A FAMILY PEDIGREE

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A FAMILY PEDIGREE
A JOURNEY THROUGH THE DESIGN PROCESS by SUE GUNN
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INITIAL INSPIRATION
Tracing your family history is an increasingly
popular pastime and calligraphers are often asked
to write out family trees and pedigrees. I have
been looking into my familys history for some
years and, when I could get no further with one
branch, I decided to write out the pedigree. One
of the most fascinating people in my family was
my Great Grandfather. He was killed in the Battle
of the Somme in the First World War when his son,
my Grandfather, was only two. This pedigree is
the result of research into this branch of my
family with the name of Castle.
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WHAT IS ITS PURPOSE?
A family tree is usually a formal piece of work,
the essential function of which is to present
information in a clear and legible manner. At the
same time it should be pleasing to the eye and
decorative. In formal work such as this, I find
that beauty is intrinsic to the function of the
piece rather than being imposed by
usingdecorative techniques. That is to say,
that if the function is the most important
consideration, the rest will follow. Originality
comes from necessity. A pedigree should present
information about individual family members as
well as how they relate to one another in the
wider context of the family and its history.
A selection of family history documents.
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WHERE TO START?
One of the most difficult decisions is what
information to include and, perhaps more
importantly, what to leave out. When working with
a client, decisions made at this stage are vital.
If major changes are made later on it can add a
vast amount of time to the project and,
therefore, increase the cost. Family trees can
take several forms and it was at this point that
I decided to place the generations horizontally,
with the most recent generation at the bottom. I
also wanted to include as many of the direct
descendants as possible. The handwritten chart
above shows direct ancestors only with each
generation placed vertically.
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INITIAL DESIGN THOUGHTS
When I had decided who I was going to include and
how I wanted to lay it out, I began, as I often
do, with pencil sketches. Roughing out who might
go where and seeing what the general shape of the
tree might be in pencil is quick and effective.
Everything is very loose at this point in order
to keep my options open and to explore all
possibilities.
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HIERARCHY OF INFORMATION
When beginning to design a piece of work, I find
a technique I was taught as a student always
works for me. The Hierarchy of Information
helps to set out the different types of
information to be included in a design. Each
piece of information is then numbered, 1 being
the most important and, in this case, 6 the
least. This acts as a guide when choosing how to
write out and arrange the various pieces of text.
I can now see that the most dominant piece of
writing should be the title as it will tell
people what the work is about, the next most
dominant should be peoples names and so on,
right down to the least dominant which might be a
key to the symbols used.
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DESIGNING THE STYLE OF TEXT
My intention is to keep the design formal and
traditional with the main writing in black and
the introduction of one other colour, possibly
red or blue. My first instinct is to use Roman
capitals with Foundational, as above. The
standard layout for married couples is to put
them side by side linked by an equals sign.
Children are then linked by a line from the equal
sign. In this example the styles work well and
are very legible but the nib sizes used will make
the panel extremely large.
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MORE TRIALS
I tried Italic which is more compressed and wont
take up so much room laterally. The introduction
of the red was an attempt to lessen the impact of
the biographical information. In actuality, the
red increases the impact and makes it more
important than the peoples names. The italic
writing is also much harder to read than the
Foundational.
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EVEN MORE TRIALS
Smaller nibs were used along with cerulean blue
lettering which is less dominant than the red. I
have also returned to Foundational writing
instead of the italic. The smaller Foundational
works better but Im not convinced about using
blue.
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JUST ONE MORE TRIAL
The same size nibs are used here but I have gone
back to red and Foundational again. All these
trials were written very quickly without drawing
lines or making measurements. At this stage it is
enough to get an overall idea of how it will look
when done properly.
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FURTHER DOWN A BLIND ALLEY
Back to the blue but this time cobalt blue mixed
with a little black ink to try to improve the
colour. But it didnt work and was very difficult
to get to flow through the nib. It became clear
that the use of any colour for the biographical
information was too much. There is a lot of
information and colour makes it too dominant. I
decided to keep it all in black stick ink.
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MORE DECISIONS
I decided to save space by not repeating the
surname Castle for every person and to only
include a surname where it differed from Castle.
And also to place spouses beneath people where
there are no children as this will save space
laterally and means that I could go back to
larger writing which is more legible. This was
starting to work now.
