typeguide1_caitlynmanning

type guide designers

caitlyn manning

a trip through the various minds of designsers

Doyald Young Logotype Designer

Doyald Young is an inspiring logotype designer who has a broad understanding of typefaces, fonts, and words themselves.

Young finds stability in letters for the same ones have been used for centuries. From this security he produces beautiful lettering that has been custom made for many occasions and companies. He speaks about how the most important rule in designing logos is that they much be legible and only made unique subtly. This point made is very important for the viewer must be able to remember the logo and still be able to read it and understand what it says completely. Another important rule, and only rule he states, is “How does it look?” Learning to see, as Young puts it, is very important to Designers of type for one in lettering needs to see and understand why changing something slightly can give a logo or type a different style and context.

Doyald Young emphasizes that lettering permeates our lives. He speaks of “Script” as a luxury font and how it is with us on our birth certificates, coming of age, graduation, and even death. These different fonts surround us through our days, months, and years even so that we connect certain font styles to times in our lives and even occasions. Seeing a font can sometimes trigger knowing a product by seeing a single letter.

Lettering soon comes to rule advertising, readings, and the way one rules their life.

Young deigns more classic fonts and doesn’t go into too much major experimentation as many designers are seen doing today. His ever so subtle changes to existing font families make his work stand out from even the more aggressive uses of text. However many ways one can change the way the letters look, the letters are still the same twenty-six.

Helvetica When thinking about the typeface Helvetica, one may think it is timeless and classic, a typeface that has been made apart of the world all around. Some people think that Helvetica is “just there” and not anything more than that. However, no matter how many criticisms the typeface receives, the legible, accessibility of it makes Helvetica a staple of modern culture.

Through typefaces, designers can plant thoughts in society’s mind. On street signs or in advertisement, one can see the way type creates the world. In the 1950’s advertisement was convoluted and difficult to truly understand the message trying to be portrayed. This Swiss typeface changed this “mess” of type to clean, crisp, and understandable. The edges of the letters seem to be “sliced off” in a manner that makes it have a crisp almost edgy look.

The designers of Helvetica turned away from the manual way of creating letters and changed it to neutral and uniform.

This typeface truly took off when the progression of the computer began. It than became the default for companies and designers to use. It is accessible, comfortable, and accountable and therefore most government buildings and even tax forms use Helvetica. This typeface is simple and almost contains one’s problems; its familiarity creates a secure blanket under which many can trust. However, some may feel like there is need for change in the overuse of Helvetica. There are many experimental designers that work a lot with “grunge typography” and stray away from this developed norm. This experimental form was and still is popular in some uses in various posters or album covers, however it all comes back to Helvetica and it’s simple form. In the clearest form whether it be using Helvetica or any typeface, one must not confuse legibility with communication.

Margo Chase

Graphic Designer

Margo Chase is graphic designer with an interesting take on shapes and form. She reaches for a goal of perfection, mostly so that it can never truly be accomplished. The work she creates looks appealing on the eye but also has a purpose and reason behind it, making it more than just a “pretty thing.” Chase originally started in the music business working later with Cher and Madonna, where she found her voice and who she was as a designer. After realizing she couldn’t start a flourishing design business based on only music, she became more flexible and began more broad work. In her designs she usually starts with a shape that was inspired from one of her many sketchbooks and then draws out the image or font that she works with. After working with the client Chase draws her own inspiration for the piece and plans the kind of drawing she wants to do. In her case, a lot of her work appears to have a “gothic style” which she both likes and dislikes being known for. However, this never stops her from being a successful designer with intentional inspiration and a high sense of purpose.

Kit

Hinrichs

Grapic Designer Kit Hinrichs is both a designer and a storyteller. Through his simple illustrations when he was young to going through the Art Center College of Design to joining the Marine Corps, his work has a background and a perspective of the world around him. While in school he took a year off to travel and have exposure to the different cultures around the world. Through this Hinrichs has a broader understanding on how people are and how they react to certain things. Hinrichs was also apart of Pentagram and from that he learned a lot from his colleagues who were doing business around the world and giving him first hand knowledge. He is a collector of many things in which he draws in spiration from including both books and figurines. Through this collection he is able to reflect on the past and work more efficiently. Another way in that he designs is through the use of typography. He sees typography as an art form and sees the scale of words as holding emotional value. Hinrichs explores how each typeface can hold a deeper meaning and weight to make a logo or design hold more than just the text itself. Through his works, Kit Hinrichs makes design more than what it appears to be, by putting emotion and a story behind everything he does.

Mariam Bantjes Graphic Artist

Marian Bantjes wishes for the viewer to have a somewhat relationship with the piece. Her work forces the viewer to step back and look deeper into the piece presented. Making so that one has to spend time and effort to fully grasp the work, just as Bantjes needed to into order to create it. Her work style varies from most graphic designers in that instead of creating a strategy for the client, she wanted to create pieces more personal and cater to what she likes. Stating that if a client hires her, they hire her for her, thus she creates her own styling of which she wishes will affect the viewer in a stronger way. Bantjes makes design that is not general, but specific to the individual.

In this way, she can be considered an illustrator or a graphic artist and not based on a graphic design clientele.

She had a shift in her work quite late in her career when she decided that everything she does, she does for love.

She began to make Valentine’s for various designers with light paper and hidden letterforms. Bantjes began work of making these “love notes� personal without being directly to the individual. Overall, her work makes the client feel more intimate with the work without the work directly relating to the client themselves as a whole.

Artist Seres: Leading Designers and Design Firms

By Hillman Curtis

David Carson All designers have a distinct personality, style, and process of doing things. Throughout the designers shown on the Artist Series by Hillman Curtis, all their people. David Carson for example, dealt with creating a articles and simply made the pages look how he truly interpreted it. The articles often were illegible but that was often the way Carson worked, it’s what he felt should be shown, saying that he should treat every project like his last. Carson’s work is a bit more experimental than most but all fall under the basic idea of interpreting and creating. Milton Glaser spoke about how gifts make it so people don’t kill people. Although an almost childish phrase, as and artist, he/she gives the world gifts and hopefully brings peace with that. .

James Victore Much like other designers he describes art as a social commentary upon the world. Designers do have the power to change or implement change into the minds of society. James Victore uses the idea of social commentary to its maximum extent, some of his pieces revolving around America’s brutal history.

Victore says that graphic design is a “club with spikes” and thus should be wielded right and in the right direction. By thinking along these lines, design and art itself are powerful weapons to be used to instill something into the human mind. However, when thinking of weapons, one must also remember the journey to get to the result and how to always better from ideas to make future works strong and successful.

Stephan Bucher Stefan Bucher is an illustrator and graphic artist that likes to think he reverses the chaos of the world. He has had various clients throughout his career as well as his own work he has created such as books and catalogs.

When his clients come to them, they ask, “Is there anything on your mind you wanted to do?� thus giving him the power to decide at his will. Bucher started illustration at a very young age making Christmas and Easter cards on the belief that getting them printed made them real. Throughout his learning experiences as a designer he has learned to simply look up at the possibilities and explore the limits of design. Through his extensive collection of illustrations he is able to not only draw for himself but do what he loves in an inspirational environment.