WITH EACH INVENTION OF A NEW KNOWLEDGE MEDIUM...

Technology inherently replaces the obsolete to a varying degree. One should view different knowledge mediums pseudo technology in of themselves. Each medium can be thought of as an invention or revolution in the way humans think. While no knowledge medium is ever completely eradicated, history shows that each newly invented medium replaces the previous medium as the dominate way to communicate knowledge. 

Salon Notes

Here is a link to the GoogleDoc of my salon notes! Nothing special...
Salon Notes Google Doc

thought this sums up the semester rather nicely

typography thesis draft 1: Comparing the two Renaissances of Typography

I just wanted to "claim" my idea for a thesis. This immediately came to my mind during class:

Reminiscent of the transition from handwritten to print, eReading has its advantages but these should not come at the sacrifice of the beautiful and purposeful typographical design of the original print medium.

I'm concerned that the focus is too modern, but I really want to compare and contrast these two transitions.

The Renaissance of font design

Shockingly, I decided to blog about fonts again. Fonts are so simple, we interact with them on a daily basis and yet they are also intricate pieces of art and vitally important in the clear presentation and dissemination of knowledge. I really have become obsessed with fonts as of late. This can probably be attributed to the fact that I am working at a graphic design firm and am surrounded by people who appreciate the subtle art of font design. 

The Renaissance marked an influx of secular knowledge with the movement known as humanism. Scholars in during this period of time turned to the ancient wells of knowledge from the Greeks and Romans. With this new wave of secular information new more legible, clear, simple and secular fonts were required. It was the first time in the history of typography where artisans looked to the past to influence their font designs. Latin and Greek culture and art heavily influenced the type design masters of this era. Improvements in the actual printing methods and machines brought new inventions within the typography realm. Designers were starting to introduce ideas of wider margins and clean typesetting. The Renaissance truly influenced all areas and aspects of life and learning; font design not excluded. 

page from Aldus Manutius' book on Aristotle

all Aldine books bear his logo

The first person I would like to highlight in my exploration of Renaissance font design is Aldus Manutius  (1450–1515). Aldus was a humanistic scholar that through his tutoring of the wealthy Pio family acquired his own printery in Venice. From this printery he published Greek and Roman classics, including a five-volume set on the works of Aristotle. One of his main focuses was to print small format books at low cost to scholars. His biggest contribution to the world of type was that he designed the first Greek alphabet typesetting. He also invented a space saving Latin font based off Italian cursive fonts. All his books (called Aldine books) bear his logo of a dolphin and an anchor and a dolphin.

Granjon, designed by Robert Granjon is considered
to be the closest typeface to the original Garamond

Adobe Garamond font
 The differences in the two fonts above are very subtle.
Can you find them?

Claude Garamond (1480–1561) was a Parisian publisher and font designers. He was one of the most famous type designers of his time. I mentioned this in my bibliography post. I mentioned in my post that his work is so famous that it is still in use today and that Harry Potter was printed using Adobe Garamond. He first gained popularity in 1541 when three of his Greek typefaces were used in a royal book by Robert Estienne. His inspiration for these three fonts came from the handwriting of Angelo Vergecio, the King's librarian at Fontainebleau, and his ten-year-old pupil, Henri Estienne. His influence spread beyond France with his Roman typesettings that followed in the 1540s. His work is still considered to be among the finest within the realm of typography. 

from Troy's famous work Champ Fluery

The last person that deserves attention is Geoffroy Tory (1480-1533). He was one of the prominant  printers of Paris during the beginning of the sixteenth century. His most famous work is the the theoretical treatise on the design of Roman capital letters in 1529. Tory followed the common practice of the day of finding relationships between the proportions of type and the shape of the human body. Thus Tory was known for drafting letters with geometrical aids to better analyze their resemblance to the human body.

Thus concludes my brief examination of the Renaissance of font design with a look at three prominent designers and their individual influence on typography. Thank you for everyone bearing with me as I explore a particular branch of knowledge that frankly I love. I think it is so interesting how we often disregard the subtle beauty and pure art involved with typography. We are surrounded by type everyday and yet we don't actually pay attention to it. How can something be in our face but we don't truly see it?

Typography

So first of all I would like to apologize for not getting this post up yesterday. I can of had an emergency yesterday in which I got stuck on a cliff/mountain up Rock Canyon with my roommate and my cousin for the better portion of the day. Needless to say I forgot to bring my computer and the HBLL with me so I didn't get this post up yesterday.

It probably came to no ones surprise that I chose to do my bibliographical post on exploring the different typefaces and fonts that were popular between the years 1450-1700. I love everything design oriented and since interning at Vada Creative Studio I have come to really appreciate the beauty and intricacies of typography. Wikipedia defines typography as: [coming] (from the Greek words τύπος(typos) = form and γραφή(graphy) = writing) is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). Additionally, I must admit that this post really stretched me, I am much more comfortable to researching online. I read physical books, but mostly for pleasure. So, it was quite an experience to actually dust off the pages of some good ol regular books. It was also pretty distracting I found myself browsing through many books on typography even though I knew I wouldn't be able to use them in my post because they were too modern. I guess that is the beauty of self directed learning- getting lost in the knowledge of what you love...

