.
INSTRUCTIONS
EXERCISES
The 3000 words
Exercises
Exercises
Before we create our own books, there are exercises that we need to do. And it's mostly using A3 paper.
1. Determining Book sizes
With A3 paper, cutter, and ruler. We need to create some desired sizes for the book and it's not supposed to exceed A4 size or smaller than A5.
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| 1.1 Determine the sizes |
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| 1.2 Cutting the paper into different sizes |
2. Staple binding for selected size
After the right size is chosen, we need to create a mock up of the book with staple binding. Consisted of 16 pages for the content and 2 pages for back and front cover
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| 1.3 Staple binding for the book |
Using A3, we have to fold them until there are 16 pages.
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| 1.4 Front part (page 1) |
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| 1.5 After folding |
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| 1.6 On A3 Paper manually |
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| 1.7 Created using InDesign |
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| 1.8 Created using InDesign |
5. Text Specimen Sheet
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| 1.9 Text Specimen |
FEEDBACK
Week 2
General Feedback : On introduction, you can put either subtext or pull quote. Pull quote is a “caption”. Don’t forget to follow the format carefully. On ISBN, we can put our birthday numbers.
Specific Feedback : Finish the first parts of the format (before the contents). Highlight the part that you wanted to illustrate
Week 3
Specific Feedback : There’s a wide mix of styles. A little eclectic. The top two on the right seem good. Start your visuals ASAP. There’s not much time left.
Specific Feedback : There’s a wide mix of styles. A little eclectic. The top two on the right seem good. Start your visuals ASAP. There’s not much time left.
Week 4
Specific Feedback: The visuals look empty and try not to run from the visual references since it will be difficult for me to continue as there are no bench mark.
Week 5
General Feedback : Try to experimental with the layout to make it more interesting
REFLECTIONS
Experience
To create the exercise was hard since I'm not that good with cutting, measuring, folding and others related with papers. There are some mistakes that I made throughout creating it. However it's always satisfying to see when it's done correctly. For the 3000 words, it was really hard for me to determine what I wanted to write about and how to actually explain it in 3000 words. It was too much for me since I don't have a lot of things to talk about especially to write it in english. And also to visualise it later, I need to really think about what I'm going to write about.
Observation
The process of creating a book is not easy at all as there are a lot of considerations and understanding of the content beforehand. Grid is also very important. I never thought before that grid is such a crucial thing to look at when creating a book or published media.
Findings
There are a lot of things that I learned besides the previous publishing class. Last time was more towards to brochures and magazines, now it's a book. It's not an easy work but the more we understand about formats and such, we could create a book that we wanted and what other people wouldn't mind reading
To create the exercise was hard since I'm not that good with cutting, measuring, folding and others related with papers. There are some mistakes that I made throughout creating it. However it's always satisfying to see when it's done correctly. For the 3000 words, it was really hard for me to determine what I wanted to write about and how to actually explain it in 3000 words. It was too much for me since I don't have a lot of things to talk about especially to write it in english. And also to visualise it later, I need to really think about what I'm going to write about.
Observation
The process of creating a book is not easy at all as there are a lot of considerations and understanding of the content beforehand. Grid is also very important. I never thought before that grid is such a crucial thing to look at when creating a book or published media.
Findings
There are a lot of things that I learned besides the previous publishing class. Last time was more towards to brochures and magazines, now it's a book. It's not an easy work but the more we understand about formats and such, we could create a book that we wanted and what other people wouldn't mind reading
FURTHER READINGS
Week 1 - Week 2
Bhaskaran, Lakshmi, 2006, What is Publication Design?, RotoVision
Fig 2.1 Cover
Fig 2.2 Design Considerations
The first thing that I thought by looking at this book was that the title is actually the same question I wanted to ask about and I believe it’s consist of explanations that I’m looking for. As it was mentioned by the lecturer, I found out that there’s a part where they cover about design considerations.
The book explained that there are numbers of practical design considerations to take into account when designing a publication, such as layout, format, color, and image, as well as the use of hierarchies and grids. And the book also shows the debate between readability and legibility and how it’s relevant to the publication design. Legibility refers to the typeform, or individual character, while readability is concerned with the speed and ease with which a text can be read.
FURTHER READINGS
Week 1 - Week 2
Bhaskaran, Lakshmi, 2006, What is Publication Design?, RotoVision
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| Fig 2.1 Cover |
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| Fig 2.2 Design Considerations |
The first thing that I thought by looking at this book was that the title is actually the same question I wanted to ask about and I believe it’s consist of explanations that I’m looking for. As it was mentioned by the lecturer, I found out that there’s a part where they cover about design considerations.
The book explained that there are numbers of practical design considerations to take into account when designing a publication, such as layout, format, color, and image, as well as the use of hierarchies and grids. And the book also shows the debate between readability and legibility and how it’s relevant to the publication design. Legibility refers to the typeform, or individual character, while readability is concerned with the speed and ease with which a text can be read.
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