Brand Identity Design Basics

Designing a brand identity involves creating a cohesive and memorable representation of a brand that communicates its values and personality. Creating a strong emotional bond with consumers is crucial for making a lasting impression and differentiating your brand from its competitors. Successful branding often involves crafting a story or experience that resonates on a personal level, making the brand more relatable and memorable.

Clearly articulating what the brand stands for, including its core values, mission, and the benefits it offers to customers helps in building a strong connection with the target audience. Branding is the process of creating and managing the distinct identity and perception of a business, product, or individual in the minds of consumers. It involves defining and establishing a unique position and reputation in the market.

What is Brand Identity Design?

Brand identity design is the process of creating and developing the visual and conceptual elements that represent and distinguish a brand. It involves crafting a well thought out visual representation that communicates the brand’s values and personality to its target audience.

The evolution of logos is a fascinating journey that reflects changes in design trends, technology, and cultural influences.
Clarity, simplicity, scalability, timelessness, emotional impact, clear messaging make for a memorable brand identity.
Image Credits : Pinterest & Google 

 

Key Elements of Brand Identity Design

1. Logo: A logo is a graphical symbol or emblem that represents the brand. It’s the core component of the brand’s visual identity. Its purpose is to provide a visual shorthand for the brand, making it easily recognisable and memorable. A logo concept visually represents the brand’s identity and values. Consider the shape, colour, typography, and symbols to be used in the logo. Ensure the logo works well in different sizes and formats, from business cards to billboards. 

2. Colour: Select a set of core colours that will be consistently used across all brand materials. Choose additional colours that complement the primary palette and provide flexibility in design. Understand the emotional and psychological impact of colors to convey the desired brand message. Colors evoke emotions and play a significant role in how the brand is perceived.

3. Typography: Select a main font that reflects the brand’s personality and is easily readable. Choose supporting fonts for headings, body text, and other elements to maintain visual hierarchy and consistency. Establish rules for font sizes, line spacing, and usage to ensure consistency. Usually use only 2-3 typefaces together as simplicity speaks volumes, and stick to using different weights of a typeface. Choose a font with a big family.

4. Visual Elements: Define the style and type of images that represent the brand, including photo treatment and usage guidelines. Develop custom graphics and icons that align with the brand’s visual style. The style of images, illustrations, and graphics that support the brand’s message and visual identity. This includes photography style, icons, and patterns.

5. Brand Voice & Tone: Define the brand’s overall communication style (e.g., professional, friendly, authoritative). Determine how the brand’s voice varies in different contexts or for different audiences. The tone, language, and messaging style used in all communications. This includes taglines, slogans, and the overall communication strategy.

6. Brand Guidelines: Creating a comprehensive document that outlines all aspects of the brand identity, including logo usage, color palette, typography, visual elements, and brand voice. Providing examples and templates for applying the brand identity across various touch points (e.g., website, social media, print materials).

Simple Brands are Eye-Catching

1. Clarity and Immediate Recognition: Memorability: Simple brands are easy to remember. Iconic logos like Nike’s swoosh or Apple’s apple are instantly recognisable and stick in the consumer’s mind. Simplicity allows for quick recognition even at a glance. Consumers can easily identify the brand among many competitors.

2. Versatility and Flexibility: Scalability: Simple designs scale well across different sizes and mediums, from business cards to billboards and digital screens. Adaptability: Simple brand elements can be adapted for various applications, such as product packaging, social media, and merchandise, without losing their impact.

3. Emotional Impact: Simple designs often evoke a stronger emotional connection. They communicate the brand’s essence without distractions, allowing consumers to connect with the core message. By stripping away unnecessary elements, simple brands focus on the key attributes that make the brand unique and appealing.

4. Ease of Use and Application: Simplicity in design makes it easier to apply the brand consistently across various platforms and touch points. Simple brands reduce the complexity for both the designer and the consumer. This streamlined approach ensures that the brand message is clear and unambiguous.

5. Enhances Brand Communication: Simplicity aids in clear communication of the brand’s values and promises. There’s less risk of the message being lost or misunderstood. Simple designs highlight the most important elements of the brand, making it easier for consumers to understand and relate to the brand’s core values.

Simple brands are eye-catching because they are clear, memorable, versatile, timeless, emotionally impactful, easy to use, and enhance brand communication. By focusing on simplicity, brands can create a strong and lasting impression that resonates with consumers.

