some responses from type foundry emails.

Some of the smaller type foundries have got back to me about their feelings on the copyright issue:
K-Type

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your email.

I suppose the simple answer is that I'm not at all sure what the law is regarding the copyright of typeface designs. From reading stuff on Typophile and other websites, it seems that the only thing you can copyright in the US is the NAME of a typeface. I don't think that's quite the case here, but what the case is I don't really know.

I'm not overly concerned about the protection of the law regarding my designs, many K-Types are freely available for personal use anyway, and the payfonts are inexpensive. I might feel different if I was trying to pay a mortgage on my earnings from type design but I don't expect font sales to be a huge earner and I enjoy the freedom of following my interests with K-Type without regard to what sells well. I don't want to make endless weights of book fonts and that's probably where the money is.

Yes, people appropriate typefaces without the artist/designer's permission, but people increasingly seem to regard paying for fonts as normal and accept that it's the right thing to do. Buying a font is buying a licence to use it, so people involved in industry, especially big businesses, are often willing to pay to avoid any legal beastliness.

I think making fonts affordable and easily available is important. You sell Photoshop for £600 and people try to find a cracked version, you sell an iPad painting app for £5.99 and what's the point of trying to steal it?

Good luck,

The Northern Block

Dear Ben,

Thanks for your recent enquiry regarding copyright law.

I've worked as a designer for 15 years and specialised as a
typographer in the last 5 years yet have had no relevant
experience of the copyright law to completely answer your
questions.

Most independent designers are very naive when it comes to
protecting their designs and would generally not be prepared
to invest money in copyright protection.

I work alone as a self employed business and simply do not
have the budget to pay for legal copyright protection on each
individual product.

You could compare your first question to protecting yourself
as a driver. If you have full insurance cover you will be well
protected, if you have no insurance then you take the risk.

I trust the typography industry as it is practised by very highly
skilled and professional crafts people. Yes there are diluted
typefaces out there that have been appropriated but generally are
of such low quality that they have no direct impact on my business.

I don't really see plagiarism in typography as a major problem to my
business because my product is aimed at the professional user.

I would say the major issue to The Northern Block is piracy.

Your questions are really aimed at the larger corporations who
have a much higher level of investment.

Try contacting Linotype, Monotype, T-26, MyFonts for more
complete answers.

Also post your questions out on Typophile.com, Your sure to get
some interesting feedback.


Best Regards

I took the suggestions from the guy from the northern block. I emailed those companies and put a question on the typophile design forum. A general issue of uncertainty about the copyright law is present in both emails, so thats something to consider when delivering my piece, educating people on what the law actually is and what it's implications are. The Northern Block's response is much more interesting to my study, suggesting piracy to be the real issue rather than plagiarism, so that's something to consider in my delivery also; a manifesto to avoid piracy, to ensure that all designers treat typefaces with the respect they deserve and their integrity by ensuring everyone pays for it.

To do this is difficult without seeming preachy and I need to be aware of this as I am designing in the word choices I use.

emailing type foundries

OK, So I've emailed the following type foundries:

-Typotheque

-K-Type

-The Northern Block

-moretype

-Hype For Type

-A2 Type

And I asked them the following questions:

Firstly, as you see it, do you feel well protected by the copyright law concerning typefaces?

What do you see as the main flaws of the way the law works to protect you as a designer?

Why do you feel so many people are willing to appropriate typefaces without the artist/designer's permission?

How do you feel would be the best way to resolve this ongoing problem? Does it come from a change in legislation, or an attempt to change people's attitudes...?

Hopefully this will give me a lot of good source material to really assess the problem and what graphical solution I can create for it.

future magnetic tape spreads.

Open publication - Free publishing

Here are some examples of how the spreads would change n future issues. I'm going to print these out onto different coloured papers to propose as further design directions. As you can see, the different kinds of pages have a similar grid and spec. The covers are the same except for the number change, I believe this makes it more enigmatic.

Resolving Magnetic Tape

So, This magnetic Tape brief has been hanging around forever, and I'm getting sick of it. I've made some final changes to the direction and then that's it done.

Firstly, after some research, I've decided to scrap the A0 poster idea, owing to the fact that I can't find any paper stocks apart from day-glo, which I'm positive will look pretty grotesque. Instead, it is likely that I will use sheets of A3 laser printer paper (100-130gsm) in pastel tones, using a different pastel colour for each quarter's issue, providing an obvious visual clue as to how to break them up.

