Typography – Beth Dudek Design | Rochester, NY Digital Designer

July Wallpaper Refresh

bethrd — Mon, 06 Jul 2015 04:09:16 +0000

An inspirational Helen Keller quote, and a quirky saying for an acronym featuring the vintage wood typeface Gothic Tuscan, which looks even better as wood blocks in person. Trust me.

Add some fun to your desktop, and enjoy.

Roc the Brain: Hand Lettering Class

bethrd — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 05:05:15 +0000

Recently, I took a class at the Rochester Brainery on the art to hand lettering, taught by graphic and web designer Andrea Burke (then Levendusky). Fun times were had.

.918 Get Type High

bethrd — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 04:09:16 +0000

My time as an intern happened randomly as I visited Type High Letterpress Print Shop after the market, and spontaneously offered to help, intern, and become further educated in the amazing world of letterpress. Tony, the owner, is so skilled, and owns the greatest print shop ever. He has quite the collection that takes up most of the space…and it’s growing. I learned many invaluable tips, tricks, and lessons there, and now I’ve earned my keep to go back and design my own projects, getting an idea out of my head, formed by type and ornaments, and printed on paper with lovely 50 year old ink.

Type High confirmed my growing love (…obsession…) with letterpress.

“Be the designer.” & “There is no spellcheck in letterpress.”

The WNYBAC Intern

bethrd — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 04:16:08 +0000

I was an intern at the Western New York Book Arts Center through Canisius my final semester, while Rich Kegler and Chris Fritton (now the wanderlust-striken Itinerant Printer) were still in association there. The travel there included construction tearing up Main Street, graffiti, lackadaisical passersby’s, littered sidewalks, and grungy subway. But I loved every day there, and gained a fortune of knowledge from a budding love for letterpress, to bookbinding techniques, using vintage tools like a corner rounder, to learning general studio upkeep and the mechanics, orders, paperwork, and communication that keeps a business alive and relevant. Oh, and we also jammed to The Decemberists every day.

Instead of reminiscing for a while, I’ll just post some pretty pictures from my experiences.

Type: Alignment

bethrd — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 15:07:00 +0000

An exercise that focuses on the importance, contrast, and interpretation of alignment using Adobe Garamond Pro. The given quote is by Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York: Methuen, 1982).

Type: Space and Meaning

bethrd — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 14:08:47 +0000

An exercise that focuses on the correlation between space and meaning with typefaces and words,in which only Futura could be used.

Bonus Round (featuring the Typefaces Ohio and Didot):

Cemetery Type Hunting Recreation

bethrd — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 14:06:03 +0000

I went type hunting at the local cemetery again for an assignment, in which I took a picture, or in my case way too many for my poor camera, and then cloned out the original name and recreated the type with a hypothetical name with the same or similar font. The font I used that appeared to be the most similar was Georgia.

This is the original tombstone:

Type Hunting: Vintage Buffalove-Style

bethrd — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 04:13:01 +0000

Went adventuring throughout the city and found some amazing hand-crafted typography gems, like tombstones pre-modern engraving and storefront signs that were painted, or untouched by anything digital. This was such a fun adventure that I will try to continue in the future if I come across any other vintage or hand designed type.

(Bear with me and all of the photos I took…)

(I know this is too modern and doesn’t really count, but you gotta admit that it looks pretty cool).

Typographic Analysis: News Gothic

bethrd — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 18:30:56 +0000

News Gothic is a sans-serif typeface that was created in 1908 by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders (ATF), in which he was the head designer there for several years. Benton is a renowned typographer who has also designed Bold Antique, Franklin Gothic, and Monotone Gothic. He originally drew two different weights, one being a medium weight, which is what News Gothic is, and the lighter weight titled Lightline Gothic. In 1958, two bold weights were added to the family. News Gothic follows a neo-grotesque model, in which certain letters, such as “a” and “g,” are two-story lettercases. Overall, the characters are considered to be somewhat “compact” and “shallow” for this time period. This typeface varies from other realist sans-serifs because there are subtle changes in stroke width, harkening back to Humanism. As the name implies, News Gothic was primarily used for newspapers and magazines throughout the 20th Century.

(Source: http://typedia.com/explore/typeface/news-gothic/)

Name Typeset and Sketches

bethrd — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:18:53 +0000

In the typographic exercise of writing my name in various type and ways, I learned that there are a myriad of possibilities. Although I filled an entire page with my name, which admittedly was strange to see, there could have easily been five pages of alternatives and then some.

The whole process was fluid, with ideas, creativity and inspiration basically bombarding my mind until the entire exercise was completed.

The sketchbook process influenced my digital one to a degree. With the digital, Illustrator files, the typography is more linear, business-like and slightly utilitarian to some regard. On the other hand, my sketches are more organic, exploring completely different styles from circular lines and text to linear and rotated letters as well. However, the sketches did help with my digital process, because I was able to explore different possibilities that I could not fit on the page, and also take certain ideas I sketched and modify them in some way. All in all though, I believe my sketches and digital typography are better left as their own entity, rather than looking at them in combination.

These are my revisited name sketches: