Design for Print

The project aims were to create a typographic ‘celebration’ of language in its local and in the vernacular of a particular region. The ISTD brief sets out to express typographically the slang or vernacular of a local region and the derivation of the phrases. In this project the I set out to explore the local language of the region in which I grew up in, Carlow in South-East Ireland, that my father remembers from the 1950’s. As a member of a local historical society, the Old Carlow Society, my father and my uncle wrote an article recording the words that were at one point in daily use that may have disappeared completely now. This article was published in the 2006 issue of the societies annual magazine, Carloviana. Mostly of Irish roots the words mostly referred to agricultural and descriptive words that would have eased easily from spoken Irish into English. It would be a small niche market that would be interested in a publication like this. They would be exclusively people with an interest in language, development in language in Ireland, or those who grew up in Carlow during the particular time frame.

The finished book is a combination of the inner pages of copper plate embossments and screen printed type, juxtaposed with the outer pages of computer printed pages with the article and related text. The whole concept revolved around the interplay between the opposing techniques to highlight how the language illustrated is that the past, and is being documented now. The hand printed elements and the hand binding of the book serve to create a mood of exclusivity and handcraftmanship that ties in with the niche market that would be interested in such a book. The somewhat informal and conversational tone of the body of the article works with the more modern printing of the outer sections, and the more formal and dictionary-toned inner pages reflects the more formal tone that older publications of the time, the 1950’s, would have had. Taking inspiration from the Penguin series mentioned earlier, the publication was realized in monochrome, relying on the artistic shapes of the uncial typeface and the texture of the paper used to add to the tactile feel to the book. The layout reflects the page size selected, with the grid in a square. These elements were designed to be neutral so that the type was and remained the main focus. The layout remained quite simple with three columns to aid in a flexibility in the setting of the blocks of text with the enlarged uncial letters. The type selected outside of the uncial was Garamond. This is a classic serif typeface which reads easily at small point sizes and once again lends the layout the feel of a older more formal book publication of the 20th century. The typeface uncial is not as legible when set in blocks of text. It was for this reason I decided to use examples of a uncial face, namely American uncial from the Linotype web site adapted slightly, as a form of illustration. This lead to the added emphasis on type forms as a focus in the publication. The article itself discusses the development of language which is implicitly linked with developments in printing and information technology. Thus the emphasis on the type forms and their juxtapositions between the too is both wholly justified but appropriate.