Tag Archives: Typography

Research Point: Magazine typefaces

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Research Point: Magazine typefaces (Graphic Design 1 pg. 97)

Go through the print material you have collected and divide it into ones that look easy to read immediately and those that don’t. Is this due to the typefaces used, the way the type is laid out – the number of words per line and the column width, or its alignment?

Work out from your examples what the designers have done to make things more legible and readable.

I can see that this activity could easily become a bit of an obsession! It was fascinating to note how fast I made the decision about what I felt was easily readable and worked well for me. It wasn’t until I started measuring and analysing the characteristics of the pages that I realised how much sits behind that almost instantaneous decision. I looked at a wide variety of print materials from the “Lakeland” catalogue and “Your Cat,” to “Time Magazine” and the “British Journal of Photography” (BJP) on the basis that this would give me some very different house styles to consider.

As I started deconstructing the layout I was very aware that my needs in terms of legibility and readability may not be the same as everyone else’s. I wear varifocal glasses and have a slight astigmatism in my left eye; for the most part I take my glasses off when I’m reading but that is dependent on type size.

In the end I analysed eight pages from six magazines, ranging from those I thought were quite legible and readable to examples I found very difficult to read. Rather than try and do everything on the computer I photocopied the pages that I wanted to look at and marked them up by hand. I was then able to scan them and add them to my learning log.

In order of preference in terms of my ability to read them, from best to worst, the articles are:

  1. A Tale of Two Hermiones: Time Magazine
  2. A Changing Nature: Your Cat
  3. In Print Lotus: BJP
  4. Labour of Love: Good Housekeeping
  5. The Mood: Elle Magazine
  6. Video: People Management
  7. You don’t want to alarm anyone…: People Management
  8. Experience: Elle Magazine

The first two were very close and I was surprised at choosing a justified text as this is usually harder to read. I think the centred headings and use of white space is probably what worked for me. It is a very simple layout, which is something I have taken note of.

I was also slightly surprised with ‘Your Cat’ because it is the only one I looked at that has four columns. I was attracted by the quite informal header typeface, and the San-serif body text with no more than six or seven words per line I found very easy to read. I think this was helped by the ragged, rather than justified edge. Overall, the tone set by the typeface seemed causal and friendly.

The BJP has used three equal width columns with a serif text and a bold sub header. My critique of this design would be that the typeface is a little small for me, but that may be expected as the emphasis seems to be more on the photographs than the text.

The Good Housekeeping page I just find really messy and I’m not sure where my eyes want to go. It uses six colours, mixed cases, regular, italic and bold typeface. It feels like the whole toolkit has been thrown at it. The serif typeface with ragged edge is reasonably clear to read but the overall design put me off reading.

Elle Magazine’s ‘The Mood’ uses a more limited typeface range and has more coherence than the Good Housekeeping page but it is too small for me to read comfortably, which I find off putting particularly because all the paragraphs run together without any space between them. The tone of the typography feels quite formal and probably aimed at a readership that I am not part of.

Both the People Management pages look overloaded to me. There is so much going on I am inclined to just flick past them. I think it has not long been redesigned to a smaller format, which I suspect was intended to make it look more contemporary. The heavy solid lines on “You don’t,” and the mix of colours and symbols and text on “Video” make the typefaces leap about on the page for me. The typeface on “Video” is also too small.

Again it was a close decision but Elle Magazine’s “Experience” is the least successful from my perspective. Small dense serif text, uneven column widths, justified text, narrow side margins all make this page very unappealing and something I am unlikely to read. The designer has used indents and the large capital “M” in an attempt to break things up but I don’t find it effective.

This was a really useful activity in terms of thinking about my own work. It has highlighted for me that I have a preference for a simple clear typographic layout but that I shouldn’t rule things out too quickly – like using justified text – as there seem to be ways to make it work in terms of readability and legibility. I was surprised to see the extent of the variation within each of the magazines in terms of design. Most seem to stick to two to three typefaces but these can have different formats, type sizes and colours.

 

 

Exercise: If the face fits 1

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Exercise: If the face fits Graphic Design 1 pg: 94

This exercise comes in two parts, the first being to create a sample book of typefaces. Organising the typefaces into:

  • Serif for continuous text, and headings
  • San-serif for continuous text and headings
  • Script fonts
  • Decorative fonts
  • Fixed width, techno and pixel fonts

Identify which typefaces have bold, italic, black or light fonts.

