I think the whole point of being a design student is to learn how to solve problems. On your own and in your own unique way. Your assignment sounds like a wonderful opportunity to get your hands dirty. Why start off by asking around here? Go and do the job.

I did get my hands dirty silly. I offered my teacher two demos and he basically trashed both. So now I'm sorta "stuck" ...

Also it doesn't help that each demo takes 3 hours to do ... I kind of wanted to kill my teacher .... *very frustated*

Translate the form into 'Franglais': rather than assuming that the form needs to be bilingual, assume that the reader is competent enough in one language to be able to sort out the meaning from a combination of languages. If nothing else, you'll amuse yourself and perhaps win points for lateral thinking.

Ooer, a whole three hours to do a 'demo'....welcome to real life, Shannon. James M was easy on you; stop whining and get on with it.

1. Allocate equal space for each language, but always allow for the longer (French)

2. Use a different (though harmonious) type style for each of the two languages

3. Don't be afraid to use rules to organize and separate items, and background tints to suggest hierarchy: although the tendency with modernism is to remove non-typographic elements, that's not the best strategy for complex forms.

4. You won't find this kind of work in awards shows/annuals (it's not Hollywood enough) However, it is amongst the purest and most demanding aspects of graphic design. Take a look at some of Erik Spiekermann's forms design -- he obviously loves and respects this kind of work, and even manages to bring some style to it. (Sorry, can't remember where I saw the examples.)

I really don't see how Shannon is whining.

--

I think there are two possible strategies: make the two languages visually as close as possible; or apply some cultural sensitivity and risk the wrath of the cross-eyed Modernists.

The first option is pretty easy. But it might result in the functional quicksand like in Emil Ruder's monolithic (in contentually great) textbook.

The second option might benefit from using totally different fonts for each language. Ladislas Mandel for example insists that French type needs to have a smaller x-height. This would actually help in the technical realm too, since French will generally run longer (like Nick says). You could also be more conservative and simply apply width (friendliness versus elegance) by using an MM font with a width axis, and making the French font slightly narrower, which would also help with balancing the space usage. Note however that smaller x-heights and narrowness will make the French have a smaller apparent size, and some people might interpret this as "less important" (although others might see it as "discrete", which fortunately happens to be in cultural character). One thing you could do to counter this is put the French first, like on the left or on top. You could also use a bit more leading to make it seem "larger" in a different way.

BTW, there are some great articles in old issues of the journal Visible Language about multilingual typography.

hhp

French more longer than English is a legend created by bad translators. I do most of my publications English French, and in many case my English is more longer (Yes, I'm one of these bad translator to English, so more long). :-)

A very recent example from this afternoon: I just edited the French texts of the Avenir Next specimen. Booth English and French came from German source. My job was to edit the French, as the original translation was bad (BabelFish have done perhaps better job than that one).

The main conceptual text take 1642 signs in French, 1708 in English. English more longer!

Each language has his owns habits don't try to make them identical, its a stupid 50's universal approach.

Sometimes, one language will take more space than another for many reasons, subject, translation, style of the writer, sometimes its the reverse. Who know the truth?

>many case my English is more longer

The rule I have heard is that generally a translation is longer than the original language. This makes sense as the writer, if he or she is good, will use the resources of the original language to be compact and forceful. A translation can't do that without being a re-write.

Can you use more than one color?

Use pictures. Icons, images. Bingo! No type and everyone in
the entire world will be able to use it, your tutor will flip and
you will pass with flying colours! But seriously, I love designing
forms. I don't know why. Brutally functional I suppose. Ahh, forms.

kris.

>French more longer than English is a legend created by bad translators.


My experience, living in a bilingual country, is otherwise. This was the first bilingual document I pulled from my filing cabinet.
It appears to be a point of honour with French Canadian writers to have more words on the page than their English counterparts.

Although [literal] translation adds about 10-15%, some languages are still more verbose than others. English is generally very terse, while Latin languages (except Latin itself!) are more verbose.

It's rare to find good benchmarks of language economy, but a handy one is Zhukov and Sadek's "Typographia polyglotta", which shows official, very tight, but non-literal versions of the UN Charter in 20+ languages. It shows that the main Latin languages run about 10-15% longer than English. So when you couple that to sloppy translation you can get a huge expansion. When Jorge de Buen translated my "Improving the Tool" essay (~2,500 words) into Spanish and got a gain of only 14%, that was pretty impressive - the UN Charter is 17% longer.

BTW, an Armenian from Lebanon has four "unofficial" languages! :-/

hhp

That�s a great reference Hrant.

Yves, it sounds like you did a great job setting four languages in parallel - much better than Ruder.

hhp

>The thing I'm most proud of is (was) a bilingual
magazine about theater, not the artistic but the
technical aspects.

Oh yeah! I always get the biggest kick when I
design something that works. Balls
if it looks pretty, if it functions and whoever
uses it doesn't have to think than it is a success.

kris

> All pages throughout the magazine were ....

Pictures, please!

hhp

Ahh. Now you really have to show
some pictures!

>I feel a bit weary of hijacking Shannon's thread

Don't most threads get hijacked 'round here?

I think hijacking is fine as long as the plane ends up in Tahiti.

hhp

Does anyone know the rules when pairing Eubonics with English in forms?

Does anyone know the rules when pairing Eubonics with English in forms?

Yeah, remember to leave room on the form for every other ethnic and regional dialect of your language.

John did you hear about the national Eubonics beauty contest?

Shannon, it's school. Experiment. I agree with others: add titles, use icons, make one language oriented up and the other down, so you can't read the other unless you flip it. Whatever. It's better to crash and burn spectacularly than be silently disregarded. Enjoy finding new ways to display information. Your wackiest ideas may whittle down into the most innovative/ effective.

Also, we don't know why your demos were "trashed" so offering guidance is a bit tricky...

John did you hear about the national Eubonics (sic) beauty contest?

That sounds like the beginning of a great joke. What's the punchline?

Just spotted the typo: Ebonics, not Eubonics. Eubonics refers to the making of really good little cakes.

Miss Idaho didn't show up.

hhp

Hrant make it clear Id a ho

Wouldn't that be "I da ho"...?

> Id a ho

Ah, a Freudian slip.

hhp

WOW~

I really didn't expect so many replies. First I'd like to thank you all for your helpful suggestions and you'll all be happy to know I handed in my form and I think my teacher smirked when he was grading my piece ....

I still don't know if that's a good thing or not. At any rate to answer Chris' question ... I believe my first drafts were trashed because the first one was "too symmetrical" (but I thought it was easier to read). And the second one was too simple (which I thought was the point of a form).

Either way, I learned a lot about form making that's for sure. Everytime I see a bilingual magazine now, I quiver ...

Also, regarding the whole whining thing. I wasn't whining at all ... it's just that I have 8 classes, that are each 3 hours and that are basically all graphic design classes. Which means that for every class I have 2 hours of research and 6 hours of homework to do per week (minimum). You do the math and you'll realize that they're aren't enough hours in the day to allow me to do that.

Then again, that's school for you. However, time because very precious to you in school as well as in the work place. No one likes to waste 6 hours working hard and then being told that what you did was "worse than the original" piece the teacher gave you. Which is what my teacher had told me. So yeah ... I was frustated, but I wasn't trying to whine. I'm sorry if some people felt like I was. I was merely frustated and had a mental block for my project.

I believe that's called being human.