hidden ornamental treasures unearthed

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:24:00 GMT Hidden Ornamental Treasures unearthed.
The Byzantine illuminated manuscripts
// by Panos Vassiliou

East meets West. Byzantine art –mostly a religious art- is the result of a cross-fertilization of ideas that led to a resurgence in creative thinking and aesthetic stimulation. The two basic sources from which it is derived are the Hellenistic and Eastern art. The former, a representational art, is more anthropocentric, whereas the latter is relatively non-figural, decorative in character, lavish in design and dazzling in colour.

In the representation of the human form it is the influence of antiquity, the hellenistic style, which is preeminent, whereas that of the East predominates in the decorative features (fig.2).
The aim of the Byzantine art was not purely aesthetics, but rather to induce spiritual contemplation and bring the faithful closer to God.The styles and forms that predominate the Byzantine decorations are the following:
1. Geometric. They derive from ancient Greek motifs on vases, as well as arabesque ornaments, which either combined or separate, are used as bands on wall paintings and for headpieces in manuscripts (fig.3).
2. Flowers, birds and animal designs (fig.4).
The majority of Byzantine art is represented with wall paintings, mosaics, iconography and illuminated manuscripts. These manuscripts are the major source of the Byzantine civilization in all its aspects. They are mostly Greek but there are also several in Latin, Arabic, Armenian and Russian. Their craftmanship is superlative. They are embellished with unparalleled decorations such as initials, borders and miniature illustrations, using rich colours on glittering surfaces.

They are illustrated in three different ways:
1. with decorative headpieces at the opening of a page, often accompanied by a decorated initial (fig.5).2. with figures, scenes and decorations disposed vertically and horizontally over text (fig.6).
3. with full-page illuminations (fig.7).
Byzantine manuscripts is a form of artistic expression with great interest to scholars, designers, architects, artists, researchers and students. Unfortunately, these historic treasures were kept from the public eye for centuries.
The centers of the Byzantine culture were conquered by the Turks and destroyed, but several of them, such as the monasteries of Mt. Athos, Meteora and Patmos in Greece, managed to survive and keep their libraries intact but far from the interested individuals.
Recently, an unprecedented series of ornaments and borders were revived -based on these originals- and are available in a layered outline font format. You may view samples here.
Ornamental Treasures 1
Ornamental Treasures 2
Ornamental Treasures 3

References
Grabar A. “La peinture Byzantine” Geneva 1953
Ebersolt J. “La miniature Byzantine” Paris 1926
Museum of Byzantine Culture “The treasures of Mt Athos”
Thessaloniki 1

Whats is my type

KOSTAS AGGELETAKIS (HARPER’S BAZAAR)

1. Which are your criteria for choosing a typeface for a publication?
Typography is an artistic expression and as such is very difficult to define these criteria. Choosing a typeface for a publication is a total different procedure from opening a recipe book which can advice you on what you can or cannot do with letters. I never follow certain rules but I always have in mind the following:
a. The content of the publication. Every typeface has a personality, so I want its personality to respect and communicate the content of the publication.
b. Legibility
c. The medium (screen or paper).
d. The audience. I'll use a total different set of typefaces for a children's book and a different one for the annual report of a big company.
e. The overall quality of the typeface. A high quality font with all the letters, ligatures, numbers, punctuation marks, currency and mathematical symbols available is the one that I'll trust to do my work.

2. Do you prefer serif or sans-serif and why?
It’s difficult to answer this question. I can't choose between two typefaces knowing only that the one is serif and the other one is san serif. There are many other factors for my choice beside this.

3. Which typeface you would never use for Harper's Bazaar?
Harper's Bazaar is a historic American fashion magazine with a very sophisticated perspective about fashion and beauty and with audience in the middle-upper and upper class. Harper's Bazaar had been the home of many talents such as Carmel Snow, Diana Vreeland , Richard Avedon, Man Ray, Andy Warhol and others. The visual identity of Harper's Bazaar has the signature of his legendary art director, Alexey Brodovitch and his Bazaar's iconic Didot logo carries a big part of the magazine's history. Having all these in mind and since typefaces convey the social position of a magazine, determined by the reader's upbringing and earlier influences, it’s hard to use any typeface which does not convey all the above. In recent past Harper's Bazaar used DIN, but this is one font that I would never use in this magazine. DIN is not the only font that I would not use for Harper's Bazaar (of course script and blackletter typefaces are out of the question) but I think this is a very good example for someone to understand which typefaces do not match with this publication.

