Type Journal & Reading Responces
Kimberlyn Lamb
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The Art of a Beautiful Letter Typography is more than just beautiful letters drawn out on a page. Typography is creating an affective letter that is good in function and design. We have seen fonts and typefaces all our lives. They have impacted our history and our society. Fonts and typefaces are everywhere, from billboards to movie titles to the soap you use to wash your face. Doyald Young is a logotype designer who has created some of these letterings you see every day. He loves lettering and creates them with a passion ever since his step mother taught him how to draw. His devotion to his work is inspiring. Doyald customizes his letters and creates his own unique forms that fit to his needs or the needs of his associates. Good fonts are created with precision and critical details. Letter making takes time and practice. Doyald has been making letters all his life, but he’s still learning how to draw. His passion shows others that they too can do what they love with a little hard work.
DESIGN Design is a way of communication. It’s a way of storytelling. These stories transform from one idea to another. Designing expresses the person, family, friends, and the world if needed. They express personal experiences, politics, social problems, and so much more. Computers have impacted and changed this art form. Before everything was done without electronics but now it seems as everything is computer generated. Great designers know how to draw out their ideas without robotic help. When designing you never stop learning. There is always something different, always something new that can be created and developed. You never get tired of working as a designer because you never do the same thing twice. You solve ideas and solutions to problems in creative and inventive ways. The fluidity of graphics allows you to do this. You can make whatever you want as long as you’re doing great work because if you’re not doing great work, then you’re not going to be happy.
Helvetica is said to be beautiful and timeless. For so long it has been used because it’s in human nature to use something neutral, efficient, and smooth. This typeface is overly used in just about every place you look. You see Helvetica on street signs, billboards, buildings, and so on. It gives a person very little to think about because of its abundance and blandness. It’s easy and simple but it’s also a default everyone goes to and has become a global monster. Just because something is legible, doesn’t mean it communicates. Helvetica was designed to communicate the perfect typeface. When asked to revise Helvetica, many can’t do so because there is nothing one can change to make it any better. It may not be the best type to use for every occasion but it is a good default to run to when in need. Helvetica fits in some circumstances but people could use more effective fonts in its place to communicate more than just ease and minimalism. It’s not just the letters, but the space between the letters that make the word.
Margo Chase surrounds herself with talented people. She collaborates with everyone in her office and they all learn off one another. She used to work in the music business. She made album covers for artists like Cher, Madonna, Crowded House, just to name a few. Eventually she realized she couldn’t grow a business of her own out of this and became more interested in calligraphy and product design. For a while she only did a gothic style with all of her clients. She soon had to convince other potential clients that she could work outside the realms of gothic. When developing for her new customers she would use six simple thinking tools.These would help her connect with them more as people so her creations could became more personal. She connected to her people through understanding and creating for the brand.
Thinking Tools
1. Research 2. Psychographic Mapping 3. Persona Development 4. Emotional Targeting 5. Visual Brand Stories 6. Design
Marian Bantjes work invites you to look and explore the delicate detail and effort she puts into everything she does. Her work is so specific to her and who she is. She’s a little more or a little less of an illustrator. She designs and creates her own fonts. She works mainly to make herself happy. For a long time she went without work because she had gone so long listening to what everyone else wanted. She began to create for herself and for the enjoyment of others everywhere. She loved that her work could be seen for free and anyone could enjoy her visual pieces. Design became an obsession for Bantjes and she would work so diligently to make her work just right. Even though her style changed over the years, she maintained the same personality through all of the new creations she developed.
Kit Hinrichs Designers make things clear and understandable so people can comprehend. Kit Hinrichs began drawing when he was a little child. He was known for being good at design and decided to make a living out of it. He traveled around before going back to art school. He culturally understood design and had a broader mind. He went to New York because he said anybody who wanted to be a designer should go to New York. He later on started to use typography in his design projects. He started on projects with science museums, the pentagon, Muzak, and many more.
Stefan G. Bucher
Stefan G. Bucher is a designer who isn’t afraid to create outside the box. His technique for design includes materials like toothbrushes and bursts of air to create whimsical and interesting creatures. His monsters are diverse and exciting in themselves. He enjoys just having drawn something during the day and having his thoughts come to life on paper. He likes to get his ideas out with design. He loves having the ability to print his pieces out and he pushes the boundaries of what print is able to do. His creativity is admirable, remarkable, and adventurous.
Brand Names Many brand names incorporate the use of metallic looking text and shiny reective lettering. The letters will usually contain serifs for a more sophisticated and higher priced look. Making the type gold or silver creates an appearance of good quality and material. Brand names mostly use a thin typeface to represent skinny bodies that will ďŹ t into the clothing. The DKNY type is thick though, which can symbolize bodacious butts that can ďŹ t into their jeans. Thickness is used here as a positive bodily feature given to the customer by the clothing.
