Typographic History Timeline

You will be responsible for researching two assigned periods of time in the history of typography. Each student will have one older and one newer time period to research. The timeline in Chapter One of the Typography Design: Form and Communication will serve as an excellent resource and guide to your to initiate your research.

You will need to locate at least 6 sources for your research for your annotated project bibliographies are required. Not all research will take place on the internet. You may only use the internet to locate resources in print format and obtain a general idea of the topic to investigate. Find books and print materials to use. The provided course reading list can help with this. Get creative with your resources. Go beyond the Google search. It should also be noted your graphic design history book will only take you so far.

Using the research into these time periods, you will design an accordion fold timeline that showcases your knowledge of typography and the history of the development of the western alphabet. The timeline will contain information about an assigned research topics and will require you to find a way to marry together two very different periods of typographic history. The timelines will serve as infographics and will demonstrate an understanding of the ways in which typography, as a discipline, has been influenced by the economic, social and/or political conditions of a place and time.You will explore typographic systems to represent the different levels of information the timeline communicates about. The timeline will introduce you to principles of effective page layout, the grid, hierarchy and control of white space. It will also introduce you to how to create a typographic system and further your understanding of typographic hierarchy. You will also want to explore the form the book will take. You may choose square, rectangular or some other shape for your panels. You may chose to do more a more complicated accordion fold than a straight fold. You final decisions on form should align with the content.

Each student will be responsible for presenting the essential information for their assigned topic to the class. This allows room for you to co-author the contents of the timeline. The designed timeline will demonstrate that you have a solid understanding of the evolution of typography within your assigned time frame. Questions from the contents of the timelines will be included in the Final Exam at the end of the semester and will be an assessment of your understanding of all the material covered in the presentation.

A comprehensive study of the time period assigned will be produced. Each timeline should include architectural styles, significant works of art, social and cultural influences as well as technological breakthroughs that contributed to the development of typography for the assigned time period. Your timeline will include an adequate number of illustrations to support the key concepts. Topics to be covered are listed under the time period assigned, however, you are not limited to these and additional topics are encouraged to be discovered.

A digital presentation of your process along with your printed final solutions will be produced. The presentation should also be created in InDesign using the same building blocks from you timeline. All references will be cited in a bibliography at the end pages of your presentation.