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Layout Design Basics

Typography in Graphic Design

Good typography is imperative to when you want to translate an idea to another person via text — such as a poster, website, blog post, magazine ad, user interface, billboard, or even a newsletter. Your choice of typefaces and your technique of setting type give your composition its character, pace and style. Not only does it give the copy legibility, it also helps the reader gain a greater insight into the subject of the design. Typography is the art of arranging letters and text in a way that makes the copy legible, clear, and visually appealing to the reader. Typography involves font style, appearance, and structure, which aims to elicit certain emotions and convey specific messages. In short, typography is what brings the text to life.

There are three basic kinds of typefaces: serif, sans-serif, and decorative. It’s best to use a maximum of two fonts in a given design project, and one with a large family is often even better. It keeps your design uncluttered and simple. Try to pair serif fonts with sans-serif fonts, such as putting main body text in a sans-serif font and putting your title in a serif font, or vice-versa. Use decorative or display fonts minimally, and almost never for main-body text, because they often have low readability and just won’t look right most of the time.

image credit : pinterest

Good typography will establish a strong visual hierarchy, provide a graphic balance to your layout, and set the overall tone. Typography should guide and inform your users, optimize readability and accessibility, and ensure an excellent user experience. If it works in black & white. It will work in colour. The typeface you choose for your website depends on how you want your users to feel when they first enter your website. Do you want to emulate a friendly atmosphere? Do you want the site to feel high-end, welcoming, playful, or serious? It’s imperative that the typography reflects the personality of the brand or product.

The typeface you choose for your layout depends on how you want your users to feel when they first look at your design. Do you want to evoke feelings of joy? Do you want the design to feel high-end, welcoming, playful, or serious? It’s imperative that the typography reflects the personality of the brand or product.

 

Design Decisions to Consider When Designing for Print

Typography is the art of creating and arranging text to ensure content is readable and appealing. Typography’s history dates back to at least the mid-15th century when Johannes Gutenberg invented a movable printing press that brought the mass-produced Gutenberg Bible to the Western world.

Image Credit : Designinspiration

Tone and Mood: Decide what the tone and mood of the layout should be. Is it formal or casual? Playful or serious? Modern or traditional? Tone and mood can also vary depending upon your end product. For example, a  coffee table book will have a different vibe from that of a photobook. 

Readability: People often confuse legibility and readability. Legibility is how easily recognizable each letterform is within a typeface. Readability, though, is how easy the typeface actually is to read (especially in large blocks of text) and depends on a number of factors.

Proportion or Scale: Knowing the scale at which you will use the typefaces in your design allows for more informed design decisions. All elements on your page should be proportionate to each other.

Combining Typefaces: Using more than one typeface is a great way to add both visual interest and reinforce visual hierarchy. Creating a layout with a maximum of two typefaces is considered good practise, and one may fuse together even three fonts but you must be a clever fox to pull that off. 

Licensing: Font licensing is getting permission from a font creator or distributor to use a particular font in a certain way. Some fonts require you pay a fee to obtain certain usage rights, which involves purchasing the license, while others are free.

There’s an art to weaving words into a design without overshadowing or clashing with the other visual elements. It’s called typography, and its importance in graphic design is inarguable. We often think of graphic design as a computer-age invention. But books, broadsides, and newspapers have been around for centuries, and the quest for tools and techniques that simplify the printing process stretches back just as far.

One of the characteristics of typography design is that it gives personality to a design. Your design looks friendly, or high-end, playful, serious, welcoming, etc because of the strategic use of typefaces. You can use certain typefaces or reflect your brand’s traits. Graphic designers use typography to ascertain harmony when designing for print. A harmonic design has an artistic effect on viewers. The designers use the same font for similar content so that people can recognise it immediately. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in graphic design, text carries just as much weight as the images it sits next to.☻

images via pinterest

Image Credit : Pinterest

 

Visual Hierarchy In Graphic Design & Art Direction

Visual hierarchy in graphic design & art direction organizes elements to guide the viewer’s eye, leveraging size, colour, contrast, and placement to prioritize information. Visual hierarchy is a design principle that refers to how elements are arranged in a design or a photograph.