Video Games The grunge look is present on many video game titles. These video games are battle games that contain a lot of violence that is reected in the text on the cover of the game. The text is usually thick and broken away as if was in its own war. The color is has been consistently white or gray with hints of other colors to highlight special editions. Some incorporate images from the game such as the eye in Aliens and the gun shown in Halo Reach. The blocky lettering also covers majority of the cover horizontally which becomes the main focus and is easily identiďŹ able.
Flyers in the Hallway Some of these are good examples of type and the others are very bad examples of how to use text to convey a meaning. The GFAA is a good example of ligature where all the letters connect with their crossbars. The blocky texture of the 2001 EDGE poster creates a brick pattern that helps develop the idea of the event. The pottery studio is clear and simple and uses similar vertical text like the nceca poster. The colors used in the nceca are odd and doesn’t make sense. The worst of all is the ceramic poster. The text is diďŹƒcult to read and a type crime of manipulating the text is evident.
Valentine’s Day Cards Valentine’s Day is a day for love and passion. These cards are just a few of the variety found on the shelves of cards in Target. There is an obvious color theme used in all of these cards, red and pink. There is a variety of texts used to convey the message of love. More sentimental messages are convey with cursive and fancy lettering with incorporated hearts. Younger texts or funny messages are conveyed with hand written typefaces and uneven lettering.
Electronics
Most electronic logos are simple, contain serifs, and get straight to the point. The Otter and Sony are similar in formats along with the lower case letters of at&t. Hp was a little more creative by placing their letters in a circle and connecting the legs of the letters to the outside. The symmetry of the lettering is pleasing to the eye. Lowerpro is unappealing though with its oddly placed capital L and mountain logo above it. The logo is placed in an inconvenient place that leaves negative space between the lettering and the top of the oval everything is held in.
TCBY
This frozen yogurt shop incorporates many typefaces into their décor. The posters contained interesting type combinations that helped develop and playful mood. The illustrations and graphics work well together with the text. The main logo of tcby cleverly uses the shape of the cups in the ‘y’ and the rest of the text flows well with the design. Even the circular pink poster located on the window was just as interesting as the other posters. The type is friendly and easy to read.
Yoplait and Light & Fit use the same circular design to surround their main logo. The whole packaging is very clean and neat. The typefaces are all clear and mostly black or white. The Publix brand is the only title that uses a different color but it doesn’t correspond to the color of carrot cake flavor of the package. Activia incorporates the tiny label above the name by warping the text around it. This is different and clever but shouldn’t be done because the middle of the text is warped differently than the rest.
Yogurt
Crackers All the typefaces here are big, bold, and easy to read. Each box uses a different color in their title. Blue, green, yellow, and red are the most used through all the boxes. Triscuit makes square crackers in which they incorporated into the tittles of the ‘I’s. Toppers has a sort of drop shadow that creates a layer of text that conveys the meaning of topping a cracker. Crackerfuls, below the Ritz logo, is manipulated to look like the filling between two crackers. These brands cleverly introduce their product through the use of type.
Toothpaste
Majority of toothpaste boxes use the color blue to represent the freshness of mint and the cleanliness of water. Aquafresh and Crest incorporate blue as their main color scheme with a hint of red. The C in crest is bold and red. Maybe this represents the gums or the color of the toothpaste. Aquafresh has a dollop of toothpaste attached to the q that makes the type noticeable and identiďŹ able from the rest. The other three boxes include odd text break up methods and unusual coloring.
Bread type is very bold and old fashioned. The type appears as if it has been around for quite some time which it probably has. Merita has been around for a while and has a warm country home feeling with its cursive lettering similar to the Italian home feeling of Spoleto. All of the type uses serifs. Sara Lee is softer and enlarges the S and L. The extended L is odd and doesn’t look right compared the large S. Cobblestone Mill is probably my favorite because its typeface is large and in charge.
Bread
Tea These tea brands use the color green the most. Seeing that all the teas but one is green tea, this makes sense. The TAZO tea is exotic in its design with the crossbars across the Z and inside the O. Tetley incorporates a leaf into the end of their name with the Y. The other green teas are all similar in their type that isn’t their brand name. Twinings actual name is slightly curved and mimics the shape of their tea pots. This visual interpretation is interesting and is surrounded by a nice circled branding.
Gold embossing seems to be a theme with many wine brands. Gold and fancy looking lettering is applied to both the title and the logos placed above the name. Livingston doesn’t go as fancy but the typeface itself says it all. A gold shadow is present to tie it in with the rest of the fancy wines. Cheap White Wine takes a comical view point on the branding. The typeface is created to look like a stencil and further convey the cheapness of the wine. It’s an eective way of portray the name to a further degree without actually come across as cheap.
Wine