"A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible"

bible: (lowercase) any book, reference work, periodical, etc.,accepted as authoritative, informative, or reliable: Heregarded that particular bird book as the birdwatchers' bible. (from dictionary.com)


note: in this post I do not intend to summarize the exhibit because we are all going to go there but rather analyze my thoughts on the exhibit. This seems kind of obvious but I thought I should add that...

Mayan Glyphing Party

This past Wednesday I had the opportunity with Mike and others not from our group to travel back in time and get our hands dirty with the beautiful Mayan glyph writing system. 

Behind the Mystery of Facsimile 2

Last week I posted about Facsimile 2 and said that I would follow up with this topic of the occult with a more in depth look at two very important factors of Facsimile 2. These factors are the centrality of God and His divine purposes. In my more comprehensive study I found that I had to sift through the not so in depth LDS.org library on this topic and the mountain of anti-Mormon material there is out there. After carefully avoiding all the anti-Mormon pollution, I found this interesting book called A Study Guide to the Facsimiles of the Book of Abraham written by Church scholar  Allen J. Fletcher.  I also found a link to the LDS Pearl of Great Price Study Manual. (Due to the lack of information and excess of anti-Mormon material, all of my information will come from those two sites unless otherwise noted...) Without any further ado: here are some key points and notes behind the mystery that is Facsimile 2 from the Book of Abraham from the Pearl of Great Price. 

A preview behind the mystery of Facsimile 2

                          

I have an unquenchable curiosity. I am intrigued by all things mysterious and unknown. For this reason I chose to discuss the occult. To me the Pearl of Great Price from the LDS canon encapsulates the word occult very well. More specifically those mysterious "drawings" we all loved to look at growing up but never had any clue what they meant illustrate the concept occult very well. So lets debunk some (but not all, it wouldn't fall under "the occult umbrella" if we knew everything about it) of the mystery....

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE AT CHICHEN ITZA

I love architecture and I have been fascinated by the Mayan architecture ever since I started blogging, well to be honest I always have been, but I never quite seemed to be able to fit it into any of the topics I was blogging about. Something I hadn't thought much about until researching for this post is the depth of research and knowledge can come from just a given culture's architecture. We can study a culture through the lens of architecture to examine what the culture deemed important. I would like to highlight a certain pyramid in Chichén Itzá called Kukulkan's pyramid to examine the importance of astronomy and architecture to the Mayans. 

MAYA GLYPHS: the de facto source of written aesthetisicm

Vada Creative Studio © 2011

I am currently working as an intern at the graphic design firm called, Vada Creative Studio (check out their Facebook blog too) where I was talking on Friday to the other graphic designers about typesetting and font design. There are so many different intricate details that going into making a font. A team of many people spend hours upon hours designing a single font. They pay attention to the minute details because they know how important aestheticism is crucial. As I have said before, most recently in my latest comment, that I have a sore spot for the visual appeal of things. The Mayan's knew, just like font creators, graphic desingers and the "not so visually or creatively gifted people" alike consciously or subconsciously know that the aesthetic nature of a writing system is important. It affects how the message you have is delivered and subsequently understood. For this reason I am excited to study the Mayan Language because it is one of the most visually appealing languages that the earth has ever seen. 

Epic Performance

Imagine yourself high up in the mountains of present day Guatemala in a stone courtyard or plaza adorned with statues and figures carved from stone of fierce warriors, majestic kings and intelligent priests. The spoken words of a poet drift to your ears through the crisp air typical of the dry season. You listen attentively, relishing in the glorious detail of brave warriors and fierce battles. A part of you stirs in pride for your ancestors and rich cultural history. 

Preserve the Maya language!

Talking with Jose Canché was a bit surreal and very interesting. He is a member from one of the wards I served in on my mission in Los Angeles. I met him because he approached us asking us if we knew of a way he could get a Book of Mormon in Maya (officially classified by linguists as Maya- Yucatán). Yes, the same language passed down from the mysterious Ancient Mayan people. Jose is from Guatemala near the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico. He grew up speaking the language Maya. It isn't one of the 22 or so dialects found in Guatemala, rather it is simply Maya. 

map of the Ancient Mayan empire (green)

Popol Vuh and the Mayan language

The mysterious Mayan civilization was an advanced society that thrived between 1500BC and 900AD with its height around 250BC. Study of Mayan civilization remained untouched until the 1830s until we started discovering and deciphering glyphs from temples and other sites.