I've started to really grow to dislike a lot of the script font. It might seem appropriate but it's also over used. I want to tone it down in favour of the more blocky, bold and stripped down 'bebas' font. This extends to the cover. I feel like I've been overcomplicating things and I just need to communicate as simply as possible with typography. For this reason I've also gotten rid of the photography. I don't think it works with this type of document, and therefore I've made the headers into typographically driven splash pages, which kind of evolved naturally into using block shapes of rectangles and lines to make something representative of their name. Here's some documentation as to the changes I've been making:

With the cover, I slowly stripped away all the elements, and left the most basic of type presentations. I wanted to create something more immediate than the direction that it was heading in. I feel like the design I've gone towards is much more enigmatic, it's mroe likely to insite a cult following with ti's simplicity than something a sovercooked as what was going on before.

Initially I toned down the script font 'prelude' in the interview spreads like the image immedietely below.

I still didn't think this was working and wanted to use the Bebas type more predominantly, so I played around with using that and geometric shapes to come up wit type that illustrates the subject a little, here the words are placed on top of a black rectangular shape that could represent a shelf. I think this is quite a visually appealing approach to take and so I applied it to all of the 'interview' spreads I'd been working on.


And her'es the development for pianos become the teeth, I've used white rectangles to represent the idea of teeth, the last representation there-of in these images is the most successful.









Used a chart like series of lines to represent the idea of a table, thankfully it also looks a bit more abstract than that too, which means that it doesn't look as tacky as it potentially could have done.

With the Kinsella Chronicles, I kept the magnetic type writing, I felt that because it wasn't an interview, that a different style is perhaps appropriate, it's also the most successful of the prelude script wiritng I'd been working with. I simply modified it to work without a photograph by using the high contrast reversed out black spread to make the page seem a bit more dynamic.

And here's the development for my castle, your castle. I've used the idea of speration of 'mine' and 'yours' to create a final design that utilises the high contrast between white and black that emphasises this theme.

And here's the final design as you can see the two opening spreads had stayed the same. These worked effectively before and I was reluctant to change them. From this issue a branding element to the pages becomes obvious; band interviews do not use the script font, instead using bebas and geometric shapes to make an appropriate high contrast splash page. Other articles tat are not interviews use a mixture of prelude and bebas in order to continue that theme running through the book.

Open publication - Free publishing - More final

Quick initial proposals for log/branding/identity of this brief

These are just a quick few plays with the words 'type community' I've played around with a few font variations to try and emphasise the word 'unity'.I've sued the typefaces, helvetica and arial rounded (to try and illustrate the point of plagiarism, but its too subtle) futura, gill and grotesque. The last of which I'm liking the most so far. However I need to play around with some different things, but I'd be quite happy to work with this idea.

Presentation boards for Lorenzo

Given what point we got to from the last post, we had to prepare some boards for Lorenzo so he was aware of what we were doing, our required print spec etc. so he could go ahead and talk to the printers and see if we could get what we're proposed done inside the budget we have for it.

Myself and Ross quickly printed a mock cover from the versions we created recently by printing on brown card-stock that James has readily available in the digital print room. On this are the specs from the type layouts myself and Ross have decided upon. It;s really different to how I envisaged this project, but making the client satisfied is the most important thing. Now we have the covers and spreads we just await the biographies and the photographs to start dropping them in, the photographs are obviously not going to happen until may, after their hand in.

Open publication - Free publishing - More design

packaging magnetic tape zine

I did this a while ago but I only just got to re-photograph it, post-burglary. Basically it's just some quick mock-ups of how to cheaply package the magnetic tape zine.


Firstly, here is a document of the right size put into a plastic wallet, this is quite a safe secure way of doing it and will hold the tape that comes with it quite easily. The problem is, that I've done it before with the conspiracy theory book and want something a bit more diverse and interesting for my portfolio.



Here it is wrapped in black tissue paper sealed with clear tape, this seems appropriate because it's cheap and lo-fi and the colour black suits the document's monotone nature well. I've also placed a sticker from the conspiracy brief on the front to demonstrate that using a sticker might be the best way to move forward with this. With a double fold, the paper is easily strong enough to hold the tape as well.



I tried the sme again but with black sugar paper, unfortunately this paper is far too bulky and difficult to manage to use as packaging.

Decision is to go with black tissue paper, I am going to need to design a sticker in order to let people nwo what the magazine is inside.