Art Directors & Designers use several compositional techniques to create focal points in design and photography. These techniques include the rule of thirds, which allows the focal point to be off-centre; the rule of odds, where an odd number of objects is pleasing to the eye; and implied movement, where objects are arranged to suggest movement. Visual hierarchy guides the viewer’s eyes across the page. Most people will read visual information in one of two ways, which guides designers in arranging page elements to hold the viewer’s attention.

  • Alignment and composition to create focal points
  • Consider reading patterns & shape
  • Colour and contrast draw the eye
  • White space creates emphasis
  • Scale and repetition creates unity
  • Signs & Symbols in graphic design & art direction
  • Texture and depth are also important for creating visual hierarchy

Image Credit : Pinterest

You can use digital tools such as mood-boards, style guides, brand guidelines, and personas to visualize and document your art direction. This will help to ensure consistency and alignment across your team as you strive to achieve your goals and convey your message. An art director collaborates with stylists, photographers and makeup artists for shoots and decides on the concept or theme everyone will work towards achieving. Its a bit hectic but totally worth the final outcome.☻

 

What is the Golden Ratio?

Also known as the golden section, the golden mean or the divine proportion, the golden ratio is basically understood as 1:1.618, and is derived from the famous mathematical Fibonacci sequence in which each number is the sum of the two numbers before it. The difference between any two numbers in this sequence isn’t always exactly equal to 1:1.618 but its rather close.

Image Credit : Pinterest

In the 1200s AD, the mathematician Leonardo Di Pisa (or Fibonacci) made some calculations, resulting in a series of numbers now called the Fibonacci sequence. The sequence looks like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21… Starting with 0 and 1, you’ll get the next number from the sequence by adding the previous two numbers together. As the numbers in sequence get larger, the ratio between them gets closer to 1:1.618. This is considered to be the Golden Ratio number.

The Golden Ratio is a mathematical ratio you can find almost anywhere, like nature, architecture, painting, and music. When specifically applied to design specifically, it creates an organic, balanced, and aesthetically pleasing composition.

 

The Purpose Of A Grid In Publication Design

There is a mathematical ratio found both in man-made design and in nature that creates aesthetically pleasing compositions in your design work. It’s called the Golden Ratio. The pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon and da Vinci’s painting of the last supper are all said to be designed and composed within the parameters of this ubiquitous and ancient equation. In design, a grid is a system for organising layout. The layouts could be for print (like a book, magazine, or poster), or for screen (like a webpage, app, or other user interfaces). There are a lot of different types of grid, and they all serve different purposes. Here are some of the main ones that i know and have put into my own practise : –

  1. Manuscript Grid
  2. Column Grid
  3. Modular Grid
  4. Hierarchal Grid

 

Publication design refers to the process of creating and designing layouts for things like newspapers, magazines, books, and the online equivalent to those. It includes elements like images, typography, and designers consider things like size and colour to make publications attractive, eye-catching, and easy to take in. Publication design can encompass a wide range of formats, from single-page newsletters to multi-page magazines. Some common types of publication design include: Newspaper / tabloid magazine, books – novels, coffee table books, photo-book, online newsletters, online magazines, e-books, blogs, digital reports, digital catalogues, digital brochures, design inspiration: magazine, web design publications, and many more.

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TypeMood & Crowds

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There are 8 principles to live by when applying text and image in visual design. Images help create a connection with the text and can clarify the information presented in a layout by adding meaning and evoking associations. An image on its own, however, is not enough to be meaningful unless it’s a photograph where the composition is of supreme importance. There are certain elements of typography, which collectively emote various moods in a composition. Below are 8 elements. ☻

 

  

Figure and ground

The relationship of an object and its space, of foreground to the background, contrasting similar to dissimilar, activating the whole composition. The prime factor of the composition is its white space. i.e. the space that is not filled with text blocks, images or graphics. The white space is actually the most misunderstood mood of typography. White space is a deciding factor as to whether the composition is neat or messy.

 

The white space or negative space can be highlighted through the use of scale and even color. But color is a crazy subject, so I shall address that in my next post in grave detail.

 

 

 

Active

A composition where a rhythm and proportion emerge to keep the focus within the elements. An active page layout with type blocks and just singular type isn’t that much of a biggie. But to place each element (type) in its rightful well-deserved spot is the magic act. One can even use kerning and leading to find space and re-create the composition. An active page layout often evokes emotions of joy and happiness.

 

 

  

Passive

A composition where no emotions are evoked, but at the same time a focal point is maintained within the composition. The elements within the composition are connected in a subdued, obedient and docile state. A passive page layout will not have any eye – movement nor any focal point. Passive composition can be mistaken for a boring page layout, but it’s just as simplistic as a layout of text blocks, type and graphics.

 

 

  

Symmetry

This composition creates stability and order. There is no tension in any elements of the composition. Symmetry is formed when all the elements of the composition are equal in scale and proportions. No element is out of its place, and that the visual is complete in itself.

 

 

  

Asymmetry

An asymmetrical composition is dynamic and there is an informed use of white space. There are unequal and uneven shapes which are formed due to positioning of the elements inside the composition.

 

 

  

Grids & Margins

This composition defines the structure of its elements. The use of columns, grids, margins, horizontally and vertically, to make sense of information. One can use this principle to organise heaps of information.

 

 

  

Hierarchy

The establishing of order and emphasis, from an understanding and manipulation of the content, within a composition. Hierarchy is achieved with the prominence of the typographic elements relative to each other. You’d first have to start with a focal point or a visual anchor, within the composition or page. Then gradually design the layout; place the other elements after thorough speculations over the scale and the movement of the eye. You’d want your composition to have the right rhythm and proportions.

 

 

  

Visual anchor

This design principle establishes an immediate focus within a composition, and a point around which the design is oriented. Any one element is either magnified or reduced to create drama within a composition. How you decide to weave all elements together, is really your call as a designer.

 

There are various examples where we can apply the principles of text and image in visual communication. However, in print design the principles are applied differently as opposed to the web space, simply because of legibility as it affects the reader’s ability to read, and in typography the main thing to remember is that the user must be able to read what’s in front of them.

 

 

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Print & Publish

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Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information, available for public view.

“Some books are to be tasted, other are to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed on and digested.” – Francis Bacon.

Primitive Visual Forms

Scrolls

A scroll is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper which has been written, drawn or painted upon for the purpose of transmitting information or using as a decoration.


Papyrus (P. BM EA 10591 recto column IX, beginning of lines 13–17)  foundation of modern paper. Image: Wikimedia

A scroll is usually divided up into pages, which are sometimes separate sheets of papyrus or parchment glued together at the edges, or may be marked divisions of continuous roll of writing material. The scroll is usually unrolled, so that one page is exposed at a time, for writing or reading, with the remaining pages rolled up to the left and right of the visible page. It is unrolled from side to side, and the text is written in lines from the top to the bottom of the page. The letters may be written left to right, right to left. Some scrolls may have wooden rollers on each end.

Hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphs was a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained the combination of logo graphic and alphabetic elements.


Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or signs. Image via Pinterest

Hieroglyphs emerged from the pre-literate artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from Circa 4000 B.C. resemble hieroglyphic writing. They refer to the characters made by graphical figures. Ancient egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood.

Hieroglyphs consist of 3 kinds of glyphs: Phonetic glyphs, including single hyphen consonant characters that functioned like an alphabet; logographs, representing morphemes; and determinatives, which narrowed down the meaning of a logo graphic of phonetic words.

Cuneiform

Cuneiform script is a pictographic form of writing. It emerged in the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq around the 34 century B.C.

Digitising Iran's cuneiform collection | University of Oxford

Cuneiforms on a solid stone slab. Image via PinterestThe cuneiform writing system was in use for more than thirty centuries, through several stages of evolution. It consists of a combination of logo phonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs. The writing direction was changed to left to right in horizontal rows, and a new wedge-tipped stylus was used which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped signs; these two developments made writing quicker and easier. By adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions.

Codex

A codex is a book in the format used for modern books, with separate pages normally bound together and given a cover.


A historic codex book. Image via Britannica

The basic form of the codex was invented in Pergamon in the third century BCE. The codex also made it easier to organize documents in a library because it had a stable spine on which the title of the book could be written. The spine could be used for the incipit, before the concept of a proper title was developed. Most early codices were made of papyrus, which was fragile. The only place where papyrus grew and was made into paper, became scanty; the more durable parchment and vellum gained favour, despite the cost. It was a roman invention that replaced the scroll.

 

Printing Came of Age

Woodblock

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout east Asia and originating in china in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper.


Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or signs. Image via MOMA

The wood block is prepared as a relief matrix, which means the areas to show “white” are cut away with a knife, chiseled or sandpaper leaving the characters or image to show in black at the original surface level.

                         Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or signs. Image via MOMA

The art of carving the woodcut is technically known as xylography. The earliest surviving examples from china date to before 220 A.D. Woodblock printing in china is strongly associated to Buddhism relative to charms and sutras.

Woodcut

Woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed typically with gouges.

                                                                     Utagawa Hiroshige’s First Station: Shinagawa (品川), Forty-Eighth Station: Sakanoshita (坂ノ下). Images via Pinterest   

The areas to show white are cut away, with the help of a knife or chisel, leaving the characters or image to show in black at the original surface level. The block is cut along the grain of wood. The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with an ink covered roller (brayer) leaving ink upon the flat surface but not in the printing areas. Different blocks are used for printing various colors.

Gravure

Gravure, also known as intaglio is another form of printing that has its roots in 15th century Europe.

                             Artist Martin Lewis’ intaglio print during the renaissance period in Europe. Image via Blenderartists.org

It is a process that involves etching an image onto the surface of a plate which is then inked and wiped clean, leaving ink only in the recessed areas. When printed under pressure, the paper draws the ink out of the engraved areas, transferring the image onto paper.

Gravure evolved over the years to accommodate multi-color printing at high speeds; it results in high grade image production. It is an industrial printing process mainly used for the high- speed production of large print magazines, and runs at a constant and top quality.

Manuscripts

An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which text is supplemented by the addition of decoration. Such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations.

Illuminated Jain manuscript from medieval India. Image via Pinterest

To make the manuscript, the text was usually written first. Sheets of vellum, animal hides, were cut down to the appropriate size. After the general layout of the page was planned, the page was lightly ruled with a pointed stick, and the scribe went to work with ink-pot and either sharpened quill feather or reed pen.

Manuscripts using all upper-case letters are called majuscule, those using all lower case are called miniscule. They were very popular during the middle ages.

 

The Letterpress

 Printing is a term for the relief printing of the text an image using the press, with a type-high bed. Printing press and movable type in which the reversed raised surface is in. and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a positive right reading image.

 

                   Legendary renaissance print-maker Johannes Gutenberg with his team and his machine. Images via Google

It was the normal form of printing text in the west from its invention by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid 15th century until the 19th century and remained in wide use for books and other uses until the second half of the 20th century.

In the case of letterpress printing, each page of type is used as the mold for a papier-mache mat, which is actually a copy in reverse of that page of type. The mold in turn is used to make a metal copy of the entire page, and this metal copy is used for printing.

This was the traditional way to print newspapers. Variations of this printing technique may use plastic or rubber plates. Because several plates can be made from each original, brand new type can be introduced at regular intervals, ensuring that copies remain sharp and clear.

                Gutenberg’s printing press machine also known as the letterpress. Image via Pinterest

 

Guttenberg fitted four pieces of wood around the letter-shaped hollow, called a matrix, to form an open box. He then poured molten metal into the box, allowing it to fill up the matrix. After the metal had cooled and hardened, the sides of the box were removed, leaving a small block with the letter in relief.

 

 

Gutenberg’s printing press machine also known as the letterpress. Image via Pinterest

He, then reassembled the box to produce as many copies of each letter as he needed. The walls of the box formed a mold that could be adjusted to fit all letters. This mold made possible the development of a less expensive and faster method of printing than had previously been in use.

The best metal for the movable type was a mixture of lead, tin, and antimony. This alloy had the advantage that it did not shrink when cooled, so all letters resembled the original matrix, and the pieces of type could be linked in rows.

Type was stored in cabinet drawers, called cases. Each case held a complete set of type in a particular style and size, called font. It was the convention for printers to keep their capital letters, now referred to as upper-case letters, separate from their small, or lower-case letters.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or signs. Image via Pinterest

Letters were removed from the type case, and arranged in rows in a small metal tray. Space bars were inserted to adjust the width of the line. Filling out a line became known as justification.

When the metal tray had been filled with justified lines, the lines were transferred to a larger metal tray called a galley. The galley was inked when the printer had made sure that there were no mistakes in the set type. The printed sheet of paper that was produced became known as the galley proof.