Magic! (and its place in Ancient Egyptian culture)

King Tut's burial mask

Harry Potter can do magic, why not you? If you were living in Ancient Egypt you were believed to be able to do magic, especially if you were a priest. Magic was a very real force to Ancient Egyptians. Today magic is by and large dismissed as a farce and sometimes even sacrilegious, but to the Ancient Egyptians it was a part of everyday life and was very important. Religion and magic were intertwined to the Egyptians. Magic permeated the very culture of Ancient Egypt and was used in many areas of life such as healing, preserving the dead, protection, dream interpretation, religious ceremonies and even controlling/influencing the gods. 

some glow stick fun

The ancient (well actually very modern) art of rave glow sticking is wrought with intricacies. At my friend’s request, it was my task to teach her those intricacies in one afternoon.  And after some smacking of oneself with the glow sticks, mostly on her part, she managed to learn two tricks! It was a very fun experience!

gettin my face did

getting rid of those sleepy eye shadows

I must say I don’t know if I could have picked an activity father out of my comfort zone than learning how to do male TV makeup. If that doesn’t catch your attention I don’t know what will! It all started when I begrudgingly agreed to be a makeup model so my friend could learn how to put make up on a male for her makeup 101 class. I debated back and forth in my mind when I learned of this assignment. Do I really want to put this kind of thing on the Internet? I mean as Dr. Burton says: the stuff you put on the Internet doesn’t ever go away! Well in the end I decided I would be open minded and learn something new. I kept telling myself I am an adventurous guy always looking for new experiences.

Becoming a Man

Sorry...! had some frustrating moments when Blogspot deleted my post...

What were you doing at the age of 18 or 19? Surely not preparing to secretly kill as many state owned slaves as you possibly could, right? I was preparing, like many LDS church members, to serve a full time mission to teach the gospel and serve others for the Lord. Instead of preparing to spread the Good News, at that same age ancient Spartan males were preparing to preform the krypteia. Seen through a modern Westerner’s eye this Spartan male right of passage can be seen as a very cruel concept.  This right of passage involves being thrust out into the wild with nothing more than a knife and made to kill as many state owned slaves called helots as he could and return to his training masters without being detected.

how to create a link within a comment

I outsmarted this website!

Here is the HTML code to put a link in your comment. Simply type this out and then replace the URL with the linked site's URL and then replace TEXT with the display text to click on within the comment to navigate to the linked site...

Dating! (Mayan style)

My home is situated far from the cultural center of the church in a suburb just north of the bustling city of Chicago. This cultural distance combined with recently returning from a mission in Los Angeles has caused me quite a culture shock here at BYU. Not surprisingly, the biggest part of this culture shock is the overwhelming marriage atmosphere here in Provo. Everyone knows that marriage permeates the air we breath here in such saturated levels it could quite possibly be dangerous to the unexpected tourist. It is fairly obvious that this folk knowledge of marriage comes from years of informal and informal schooling. From church to the home, many LDS members have grown up with a future marriage and homemaking at the forefront of their minds. You could say the Provo marriage obsession traces its roots all the way back to Sunbeam class.

A rich deposit of learning potential can come from examining (at a cautious distance mind you) this new culture I find myself thrust into here at school. As part of this examination, I take you along the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico and through Guatemala to compare Mayan marriage and dating practices to those found closer to home here in Provo.

Unlike most LDS children, thoughts of marriage usually started around the age of 16 for males and 12 for females at a ceremony called the "Descent of the Gods" (shown in the painting to the right). In this ceremony the adolescents would ceremoniously remove clothing- white beads for males and a red shell belt for females that represent their virginity.

The main drive behind marriage in both cultures is primarily: to provide a healthy, strong and large family. Despite this similarity, Mayan parents were more involved than LDS parents in their children's dating and marriage life. We are used to many "marriage/dating talks" or the varying amounts of pressure to date. Instead Mayans went a step further and practiced arranged marriages. The method of these arrangements was through a professional atanzahab (matchmaker). He would read the prospective couples' horoscopes to determine compatibility in such areas as birthdays, names and among the gods. After this time the bride to be's father would agree on a price for his daughter and once in agreement the groom to be would work for him. This process could take as long as five to six years to complete. Throughout this whole arrangement process it is highly likely the marriage couple to be would not so much as engage in a single conversation. I laugh as I compare this Mayan custom to the stories we here in Provo that shock us involving a total time elapse of one month from first meeting, then dating and finally engagement and marriage.

After this deeply entertaining and interesting study of Mayan marriage and courting practices, it makes me think of what marriage should be based on. I also wonder simply what marriage means at its core to me and to all of us as members of the LDS Church. Personally, I know I prefer the methods many of our parents use to keep this particular piece of folk knowledge alive and vibrant by (might I go as far to say?) brainwashing us from a young age. I will pay the price of some cultural discomfort as I adjust to life here in Provo in exchange for a marriage based on profound love and the true Gospel and not simply a negotiation made between my parents and her parents. I do not judge the Mayans seeing as the distance between their culture and time period to Provo is much greater than Chicago's is!