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LAYOUT AND SPACING
There were approximately 80 individuals to be
included in this pedigree. It was a daunting
prospect to try to work out how they would all
fit onto one sheet of paper. I used Saunders
Waterford HP 90lb paper in a sheet measuring 56 x
76cm as my maximum size. A good starting point
for the design is to take the generation with
most people in it and to work out how they will
fit comfortably. All the smaller generations can
then be fitted around that. I wrote out each
persons details, cut them out and laid them onto
a sheet of paper, spaced evenly apart. When I was
reasonably happy, I pasted them down using a glue
which allows for repositioning. The sheet was
then stuck on the wall so I could view it from a
distance and many adjustments were made over a
period of time.
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Until this point I had been centring all the
individuals information under their name.
However, I found that married couples worked
better as a unit if they were centred as a pair,
using a narrow gully between them. This made more
sense as the line came from between them to their
children. But, this meant that the person on the
left had to have all their information lining up
on the right hand side. So, where do you start
writing to make sure you end up at the same point
on each line? I resolved this by writing the
lines upside-down. It gave me the right
appearance and I could measure the lines to
ensure I started in the right place on the final
piece.
LAYOUT ADJUSTMENTS
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THE TITLE
From the Hierarchy of Information, I knew that
I wanted the main title to be the most dominant
feature. When work is framed and hung on a wall,
something has to catch the viewers eye to tell
them what its all about. The title will be the
hook to bring people closer to read the smaller
information. In any design, if theres no hook,
or focal point, people wont bother to look at
it. Having experimented with various letterforms,
I decided on fairly large roman capitals. It is
easily read and fits well with the rest of the
text. At this stage I also developed my ideas for
colour. I settled on a terracotta mixed from
Scarlet Lake and Ivory Black gouache.
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GENERAL LAYOUT
When all the individuals are laid out in their
correct generations, it became apparent that the
design didnt balance. There were areas with no
people and this created holes. As can be seen
on this rough, there is a large hole on the top
right and another in the bottom right corner.
There is also a smaller area on the right beneath
the 4th generation. For the piece to work, it
must be balanced and that means filling the holes
in such a way that they dont compete with or
dominate the rest of the text, whilst also giving
that sense of balance.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The holes in the design offered a good
opportunity to include some details about
specific people and to give a flavour of the
family history. I decided to do the writing in
italic using a very small nib and with generously
spaced lines. This gave a texture which didnt
compete with the main information. The sub-title
was terracotta and in small roman capitals. The
rough above was quickly written to judge the
effect when pasted up with the rest of the design.
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OVERALL APPEARANCE
This rough shows how all the elements work
together and how effective the hierarchy is. The
most dominant feature is the title, followed by
the names of the people and then the additional
information. I also decided to do the linking
lines in the terracotta and its only when this
goes in that the design really comes together.
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THE FINAL PIECE
When I start on the final piece of any design, I
often rule up and work on two sheets. This takes
the pressure off slightly because if I make a
mistake on one, I know I can carry on with the
other one. This design was extremely complex and
needed many measurements taking and transferring
to the final sheet. Because of this I decided to
work differently. I began by ruling and writing
the title first.
My workings out for some of the measurements
When I had one I was happy with I ruled and wrote
the top generation. I took another piece of paper
and taped it beneath what I had already written,
ruled up and wrote the next generation. I was
then able to check if it looked right before
writing it on the actual sheet. If it wasnt
quite right, I could make alterations. In this
way I was fine-tuning as I went, allowing each
generation to respond to the previous one. Once
the main people were done, I wrote the small
pieces of extra information in the spaces left.
Finally, the lines were ruled using a ruling pen.
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THE FINISHED PIECE
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DETAIL OF TOP LEFT CORNER
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DETAIL OF TOP RIGHT CORNER
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FOOTNOTE
One of the most common questions I am asked is
how long a piece of work took to do. In this
case, I can give an answer as I kept a record
from the beginning. The total hours worked over a
period of some months was 72 hours. This does not
include the many hours that the roughs were stuck
on my workroom wall in order to judge what
changes were needed. Nor does it include the
innumerable times I fiddled with moving text a
fraction here or a fraction there as I passed by.