Tesserae Type Spec

T E S S E R A E

Strategy and Type Specimen

3

Strategy

Grid

Type

Colour

Images

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8

14

18

20

contents

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This book is about mosaics, with the focus being on the work of current mosaic artists. I chose to focus on this part of the subject because there are already great books on the Roman mosaics and those of other specific regions or periods of history. There is also an abundance of books on how to construct your own mosaics, written by people with years of experience, far more than I could possibly amass as a total beginner in the space of this project.

By visiting and talking to mosaic artists I could gather my own content, both text and images, this made it the ideal choice of approach. I did decide I needed to

give readers a brief education in some examples of historical mosaics to begin with. By starting with the oldest surviving specimen and working chronologically through to the more beautiful ones in Ravenna, and then the expressive work of Gaudi, it gives the book and the audience a journey to follow. This hopefully continues by giving readers an interest in the work of current mosaic artists.

By giving these artists a place in a timeline of mosaics I believe it gives their work a greater significance and makes their work demand more respect, because in the future there will be more mosaic artists who could be influence by their work.

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The idea of my book began with a souvenir I had collected from my holiday last summer. I brought home with me a small block of limestone from a Calçada, or Portuguese pavement. In Lisbon these blocks are laid on footpaths and in large open outdoor squares, contrasted with black blocks of basalt to create stunning patterns of waves, symbols and imagery.

After clicking on a few links on Google I read that it is becoming a dying art, with health and safety concerns and a lack of apprentices putting it in danger. I immediately pictured a book dedicated to saving this public art, immortalising the craftsmen and the labourers who make it

possible for everyone to enjoy the beauty of the Calçada.

It didn’t take long though until I realised it would be close to impossible. With no knowledge of the language and no way to return to Lisbon I knew I would have to change my mind. This made me think about the Calçada’s equivalents in the local area, so I looked at paving techniques both current and ancient. It was the similarities with Roman mosaics that really intrigued me though, after seeing them at Bristol’s M Shed and Bath’s Roman Baths. This led me to gather as much research as possible about mosaics, both old and new.

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Gridpage size and margins

I had originally intended to create the pages in the book in a perfect square, but this proved too difficult to design in and limited the flexibility of the grid. I tried different sizes in landscape and portrait before settling on 190mm x 260mm.

Page size

190mm x 260mm

Margins

Top: 0

Outside : 0

Inside: 6.78mm

Bottom: 10mm

1

2

2

1

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1

The margins I used enabled the content to reach the outside edge of the page, while the space at the bottom lifted the lowermost squares of the grid from the bottom of the page. The inside margin gave some empty space to allow for binding.

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I created a grid system with great flexibility, one that was intended to replicate a mosaic grid of squares of tesserae with grout between them. This allowed me to place elements on the page at almost any location, and encouraged me to ensure that the design made clear the underlying grid and link with the subject matter. I used this same grid on throughout the whole book, including on the cover.

Gridrows and columns

1

2

Row height

127mm

Column width

128.08mm

Baseline grid

12pt

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2

3

3

5150

You do get mosaicists who work in

schools and sometimes when I look

at it I think ‘that’s too good.’ If you

look at it and read the small print it’s

designed by the kids and made by the

artist. I don’t get it; I don’t understand

why the school’s employed them.

‘you can encourage the kids but it should mainly be done by the kids’

It should be made

by the kids, you can

encourage the kids but

it should mainly be done

by the kids. Some stuff

is just a bit too good.

What is it that you enjoy?

The part of the job that I like is at the

end of it when the kids have all done

their bit and it’s finished and the kids

go ‘that’s mine’, ‘I did that’. I worked

down in Yeovil and we made 4 murals

over 7 days, I worked with over 450

kids. So at the end on the last day,

we’d got them all finished, they had

an assembly for all the kids, we set up

What was really nice at the end of the day all the kids went back

to class and then we set the murals up so one was in each corner

and a couple of hundred kids came in with their parents and

showed them what they had done. That’s the bit I love about it,

seeing the kids either individually or collectively going ‘I made

that’ or ‘we made that’. For me that’s part of my job, personally I

always think that the process is more important than the outcome,

even more so with kids.

‘I always think that the process is more important than the outcome’

each of the murals so

they were all standing

up so all the kids could

see them, and then we

unveiled each mural

one by one and the kids

were all going ‘wow.’

5150









It should be made





























unveiled each mural



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5150









It should be made





























unveiled each mural



Due to choosing a baseline grid of 12pt and wanting to stick to it, it proved difficult to combine the columns and rows to make a perfect square. I chose to use this to my advantage and create imperfect squares, just over 1mm off. I thought it would fit with the fact that the pages are not square, and in any case tesserae are surely not all exact squares.

