OUGD404 | STUDY TASK 3 | TYPESETTING

For this task, firstly we were reminded of the distinct conventions of modernist and postmodernist editoral layout design. We were informed that using justified paragraphs leads to unappealing 'rivers' caused by the altering of the tracking. The less-lazy way would be to flush the text left and alter the lines so that it corrects the rag to be a little more neat. We were taught about how to correct orphans and widows which we had previously touched on in previous sessions; which involved a similar process to adjusting the type in different lines.

After we had an overview on modernism, we were split into groups and given a poem - The Mouses' Tale and were told to create different layouts for both postmodernism and modernism.

For our modernism one there was discussion about whether the poem should be layed out as it would be read, for example following the conventions of poetry, or having the layout appealing and neat. I thought that since modernism is about legibility and making type easier to read, that the poem should be how it would be read with the same system, it still looks neat and follows the conventions. We used both however as we were unsure which would be correct, since one follows the right principles of modernism and the other looks more modernist.

For post modernism we decided to be experimental as that is exactly what postmodernism is; breaking rules. We added huge speech marks and created a mouses tale on the last line to 'cleverly' fit with the title of the poem.

This session allowed me to become more confident with layout of type and stop myself perhaps being lazy and justifying my text! I am a fan of postmodernism over modernist design, so it was fun to try out a layout and be experimental and work in a group and get different opinions and options.