PA178 Digital Typography and Visualization

Faculty of Informatics
Autumn 2009
Extent and Intensity
2/1/0. 3 credit(s) (plus extra credits for completion). Recommended Type of Completion: k (colloquium). Other types of completion: z (credit).
Teacher(s)
doc. RNDr. Petr Sojka, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. Ing. Jiří Sochor, CSc.
Department of Visual Computing – Faculty of Informatics
Contact Person: doc. RNDr. Petr Sojka, Ph.D.
Timetable
Wed 8:00–9:50 C522
Prerequisites
Passion for the digital typography and scientific visualization is an advantage.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
At the end of the course students should be able to: understand digital font formats and technologies at expert level; make reasoned decisions based on the understanding of the principles of algorithms used in digital typography (hyphenation, line and page breaking, float placement); explain and understand methods, principles and possibilities of scientific visualization (displaying quantitative information, data transformation, conversion and modeling for display and data understanding, use of colors, space, interaction, texturing).
Syllabus
  • Digital font formats characters and glyphs
  • concept of meta-font, multiple master fonts
  • font formats in PostScript, SVG, Opentype
  • font rasterization, aliasing and hinting; font embedding and approximation
  • Mathematical typography line and page breaking algorithms; hz-algorithm
  • hyphenation algorithms
  • float placement algorithms
  • Visualization purpose of visualization, visible certainty
  • data and image models (1D-nD, hierarchies, graphs, texts)
  • visual display of quantitative information
  • perception and cognition
  • space, projections
  • color, color spaces, conversions in pre-press
  • interaction, reactivity; animation
  • trees and graphs; line drawing, shading and texturing; graphical integrity
Literature
  • Tufte, Edward R. (2006). Beautiful Evidence. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press. ISBN 0961392177.
  • Haralambous, Yannis (2007). Fonts and Encodings, O'Reilly, http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/9780596102425
  • KNUTH, Donald Ervin. Digital typography. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1999, xv, 685. ISBN 1575860112. info
  • TUFTE, Edward R. The visual display of quantitative information. 2nd ed. Cheshire: Graphics Press, 2001, 197 s. ISBN 0-9613921-4-2. info
  • TUFTE, Edward R. Visual explanations :images and quantities, evidence and narrative. Cheshire: Graphics Press, 1997, 156 s. ISBN 0-9613921-2-6. info
  • TUFTE, Edward R. Envisioning information. Cheshire: Graphics Press, 1990, ii, 126 s. ISBN 0-9613921-1-8. info
  • TUFTE, Edward R. The cognitive style of PowerPoint. Cheshire: Graphics Press, 2003, 27 s. ISBN 0-9613921-5-0. info
Teaching methods
The course is a mix of classical lectures and discussions in a seminar style, with occasional brainstorming sessions on some miniproject solution or case study presentations prepared by students based on given readings (Tufte).
Assessment methods
Final written exam (50 %), miniproject on chosen topic of a course (50 %).
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught annually.
Teacher's information
http://www.fi.muni.cz/~sojka/PA178/
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2008, Autumn 2010, Autumn 2011, Autumn 2012.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Autumn 2009, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/fi/autumn2009/PA178