Teaching Calligraphy in a Modern Way

• Autor(a) principal: Alka, Onur
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/39591
• topic: Caligrafia; Tipografia; Alfabetos; Layout; Design de comunicação; Diretrizes; Práticas Tipográficas e Editoriais Contemporâneas

Calligraphy can be defined as the art of handwriting or as the design of beautiful letters with writing instruments. Apart from beautifully executing the letters, one must also make sure to arrange them properly and eventually contribute to a well-implemented aesthetic page. When the printing press was invented, typographic characters were born from calligraphy. Graphic design is based on three important categories: image, illustration and typography. One of the most important characteristics of a graphic designer is to find and to use beautiful type characters and arrange them well. We believe that a full knowledge of their historical evolution, anatomy and methods of writing, is a very important element for the development of a good designer. The use of computers and the development of technology in general has resulted in a lack of interest in handwriting. Moreover, the excessive use of ready fonts caused people to forget manually designed fonts. To recapture this knowledge that has been slowly forgotten, it is necessary to learn calligraphy especially if one actively practices graphic design and uses writing instruments. This project (Appendix D) aims to introduce a practical guide with a modern look enabling beginners and especially graphic design students and type designers to fully and easily understand the foundations of classic calligraphy. Rather than complex explanations, eye-catching sentences with keywords and clear illustrations are provided throughout the project, so that everyone, even beginners can comfortably learn the principles of calligraphy. Moreover, the fundamental calligraphic content is presented through practice and exercises along with the required theoretical background. Another important aspect is that great effort has been given to defining rules based on reliable sources since the beginner needs dogmatic norms rather than ambiguous expressions. The calligraphic hand covered in this study is Edward Johnston’s model – ‘Foundational Hand’. At the end of the 19th century there were scarcely any font designers who mastered broad-edge calligraphy. Consequently, existing fonts were quite far from being aesthetic. However, in the early 20th century, calligraphy flourished again through the works of Edward Johnston — the man who is regarded as the father of broad edge calligraphy. Johnston developed the ‘Foundational Hand’ model by classifying the letters according to their geometric similarity and therefore revolutionized the way of learning calligraphy. Johnston designed new fonts, which were an inspiration for other contemporary fonts and works that led to a new stage in typography. One of the most important examples of this transition is Gill Sans typeface, designed by Eric Gill, a student of Edward Johnston. ‘Foundational Hand’ is an upright round-hand like roman miniscule, which has been used for a long time as book-hand. Moreover, if a roman miniscule is taught firstly, the understanding of other hands such as italic, gothic and copperplate will be much easier. For these reasons, ‘Foundational Hand’ is covered elaborately in our study. Materials are a very important part of calligraphy books. As such, the first part of this study covers in detail materials used in calligraphy. The main materials used in calligraphy are pen, ink and paper. In addition, a desk and a board to write on are necessary as well. As simplicity is a key to a better understanding, only the necessary information about all of these elements is provided in this chapter. After explaining the materials used in calligraphy, the next chapter deals with letters and their basic structure, known as skeletal proportions. A type designer or a calligrapher understanding the skeletal proportion is as important as a doctor understanding the human skeleton. Through the skeletal proportions, the shape, proportion and relationship of the letters can be easily seen and compared. A profound understanding of this basis, allows the calligrapher to understand and design more complex letter systems and alphabets. Classification of letters, which is an important study, is covered in a separate section. A good classification helps the student to distinguish the different forms and compare them. Learning and practising the letter forms group-wise is obviously easier than learning them letter by letter. There is no common accepted classification of foundational hand alphabet, hence this study aims at making a clear classification of the letters as well. The miniscule letters are grouped according to their relationship with the key letter o and also to their letter-widths. On the other hand, the capital letters are classified into four groups, according to their letter-widths. Before explaining writing with broad edge nib, some issues, that have to be taken into account were presented such as: starting to write with a wider nib, making the necessary adjustment to the metal-nib-pen, and handling the problem of rate of ink-flow. After a short demonstration of the skeletal proportion of letters, teaching writing with broad edge pen – the main objective of this work – was the next focus. In this work, some methods which help teaching calligraphy with a broad edge pen, were implemented. One method is showing the letters on a grid with divisions. The basic grid is divided into four divisions for the lowercase letters, six divisions for the capital letters, and all the letters were shown on it. Each division corresponds to one nib-width, which is related to the height of the letters. The other method is ‘coloured two-pencil method’, which is used in the project to show the ductus. The ductus is the set of sequences and directions of the strokes of the letters, and it is an important detail, especially for the beginners. In this work, the ductus has been explained through a new approach called ‘coloured two-pencil method’. Even spacing between letters is very essential for calligraphy, and sometimes perhaps more important than beautifully drawn separate letters. Hence, a separate section is dedicated to this topic. There is no specific rule for even spacing. Some letters have unique letter shapes. As a result, spacing problems may occur, such as in the letters with open ending or beginning, known as open letters. This study addresses these spacing problems as well. Finally, the last chapter covers the other important design and spacing topics such as page spacing (margins), and line spacing. With the help of this chapter the student who has already a good understanding about calligraphy can fulfil a complete work or a calligraphic project. The project of this thesis is tested and validated by various masters of calligraphy, and active users, such as students of architecture and design, through a workshop. Through this project a better system for learning calligraphy was obtained. This system is specifically designed for graphic design students and type designers