Reflection:
Before our class on Typography, I knew nothing about it. In my high school, we never covered this type of material. I think there was one time in middle school where we watched a video on newspapers being made and, in that video, they were showing how old newspapers would use stamps. At the time I had no clue, that was Typography. After we watched that video, we got to use stamps and try to make our names, but we didn’t go into learning about the anatomy of type. It was more of a fun, short activity than a lesson with a project.
However, when I was little my mom gave me old stamps that she used as a kid. She had all kinds of different letters, fonts, and other sorts of stamps. I would always love to try and make cards and newspapers with them. It was always a blast to be able to experiment and see what I could do with all the different stamps there were. She also had three different powders that you could pour over top fresh ink, and it made it have a cool effect. One of them made the text furry, another made it look like snow, and the last one was basically glitter. The stamps themselves were different than the ones we used in class as they were made from wood and rubber. Although they had the same side indent to line up your letters in a row correctly.
I learned a lot more about typography from our class and enjoyed doing the activity. The hardest part about doing the on-hand activity was making everything line up just right and placing the stamp evenly. I really struggled at first to get the name all nice and even on my paper. Whenever I lifted the stamp, there were parts of some letters that looked like they didn’t have ink. There was a learning curve with it, trying to find the correct amount of pressure and making sure it was even. Once I figured that out, the rest of it just clicked.