Abstract
‘Graphic design’ and ‘typography’ have become interchangeable terms to define the practice of deliberate visual communication, in spite of the first term implying a heavy emphasis on images absent in the second term. While graphic designers need also to deal with pictures the problem exists that theories on typography do not and cannot explain pictures. This paper sets out to explain that picture theory can apply to typography. I explain an approach taken to categorise pictures according to their level of fidelity. I will explain how the visual faculties of the cognitive system are concerned with categorizing and identifying elements of the visible world and how this leads to a means of picture making, namely, caricature. Applying visual caricature methods to typefaces is a novel method explained here to demonstrate that picture theory can be applied productively in typography.
Keywords
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Baines, P., Haslam, A.: Type and Typography. Watson Guptil, New York (2005)
Baluja, S.: Learning typographic style. arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.04000 (2016)
Campbell, K.S.: Coherence, Continuity, and Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for Document Design. Routledge (2013)
Cheng, K.: Designing Type. Laurence King Publishing, London (2006)
Dror, I.E., Stevenage, S.V., Ashworth, A.R.S.: Helping the cognitive system learn: exaggerating distinctiveness and uniqueness. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 22(4), 577 (2008)
Gibson, J.J.: The information available in pictures. Viewpoints 47(4), 73–95 (1971)
Heller, S.: Cult of the ugly. Eye 3(9), 53 (1993)
Kahn, P., Lenk, K.: Design: principles of typography for user interface design. Interactions 5(6), 15 (1998)
Medley, S.: The feeling’s neutral for pharmaceutical packaging: how the pharmaceutical aesthetic equals the Modernist aesthetic. Australas. Med. J. (Online) 2(11), 146 (2010)
Medley, S.: The Picture in Design: What Graphic Designers, Art Directors and Illustrators Should Know about Communicating with Pictures. Common Ground, Champaign (2012)
Mitchell, W.J.T.: Visual literacy or literal visualcy? In: Elkins, J. (ed.) Visual Literacy, pp. 11–29. Routledge, New York (2008)
Moore, P., Fitz, C.: Using Gestalt theory to teach document design and graphics. Tech. Commun. Q. 2(4), 389–410 (1993)
Poyner, R., Booth-Clibborn, E.: Typography Now II (1998)
Reed, S.K.: Cognition: theories and applications. CENGAGE learning (2012)
Rhodes, G.: Superportraits: Caricatures and Recognition. Psychology Press, East Sussex (1996)
Spiekermann, E., Ginger, E.M.: Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works. Adobe Press, Mountain View (2003)
Rath, K.: Letters that speak: framing experiential properties of type. Image Text: J. Des. 28(1), 59–100 (2016)
Valentine, T.: A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion and race in face-recognition. Q. J. Exp. Psychol. 43, 161–204 (1991)
Warde, B.: The crystal goblet or printing should be invisible. In: The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, pp. 11–17 (1956)
Wileman, R.E.: Visual Communicating. Educational Technology Publications, Englewood Cliffs (1993)
Yang, T.T., Lai, S.H.: A learning-based system for generating exaggerative caricature from face images with expression. In: 2010 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), pp. 2138–2141. IEEE, March 2010
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Medley, S. (2020). The ‘Graphic’ in ‘Typographic’: Picture Theory Applied to Type Through Caricature. In: Cicalò, E. (eds) Proceedings of the 2nd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Image and Imagination. IMG 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1140. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41018-6_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41018-6_24
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-41017-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-41018-6
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)