5150









It should be made





























unveiled each mural



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Gridex amples of use

T E S S E R A E

3332

Cleo Mussi makes exquisitely

mosaiced 3D figures, using tiny

pieces of crockery, clipped to size

and shape and grouted into place.

‘It’s difficult… if I say I make mosaics, people have

images of all sorts of hideous things, but if I say I

deconstruct and reconstruct ceramics, that’s a bit

pompous. I usually end up just showing people my

work.’

Cleo Mussi

Mosaic Artist

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This is not a guide to the complete

history of mosaics of a single

region, nor is it full of step-by-step

instructions on creating your own.

This is a showcase of some examples

of the greatest historical mosaics,

and case studies of artists who are

keeping this technique alive over

5000 years since it first appeared.

6766

What do you enjoy doing most?

I get much more enjoyment out of

doing sculptural pieces, I’ve got one

that’s going into the ‘Art at the Edge’

Olympics thing, and that’s going to be

in Bath in a little garden that you walk

past near Bath Spa.

I’m also mosaicing a swan for the

Swans of Wells public art project,

like the Lions of Bath project I took

park in. I’ve been sponsored by a firm

of solicitors and they were happy to

give me free reign over the design,

although they were keen to have some

black and green in it as they are the

colours of their logo.

‘It’s funny how things turn out.’

Did you make mosaics during

your degree?

I didn’t do any mosaics at all when I

was studying my degree. I had a bit

of experience in ceramics, I’d done O

Level ceramics and I’d done evening

classes, but at college I was doing

video and dance. I gave up dance and

I was doing photomontage in my final

year. So it is kind of the development

of what I had done, but it was more of

a very chance thing that the teacher

had asked me to do it.

It’s funny how things turn out. I do

sometimes wonder if I’d carried on

doing collage whether I would actually

be earning a bit more money. It would

have been cheaper for a start.

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typemain body

Akzidenz-Grotesk,

Bold, 8pt.

C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=90

Akzidenz-Grotesk,

Regular, 8pt.

C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=100

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2

I wanted to choose a typeface that wouldn’t attract much attention or distract from the imagery, so I decided it would have to be a sans serif. I picked Akzidenz-Grotesk because I personally like it’s appearance at small sizes, as well as the links with Josef Müller-Brockmann and modernist design. The fact that Akzidenz-Grotesk was the first widely used grotesque face and that it influenced many later typefaces fits well with the books development of mosaics through the years as well.

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48

Are there any artists who inspire your work?

I love Gaudi, I’ve been to Barcelona, and I’ve

been to Venice. Cleo Mussi, her stuff is absolutely

amazing.

I suppose one of my weaknesses is that because I

didn’t go to university to do art that my knowledge

of artists is quite limited, so my art has been

developed bit by bit but then it’s developed working

with kids. I would like to know more about different

artists but I haven’t got the time. I go to galleries

and I enjoy art but I just haven’t got the time. I’m a

bit of a Pre-Raphaelite fan, and I like street art and

Banksy so I suppose there’s little bits that come in

there.

What do you think children get from these

projects?

When I do these design workshop with the kids,

when I take 6 kids to look at other children’s

designs I always say to the school, ‘You don’t

necessarily have to give me kids that are arty’. ‘If

you give me 6 kids, give me 3 kids that are arty and

3 kids that could do with the confidence boost’. For

me personally art shouldn’t always be about ability.

It’s about expressing yourself, even if you can’t draw

perfectly or whatever.

I talk to the kids a lot about Quentin Blake, and

show them pictures of his stuff and say look,

technically his stuff doesn’t look right, but it’s

equally amazing because you understand what his

imagery is.

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2

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typepull quotes and page numbers

Akzidenz-Grotesk,

Bold, 15pt,

15pt Leading.

C=100 M=0 Y=0 K=0

Akzidenz-Grotesk,

Bold, 8pt.

C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=80

1

2

I decided to use tight leading for the pull quotes because I think it gives the text the effect of becoming blocks, so they fit well in the grid in the same way that images have done. I used cyan to make them stand out from the rest of the text and for the reasons on the next page.

The page numbers needed to be light to stop them from standing out, so I used the lightest black tone used in the book.

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60

You do adult workshops quite often though?

I do workshops at the stained glass place in Bristol.

This time I had two teachers, one was a physics

teacher and the other was a psychology teacher.

The physics teacher does a lot of her own stuff;

she’s a bit of a craftsperson really. She only sells

a bit, she doesn’t do it as a business. She makes

silver jewellery and stained glass, all sorts of things.

