Jenny Holzer's Truism Poster

Updated: Sep 9, 2018

I conduct research working with a partner and found that the post for the Truism Poster by Jenny Holzer. The truism I selected is,

Learn to trust your own eyes. My background and life experiences have made me review qoutes to find deeper meanings. This artist speaks to me primarily because of type. As I progress with art I know that type is a major viewpoint in my work.

Below: Jenny Holzer, "Truism," offset poster, edition of c.75 stamped "copyright 1978 Jenny Holzer," 17x22 in. http://gallery.98bowery.com/jenny-holzer-truisms/

 

Ancient and Medieval Writing

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Egyptian Hieroglyphs

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Learn to trust your own eyes

Above is the truism that I am using from Jenny Holzer. Converted to Egyptian Hieroglyphics. For this truism I used the online typewriter to type the phrase out and I just needed to copy it to my page from http://discoveringegypt.com/egyptian-hieroglyphic-writing/hieroglyphic-typewriter/ What I later thought while copying and pasting the time it would have taken to create a full wall of images would be so time consuming.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/The_judgement_of_the_dead_in_the_presence_of_Osiris.jpg

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Phoenician Abjad

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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Eshmunazar_II_sarcophagus.jpg/800px-Eshmunazar_II_sarcophagus.jpg

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Learn to trust your own eyes

Above is the truism that I am using from Jenny Holzer. Converted to Phoenician Abjad. I took each letter and overlaid it to a stone image and added the dots that are place holders for vowels. The writing for Phoenician goes from right to left. The most challenging thing from this assignment wasn't making the letters but it really made me think as to how it evolved to this? Then when you add what three others that we learned to develop that, I find that it is remarkable concept to form during a very primitive time. The source for the letterforms I found at http://www.ancientscripts.com/phoenician.html

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Greek Manuscript Uncial

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https://www.ancient.eu/uploads/images/3425.jpg?v=1485681055

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Learn to trust your own eyes

Above is the truism that I am using from Jenny Holzer. I converted it to Greek Manuscript I made the letter forms from scratch in Adobe Photoshop with a tablet. I feel that trying to actually write in out by hand gives a little more insight. I consider it like trying to speak a new language but with your hand. Now the greeks had two ways of writing. In the photo on the left the method of writing was "stoichedon." This was a convention that military in nature everything was in a row. The other form of writing was "boustrophedon" which can be seen on the Greek votive statue in the lower left. This writing would scroll across on leg around to the other leg and then back again.

 

 

The source of letter forms from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Alphabet#Letter_shapes

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Roman Rustic Capitals

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https://www.ancient.eu/uploads/images/962.jpg?v=1485682870

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Learn to trust your own eyes

The truism above I used from Jenny Holzer and converted it to Roman Rustic Capitals. In determining how to write these letters I chose to grab each letter form and place them together.  These letterforms only had 25 letters in the alphabet and the letter J, U, and W were missing. In my truism you will see that the U was replaced with a V. The other challenge was to write this in script continum.  Source for the letterforms were found at https://www.calligraphy-skills.com/roman-writing.html

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Carolingian

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Learn to trust your own eyes

The truism above I used from Jenny Holzer that I converted to Carolingian script. While I was researching these letterforms and trying to find suitable images to crop these letters, I found that these were of very low quality. So as I just gazed at these letters I looked to see if there was a premade font. Of the three that I found, I found one that resembled the strokes to the Carolingian letterforms. The source for the letterforms were found at www.dafont.com, the font is called Carolingia by William Boyd

CarolineMinuscule with Latin Square Capital heading, detail of Saint Jerome’s Prologue, The Harley Golden Gospels, folio 1r, Aachen, Carolingian Empire Circa 800-825, 365 x 250 mm (British Library Harley Ms2788)

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Bastarda

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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Pantographia.jpg

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Learn to trust your own eyes

The truism above I used from Jenny Holzer that I converted to Gothic Bastarda script. This was an interesting letter form, one that I am used to versions of this letter from the D in Detroit tigers to trying to sketch similar letters when I was younger. The difficulty from these letters were the W, to create either a uu or a vu to make a w. My source for these letters were from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Pantographia.jpg

Lindisfarnes Gospel 

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I would like to present my Lindisfarne Gospel manuscript design.

The three animals are a Snake, that is in the shape of the letter S which wraps as the border to my page. The second animal is a crocadile, that is the letter A. My last animal is a squid that is in the shape of the letter I. Followed by the N and T, to spell SAINT.

Just beneath I wrote Matthew in a runic font.

The Jenny Holzer truism is "It is heroic to try to stop time." 

I was very interested in the color scheme and to use colors that might be royally accepted?

Once I finished this I gave it some time to review it. There were a few things I wanted to change but I needed to time gaze at it to figure it out.

I felt that a holy circle around the squids head would help with the i.

I did not like the negative space on the left side on the snake, so I added a cross. I decided to add a versal even though it was not a requirement to the Half Uncial lettering in the upper right.

Lastly I added a parchment background because I felt there was too much white in the top half on the page. Overall I really liked this assignment and I plan on saving this to work on it more in the future.

 

Early modern Europe timeline.

 

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This assignment was to develop a timeline of the information from the bottom of a worksheet. 

​The timeline was regarding the key events towards printing, paper, and moveable type. We decided to create a timeline to separate what was going on in Europe and in Asia. I created the idea of using a feather which symbolized another version of writing that was being replaced by what was happening in the timeline.

​Europe was on the left with blue blocks for the text and the right I used orange blocks to show the text. Overall we tried to make sure that the timeline had an overall theme to include background images and the main letterforms of uncial font.

 

INFOGRAPHIC

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The infographic above is a summary of the transformations in printing technology up through the nineteenth century described in chapters six through eight in, "The Story of Graphic Design," by Patrick Cramsie. All of the information contained in the infographic as well as most of the images are derived from this book.