4. Would you ever compromise legibility for aesthetics and when?
Legibility or readability isn't the only task of a font. A typeface is not only the medium by which we convey to the reader the meaning of text, it is also shapes and forms. Graphic design is also shapes and forms. Therefore, letters may sometimes loose their legibility for the sake of aesthetics, but this does not necessarily mean that they loose their power.

5. Is economy of text a major concern when it comes to choosing a typeface for your magazine?
Not really. In a fashion magazine like Harper's Bazaar long articles are not usual, so there is no need for a narrow typeface.

6. What do you see to be the next trend for magazine design?
Magazines and newspapers are no longer the only media we use for news, fashion, entertaiment, etc. Needs have changed, therefore the medium has to change as well. In this context, the new magazines must portray their character. The "new" magazines will be like coffee table books. Magazines with a strong concept, sophisticated images and illustrations, eye catching typography, high quality papers, in new formats and all sorts of different sizes. These are the magazines of the future.

7. Which motto describes best yourself and your work?
“Art is not a reflection of reality, it’s the reality of that reflection”
- Jean-Luc Godard

The making of Champion Script Pro

// by Panos Vassiliou
As presented at the 3rd International Conference on Typography & Visual Communication
(ICTVC) - June 2007, Thessaloniki, Greece.


PF Champion Script Pro is the most advanced and powerful script ever made. Developed over a period of two and a half years, each one of the 2 weights is loaded with 4253 glyphs (now 4280 glyphs), offering simultaneous support for all European languages based on the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts.The decision to develop such a typeface was taken during my trip to London back in 2001, while doing a research at the St Bride Library. It was then that I came across some beautiful 18th century manuscripts written by English calligraphers. I was particularly impressed by the writing of Joseph Champion, somebody whom I had never heard before (fig. 5).Being myself a self-taught type designer and not a calligrapher, the idea of pursuing such a task seemed at the moment unattainable. Nevertheless, it haunted me for at least three years before the project got started.
Joseph Champion (1709-1765) was born at Chatham in 1709 and was educated partly at St Paul’s School and partly at Sir John Johnson’s Free Writing School in Foster Lane under Charles Snell to whom he was afterwards apprenticed. Champion contributed no fewer than 47 plates to Bickham’s Universal Penman. His most important work, “The Parallel or Comparative Penmanship Exemplified”, was published in 1750. The Parallel consists of reproductions of the work of foreign masters like Materot, Barbedor, Van den Velde, Perlingh and Maria Strick, with corresponding plates by Champion. Following these plates come some alphabets by Champion. His last published work was “The Penman’s Employment”, 1762.His manuscripts (fig.6) were embellished with several beautiful swashes, frames, ornaments, endings and beginnings, all written with such a precision that seems very difficult to achieve in our days.
The first known attempt to decode Champion’s writing, was done in 1989 by the French typographic designer François Boltana. Later, in his published paper “Ligatures & calligraphie assistée par ordinateur” (1995), he proposed a couple of alphabets, based on Champion, with a minimal set of alternate glyphs (fig 7). These did not really make it into a commercial font as he passed away in 1999.The development of Champion Script Pro started in 2004 with the intention to design a contemporary typeface with classic roots which, for the first time, would be able to fully support three major scripts such as Latin, Greek and Cyrillic, as well as document at the same time alternate glyphs and ligatures (for all three scripts) never before released. The result of this project I present to you today.

concept & guidelines
Three basic requirements became clear right from start. The new typeface would have to loose its deep classic calligraphic roots and instead acquire a clean contemporary identity; retain the handwriting elements without the mechanical repetition of identical glyphs for the same character and finally, apply similar design aesthetics to Latin, Greek and Cyrillic, without compromising the domestic characteristics of each script. The intention was to design this typeface in a way that works equally well for a variety of projects from music, fashion, lifestyle to business, communication and life’s best.
On a practical basis the following guidelines were followed:
1. Lowercase characters were designed so they are less inclined, have a higher x-height and are less condensed than the original. Uppercase letters were corrected accordingly to follow suit (weight, stress, etc)
2. Several characters were stripped-off their connecting lines in order to enhance legibility.
3. Design four sets of alternate swashed capitals.
4. A plethora of ornaments and frames (117) was included.
5. Small caps and their alternate forms were designed to replace the capitals which disrupt the flow of text within a sentence with their extravagant swashes.
6. All characters were carefully designed with the proper weight in order to sustain harsh printing conditions (on special papers), a situation which affects mainly the light connecting parts of calligraphic typefaces.
7. A wide selection of alternate forms and ligatures (never before released or incorporated within the same font) was included for all languages, in order to accommodate diverse design aesthetics and preserve handwriting qualities. These alternates are either applied automatically through an advanced programming scheme, or manually through several opentype features.
8. Apply a programming scheme which will balance the frequency that ascenders, descenders and swashes appear among the various scripts in order to achieve a homogeneous optical effect.
9. Embellish the endings and beginnings of letters with several alternate swashes.