‘Normally they’re fairly artistic and they want to pursue a bit more’

It was unusual this time because they all knew

about cutting glass and how to do it, whereas

normally they’re not really sure how to go about any

of it. Quite often they’re total beginners and they

just want to do something a bit different or they love

mosaics and want to know how to make them, it’s

a mixture. Quite often they’re teachers or they’re

social workers or something like that funnily enough,

people people.

The other guy was a planner for his real job and

does stained glass as a part time business really.

Normally they’re fairly artistic and they want to

pursue a bit more.

1

2

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colour

In order to stick to the modernist style and keeping the focus on the grid system, I considered having my book printing using only black ink on a white page. I thought this would also give the book the look of the old textbooks that I found in the library. I decided instead that some colour

should creep in through the book, developing through time much as the authorship aspect of the mosaic has done over centuries. I only wanted to use one colour though, as the single colour represents the fragmentation of mosaics, with colours lying side-by-side and not overlapping.

C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=100 C=100 M=0 Y=0 K=0

19

I thought of using red as my single colour, as that is generally paired with black by modernists, but I wanted to choose between cyan, magenta and yellow for my point of not overlapping colours to come across. Yellow would be too hard to see on white paper, magenta would have feminine connotations when placed

alongside the image of David Bowers, so I chose cyan. This has meant that the book starts as a journey from the black and white textbook, to introducing colour with the famous relatively recent work of Gaudi, and finishing with lots of flashes of cyan within current artists work.

C=50 M=0 Y=0 K=0C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=90

20

imaGesframe manipulation

I was experimenting with ways to display my images, and found

the effect of cutting the images up fit well with the subject of

mosaics. I didn’t want to make the images completely obscured by

fracturing them all over, but more as though the final piece was

just not quite in place. I toyed about with the position of the cut off

triangles and considered allowing them to break the grid, but I

found this brought too much focus on the individual piece and not

the layout of the spread as a whole.

5958

Do you work in schools?

They don’t seem to get back to me, I expect David

gets most of them. I actually did pass one on to

him because it was in Bristol and I thought, ‘I can’t

be bothered’. I could do with the money at the

moment. It is hard work as well, it’s so exhausting.

I’m just absolutely knackered by the end of the day

in schools.

‘It is hard work as well, it’s so exhausting’

Why are you working with your

tiles on paper?

I’m doing what’s called double

indirect. Indirect would be done

upside down, the design would be

back to front, so that when you put

it onto the board you turn it over into

the tile adhesive and soak the paper

off. I’m doing it double indirect so

that I can see what I’m doing as I’m

going along, so this is what it will look

like. When I’ve done it I’ll lay a sheet

of paper onto it, turn it over, soak

that sheet off and then I’ve got the

indirect, and then that will go into the

tile adhesive.

Weird way of doing it but I wanted

to be able to see what I was doing,

and also by doing it on the paper I’m

not covering up my drawing with tile

adhesive.

5958








in schools.



tiles on paper?














tile adhesive.





adhesive.

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5958








in schools.



tiles on paper?














tile adhesive.





adhesive.

I didn’t want to apply this technique too many times as I thought

it would become less surprising, so only Kate Rattray and David

Bowers have the honour of their images being manipulated in this

way. I gave David two instances because his work has more of a

playful nature about it, as he works with schools.

5958








in schools.



tiles on paper?














tile adhesive.





adhesive.

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3938David Bowers

Community Mosaic Artist

I met with David and asked him a few

questions about his work, and he

generously invited me to join him at a

project he had at a local school.

imaGesex ample of use

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4746

I’ve done healthy eating ones; now and then I do

murals where I can get a TARDIS in there. I’ve got

friends who work in IT who have quite boring jobs

so I text them and say, ‘I’m making a Superman,

what are you doing at work?’ They don’t like that.

What are your usual projects?

Normally entrance wall murals, it’s

nice for a school to have an entrance

wall mural that’s been made by the

kids. I’d say three quarters of the

mosaics I do for schools are entrance

wall murals. Each school has a

strapline or a motto so sometimes it’s

themed around that.

I worked at a school down in Plymouth

and theirs was ‘Free to fly, onwards,

upwards, together’ so we had these

kids that were flying through the

sky, but I talked to the school about

whether we could enlarge upon it

so we looked at different animals

that could fly, so there’s Pegasus in

there, there’s Icarus, we’ve got Mary

Poppins, Superman, a witch and a

little fairy in there!

‘I’m making a Superman, what are you doing at work?’

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