Tales of typography

So this week was all about type, fonts and typography. I have studied this subject in the past, but it was nice to refresh some of the do’s and dont’s when it comes to creating good typography. So all of the tasks this week was centered around type, how to utilize it to convey meaning, how different typefaces are contstructed and how to use it in a practical way. I chose to gather all the learning activities in this post, because some of the assignments weren’t huge, so it would be overkill to have a separate blog post for each of them.

Expressing meaning
So for our first learning activity we were tasked with creating a new word, one which had no dictionary definition. So it was essentially a task which made us invent a word that we would be able convey the meaning of using only typography. The nonsensical word I created was «Splitch», which was a combination of the words «Splice» and «Glitch. I wanted to emphasize the splice, by dividing the word and distorting the arrangement of the letters. Also the glitch element was there to convey an asymmetrical, disjointed feeling, a feeling of unease. I typed the word in a big font called Adam CG Pro, and then split the word in half in illustrator. I then moved the upper half up and to the right, so it would be disconnected from the lower part of the word. Then I made some shapes that would create the desired glitch effect, and then I connected these shapes to the two halves of the word.

Here is the result of designing my nonsense-word:

I feel I could have tweaked the glitch effect to some degree, but I feel that the current effect express the «Glitch» part of the word in a good enough way.

Next, we were given a list of words to choose from. We were told to choose two of the words on this list:

• Fluffy
• Falling
• Slimy
• Agony
• Sailing
• Rock-Solid
• Loading
• Pizzaz
• Accelerate
• Elevate
• Create
• Inspect

I chose LOADING and FALLING.

For the Falling composition, I wanted to give off a feeling of actually falling. I felt that I could achieve this effect by duplicating the word several times, scale it down every time, and also by changing the tint every time. I chose a standing A4 canvas for this image, so I would have more vertical space to work with. I wrote the word in all caps, in the font Bebas Neue. After I had duplicated the word a number of times, I then played around with the arrangement until I was happy. Here is the result:

I am quite happy about the effect, and how the changing tints and difference in size conveys a sense of falling.

For the Loading composition, I borrowed some ideas from my time as a gamer. Most of my aestethic choices and eye for design comes from gaming and popular culture. So I can safely say I have seen thousands of loading screens in my life. I wanted the composition to be really simple, sleek and minimalistic. I got the idea to have the same font size and play around with the font style to convey that the word itself was loading. Like a loading screen in a game or online. I used a font called Big John, a heavy sans serif font. I got the desired «loading» effect when I altered the font style every other letter. So the next duplicate of the word would have one more letter in a bold style. With the last word being fully «loaded» having all the letters in the bold font style. Here is the result:

The anatomy of type
The next assignment was about the anatomy of type. Every typeface has subtle differences. This is how you can see the difference between Futura and Helvetica. But some typefaces have so small diffences that it is good to know all the parts that make up the letters. In typography, we have a specialized vocabulary to talk about the different parts of letters. In this task we were supposed to show at least three of these different parts that make up the letters. Using this knowledge, we can manipulate type to better fit in a space so that it looks balanced and easier on the eye. I chose to explain only a handful of the many different «anatomical» parts of type. I chose the font Helvetica, becuase it is a popular font that is used in graphic design all the time. All the text was written using helvetica. Here is my guide:

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I am happy with the overall design, but I feel that the body text is too hard to read at this size. I could have used more time to make it more readable.

Creating a gig poster
The final task was to create a poster for a fictional band. We were supposed to design a poster for the band’s gig. The band was called: “The Keystrokes.”
We were given a lot of freedom when it came to what to include in the design. We were told to reflect on the use of visuals and typography to design the poster, and also to remember to make the type work with the rest of the design. I started with a base color, an ordinary yellow color.

I wanted to have some texture in my background, so I found a texture online which I liked. I set the texture to an overlay layer and reduced the opacity. I found a vector drawing of a skull, which I placed in the center of the image. I scaled it until I was happy with the size of the skull, and then I changed the color to a bright red. For a more striking visual effect, I placed a rectangle over the eyes of the skull, as to symbolize a «censor» bar. I changed it to a brighter yellow than the background, to make the contents inside the rectangle stand out more.

I then added the type, which were three different fonts. The top word «The» was written in a serif font called Bodoni. I used the serif here to emphasize the next word, by creating contrast and a clearer visual hierachy. The main word in the poster, «The Keystrokes» was first written in a heavy italic font, then the kerning was set to -10. I wanted to have a grainy effect added to the text, like they used rock posters in the 1960s. I found a splatter online, placed it in illustrator, traced it, positioned it over the paths in the text and subtracted the intersecting paths.

I was quite happy with the result, which was a vintage style rock poster reminiscent of the 60s or 70s. I added a slanted red rectangle, much used in american advertising in the 1950s. This adds a asymmetrical quality to the image, which makes the composition more dynamic and interesting. For the information about the venue and date, I wanted to follow the slant of the rectangle to achieve visual harmony. Here is my gig poster:

And here is my pamphlet, which was a part of the same assignment. I used much of the same design elements, to tie it graphically to the poster as much as possible. The colors are all found in the gig poster, and so are the different fonts: