The landscape approach to Villards Diagram
Type Specimen Sheet
Visual Thinking // Quotes
Challenging Villards Diagram
I decided to look at ways in which I can challenge the rules of the Villards Diagram style template in order to create a more or less effective layout for my Type Specimen Sheet to fall on. I first looked at the position of the Villards section on an A2 page by flipping it horizontally and vertically. I felt this is definitely something worth experimenting with in the next design stages.
I then came on to the idea of using a more unorthodox approach to a poster. It is common for most posters to be portrait format so I further played around with the manipulation of the Villards Diagram on a landscape A2 page. I think this gives an interesting composition for the poster layout and could add an element of modern interpretation to such an old font and style of diagram.
Rule of thirds is another great technique used in layout and photography. It also has relevance to the rules and grids which each character of the Bodoni typeface are based on; Giambattista used 3×3 and 3×4 grids for different shapes of characters of the alphabet.
This idea of using a rule of thirds could be sectioned into a 3×3 box grid which will act as a template for me to design on – both vertically and horizontally. I also feel I need to calculate a size of column which will not only fit within the Villards section but also correspond to the page.
A Villards Poster
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I was set on the idea of using the Villards Diagram as a template to approach my Type Specimen Poster with. I have always worked with 7 columns on portrait pages so therefore this is something which I want to keep consistent in the aesthetic structure of this poster. This stage could be done before or after I have started importing content into the body but I felt it was key for me to look at the orientation in which my diagram could fall in to now, so I could potentially do some more research into visual styling.
Visual Research
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Tutorial Response
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After feedback from my tutor group, confirming my favourite approach was the most effective, I then went back to my sketchbook to begin looking at other styles and themes of Bodoni which I could incorporate into my Villard Diagram styled poster layout. The Early Bodoni Sketches was something which I found extremely interesting. I determined that all of the characters within the Bodoni family are based on either a 3×4 grid or a 4×4 grid for wider letters. The layout principal of rule of thirds had similarities to the Bodoni 3×4 grid and so I started to experiment with ways I could convert a typographic character grid into a structure which could efficiently hold the key elements of my poster.
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Villards Diagram
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I started to look into the principal of layouts and grids for typography and posters. I came across a style template called the Villards Diagram – more commonly used for the template in a double page spread design. The template is formed using a set of geometric lines connecting the corners of pages and then intersecting points of those lines, in order to create a section on the page for all of the content to fall into.
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Although this template is used for double page spread design, I thought it would be worth playing with in order to see if it could be just as effective on an A2 portrait poster format. This is something which I wasn’t sure about at first but a tutorial with my tutor and peers sparked an interest for this approach so this is definitely one route I am going to take with this project. This layout will also allow me to add white space to the 18th Century Type Specimen Sheets which I was heavily influenced by earlier in this blog.
Initial Documentation
As well as doing my best to keep updating this blog, I had been recording some initial information and idea generation in my note pad to help me visualise the ideas I was starting to think of. I started by looking at the font Bodoni itself and from my research on this blog I knew I wanted to take a traditional approach – similar to the style of type specimen sheets in the 18th Century. Therefore I began creating thumbnails of potential layouts which lead me on to the next stage.
During a week off, I completed my Reading Week Research Task (click here) which consisted of three 8 page right angle fold booklets which consisted of the tasks I had been set. This A6 booklet folded out to an A4 Poster – so this is where I thought about the idea of using the same form for my Type Specimen Sheet at an A2 size. The reason for this is to create a nice solution to transporting these specimen sheets around. The potential customer of the font would be able to take their own small copy of the poster which could be folded down into a more detailed booklet, where they can find out more, see more and be directed to the shopping basket. This smaller booklet version would also allow me to direct the viewer to my outcome from the TV Ident section of this assignment.
An A2 poster folded in this style would create an A4 booklet but I still felt this is too big to act as a handy resource for potential customers. So I have decided to take this assignment and extend it into two documents; the A2 Type Specimen Poster (as briefed) and an A3 Poster/A5 Type Specimen Booklet.
See right page for the format of both A2 Poster and A3 Poster/A5 Booklet
Early Bodoni Drawings
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I managed to find a blog by Design Traveler which documented a trip to the Bodoni museum in Parma, Italy. I had been searching for old imagery of drawings and sketches of the Bodoni font and this blog enabled me to find them. Given more time before the end of term, I am contemplating flying out to Parma for the day to go to the Bodoni museum seeming as flights were £38 – bargain! Nevertheless, this amazing imagery of early sketches by Giambattista Bodoni means I can understand the grids and rules he based his letterforms on and try and incorporate a similar template into my A2 poster layout.
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DESIGNTRAVELER (2010) Bodoni Museum, Parma, Italy [online] [images]
Available at: https://designtraveler.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/bodonimuseum/
[Accessed: 10/12/2014]
Era Specific Type Specimen
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After looking at a range of example designs for type specimen sheets, I thought it would be wise to draw influence from a style of design which is era specific to the release date of my chosen font – Bodoni. Fonts such as Baskerville and Caslon also come from the 18th Century and so when I found these examples of type specimen sheets having a similar style to the Bodoni image (top right) I started to understand this as a style which was present in that era.
The above type specimen sheets were a mixture of posters and pages found in type specimen books. I have looked at original copies of these posters and books and they seem very collectable and expensive. This leads me to believe that type specimen sheets with this styling would have been amongst the more original designs printed.
They all seem to use a simple column structure which is similar to the visual styling of a newspaper. I feel drawing inspiration from the aesthetic of these 18th Century posters would be an effective way of enforcing the age of Bodoni but also allowing me to implement a way of laying out the sheet to re-promote Bodoni in today’s era.
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