Abstract:

Typography is an important element of design discipline education process at graphic design departments of fine arts faculties. The term typography which was firstly used for defining Guterberg's metal letters, is accepted as a province of design field nowadays, that its subject matter is the usage of fonts, numbers and punctuation marks. Typography course aims to develop the ability of using types of fonts and characters effectively and correctly for graphic design students. While letter forms, characteristics, type styles, tools and techniques are being taught, the basics and principles of typography takes place in this narration.

These basic principles that are taught with the support of applied projects, provide to see the connections of different designs and techniques with the subject. Topics like positive-negative space, hierarchy, symmetry-asymmetry, rhythm, emphasizing, aligning, selection of the color constitute the basic concepts. Because of the experience gained while working, from minimal arrangements at the flat surfaces to the complex compositions, in each step, balance at the space is created with the value of letters as shapes.

This complex structure which is formed in the content of identified project, eventually is related with the environment and composes a sculptural position carried from surface to form. This three dimensional structure that is made of letters, is the design meets with the environment.

With this method, an applied project was carried out with thirty, second class students from Anadolu University, fine arts faculty, graphic design department. At the first step of the project many fonts were examined and one character was taken from the choosen font. This character was placed in squares given, and a balanced composition was created. In a concept of four stepped process project, compositions were designed with one, two, three and four elements. Presentation was made with four squares and one rectangular form in 50x70 cm board with a concept of typographic fiction.

An arrangement that was formed with four squares by adding a different font of the same letter in each square to the letter at the first square. On the other hand a free composition was created in the rectangular area without a limit at the number of letters. At the execution step, the identity of the design on the surface was kept, and the design was carried from two dimension to three dimensional form with the usage of free material and was presented at the exhibition area.

Keywords:

Typography, three dimensional, compostion, education, character.