IMPLEMENTATION
After having examined thoroughly the particulars of Champion’s writing, the development of the typeface had to be properly organized into well defined steps which were strictly followed.
stage 1
Selection Tables. During this stage a number of tables was created which documented all possible versions of characters which were numbered. Later on, the dominant glyphs were chosen and highlighted in order to be used for the basic alphabet. Several others were dropped from the list whereas the remaining were used as alternate forms.
stage 2
Uppercase. The list for uppercase letters was passed on to my two assistant designers George Lygas and Sophia Kalaentzidou who put together all the glyphs that were chosen from the manuscripts for each character and prepared them for digitization (fig. 8). Sophia run the initial digitization process, made corrections and passed it on to George for further adjustments based on above guidelines. Finally, they were sent to me for the final adjustments which were performed when most glyphs were put together as a font. Figure 9 shows the resulting glyph for “A” from the original which sits in the background.stage 3
Lowercase. Meanwhile, I was busy designing the lowercase glyphs. It was realized right in the beginning that instead of digitizing lowercase characters from the manuscripts, it would be easier for me to set them up right from scratch. So starting with letters like “o”, “n” and “i”, I built the basic letterforms and afterwards I designed the rest, based on the initial guidelines and a visual reference of the original. A key point, is to set, right at start, the spacing of the characters for proper interlocking between the letters (fig. 10). Later begins a long process of proofing the letters and amending the shapes, so that they harmonize in form and weight.stage 4
Endings / Beginnings. A special list which was created in stage 1, documented a large number of swashed endings and beginnings for lowercase characters. By incorporating the information from this list into the original lowercase characters which were designed in stage 3, I created several new glyphs to be used as alternate initial and terminal forms (fig. 11).
stage 5
Small Caps. Small caps were created during this stage. These are not scaled-down versions of the capitals -just like the ones we see in other fonts- but rather small and simple capital forms, whose main purpose is to replace the capitals which disrupt the flow of text -when used within a sentence- with their extravagant swashes. Furthermone two more sets of stylistic variant small caps were created to be used within a sentence, in order to connect words which are separated with space, thus creating the effect of a continuous text flow (fig. 12).
stage 6
Alternates. Hundreds of alternate glyphs and ligatures -for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic- were created either based on the original manuscripts, or right from scratch (fig. 13).
stage 7
Ornaments. A total of 117 ornaments/frames were digitized (mostly done by George and Sophia) and incorporated into this typeface (fig. 14).
stage 8
Kerning. Best designed calligraphic typefaces don’t need kerning. There are a few exceptions though, as is in the case of Champion Script Pro, where there are several occurences of letters which do not interconnect and kerning had to be applied (fig. 15).
stage 9
Programming. This involves the automatic replacement of a glyph into an alternate form, which either looks better in a certain sequence of characters, or avoids clashing with neighbouring glyphs (view sample here). This was a painstaking process as specific parameters had to be taken into consideration, such as possible neighbouring characters, frequency of occurence, etc (fig. 16). Furthermore, many groups of glyphs were established in order to facilitate the manual selection of alternate forms. Finally, several more opentype features were incorporated into this typeface, in order to manage its vast array of glyphs.
stage 10
Bold. After completing the design and programming for the regular version, it was decided to complement it with a bold version. Initially, the lowercase glyphs were designed using as reference the regular version and the rest just followed.
In conclusion, PF Champion Script Pro exceeded my initial expectations. What I presented to you today is the first version which is expected to be released right after summer (2007). I consider this being a typeface which evolves with time, as new ideas and comments from colleagues and users come through. Thus, a second release is due sometime at the end of the year and a third is planned for early 2008. Thank you all !!

Further links
Champion Script Pro