 

The Gutenberg Bible

The first book of any note to be printed with movable type was Gutenberg’s bible, published in 1456. Printed in Latin, its pages consist of two columns of type, each 42 lines long. It is 1282 pages long.

In producing this book, the type was arranged on each page, and inked before the paper was pressed down on it. After removing the sheet of paper, the type would then have been re-inked before another sheet of paper was placed on it.

Gutenberg printed about 200 bibles in a five-year period. Each of the printed characters in the bible was made to resemble handwriting. Because the type in the Gutenberg bible makes the printed page very dark, it is called black letter. It has wide mrgins and the pages are well designed.

As compared with the traditional water-based ink used in manuscripts, Gutenberg had to develop a new kind of ink, an oil based on carbon, with high metallic content, including copper, lead and titanium.

“It is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams…. through it, god will spread his word. A spring of truth shall flow from it: like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light heretofore unknown to shine amongst men” – JG

 

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or signs. Image via Pinterest

 

Lithography

 “Lithography (which means “stone-writing) is based on the principle that water and grease do not mix. Ink is applied to a smooth, flat surface, such as a metal plate or stone, on which the image to be printed is ink-receptive. Because ink is oily, applying water to the blank areas of the surface makes them ink-repellent.

Sea anemones by Ernest Haeckel, prints of nature and sea. Images via Pinterest

 

Aloys Senefelder, a Bavarian author, invented lithography in the late eighteenth century. Lithography can be used to print text or artwork onto paper or another suitable material. It grew during the nineteenth century as a means of printing color and imagery, and was used widely for printing posters, newspapers and magazines. Today this method is used to produce posters.

In lithography, a picture is drawn on a smooth flat stone with a special type of oily crayon. Then the lithographer passes a water-soaked roller over the stone. The water adheres to the bare stone surface, but does not stick to the oily crayon marks.

Another roller soaked with printer’s ink is passed over the stone, Since the ink will not mix with water, it cannot stick to the wet stone, but does stick to the oily crayon marks. When a sheet of paper is pressed against the inked stone, the paper takes up ink only from the places where the crayon lines are. This produces a print of the original drawing on paper.

 

Photolithography

It is a variation of lithography performed by machine and using a camera. It is also known as offset printing.

 

In this case, a zinc plate is used instead of stone. The picture is placed on the plate by photographic means rather than by hand. Characters and words can also be printed on the plate. The zinc plate is then curved around the printing cylinder.

As the cylinder turn, the plate first presses against a wet roller, and then against a wet roller, and then against the ink roller. This has the effect of covering the blackened portions of the plate with ink. The inked plate next rolls against a rubber-blanketed cylinder so that the image is picked up. The blanketed cylinder then transfers the image to the paper.

 

Techno-Print

The ability to print type has evolved rapidly in the past 100 years. Although the hand arrangement of metal type as part of letterpress printing continued well into the twentieth century, other methods of mechanical typesetting also came into use.

Designers such as Bradbury Thompson made their mark on the industry by introducing new imaging techniques and innovative typographic treatments. Image via Pinterest.

In the early part of the century, line casting machines, such as linotype increased efficiency over handset type by allowing users to cast lines of type. Called “slugs,” rather than individual characters. Its revolutionized printing and especially newspaper publishing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o-type.

As technological advances made type-setting and the printing of color and imagery much easier, publishing began to flourish. The early half of the twentieth century saw American magazines, (such as the Saturday evening post and harper’s bazaar from 1934 until 1958) which forged new territory with magazine layouts that incorporated lots of white space and type as shape.

 

Phototypesetting

Phototypesetting machines allowed type to be projected onto paper or film, which was then pasted down onto a board along with imagery and other graphic elements.

 

The works of Sir Bradbury Thompson. Image via Pinterest.

 

In addition to begin more efficient and economical, it was also an affordable means of producing type in-house, giving designers more flexibility to format & adjust type themselves.

In the early 1980’s personal computers such as apple Macintosh gave designers even more control over the typesetting process by allowing them to manipulate type and create their own typographic designs. The computer allowed designers to reshape letterforms, layer type, configure it into shapes and curved paths, and otherwise make it conform to a designer’s concept in ways that it had never been made to conform before.

In addition to giving designers total creative control over typography and imagery, the computer revolutionized the way publications and other printed projects are designed and produced.

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