Oblong sample book page

I took two approaches to this first part of the exercise. The first being to start to create a sample book and the second being to use software to organise the typefaces.

I decided to use the sample book as an opportunity to take the plunge and use InDesign. I have used other packages before like Publisher but a couple of earlier attempts to get to grips with InDesign were not entirely successful. I decided on a landscape format with a very simple design so the typeface could be easily identified and I could feature the different formats.

I learnt a number of things in setting up the sample book:

  • How to set up an apply master pages
  • How to set the document language
  • Turning off hyphenation
  • Fill and stroke
  • Adjusting typeface and characters
  • Locating and adding glyphs
  • Using past in place

I’m not convinced I produced the samples as efficiently as I could have but at least I’ve got started.

As an alternative I also signed up to MyFontBook, which allowed me to quickly identify and tag the typefaces on my computer. This is a great way to do the work of the sample book quickly but I’m glad I started with InDesign before I used this.

I can see how useful the sample books might have been in the past and can be helpful as a quick reference guide now; this feels like the start of an on-going process. I have only done two of each form of typeface in my sample book so far but have found the process very good for familiarising myself with InDesign and the typefaces on my computer. It was useful to see the different formats that typefaces come in (reglar, light, bold, italic etc.) and the different tone they can each evoke from fun and informal to serious and formal.

 

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Research Point: Vernacular typography

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Collage of vrnaclar street signs, handwritten and printed

Research Point: Vernacular typography (Graphic Design 1: page 90)

Vernacular typography can be very well crafted but it can also be crudely created signs done in a hurry. Either way it is using typography and lettering to create visual communications Take a look around you and identify some vernacular typography that you find interesting. Document the results.

Collage of vrnaclar street signs, handwritten and printed

Vernacular typography

I happened to be in Kentish Town for a meeting and it provided a perfect opportunity for looking at vernacular typography. In an age where digital reproduction is so easily available I confess I hadn’t expected to see many handwritten signs, but once I’d spotted one they seemed to be everywhere. I particularly liked the Laurent Perrier one because its message is so clear.

I also like Strollers mainly because it made me laugh. This is a coffee shop for all!  But the coloured type looks a little faded, the positioning of ‘retired people’ is slightly odd, and the lack of opening times seems to be a bit of an omission.

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Typefaces around you

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Collage of typefaces from a journey to London

Street Typography

I used my trip to see the Crewdson show at the Photographer’s Gallery in London as an opportunity to look at some of the typefaces I encountered on the way. To say they were ever present seems like an understatement. Typography was there in every aspect of my journey from my number plate and parking ticket to underground adverts and Emergency call systems.

The most common feature, with the exception of the Royal Academy logo, was that all the typefaces were sans serif. A couple used a script typeface. They were also a mix of all uppercase and upper/lower case. By the time I got home the exercise had almost become overwhelming, and it was interesting to note how much I probably screen out everyday.

I was intrigued that most of the typefaces were sans serif because my understanding was that serif type is easier to read (although Poole’s research suggests this is not a clear cut debate). Sans serif typefaces certainly look more contemporary but for me it highlighted the importance of the relationship between design and purpose, particularly where the intention is to convey a specific message.

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Research Point: Magazine typefaces

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Paragraph of text from Elle magazine with analysis marks
Paragraph of text from Elle magazine with analysis marks

Typeface analysis

(Research point: Graphic Design 1, page 87)

Choose a magazine and look at the main typefaces they use for the body text and headlines.

I had bought a number of magazines to use for the various exercises and research points and decided to use ‘Elle’ magazine for this activity. This is not a magazine I’m particularly familiar with and it seems to have a very distinctive style so I thought it would be a good starting point. I used various online tools (Identifont, WhatTheFont and Font Matcherator) with mixed success. The various searches gave five matches for the main heading:

  • Nimbus Roman Modern Compress D
  • Euphonia Latin
  • Redeye serif bold
  • Ambroise Std Francois Demi – this was the closest match as far as I could see

On further research a couple of blogs suggest it is Didot, which having seen it, I think is correct. I am obviously getting a bit typeface nerdy because this blog piece on Didot’s history was fascinating!

The brief was just the kind of challenge that Hoefler & Co. loves: we were asked to create a typeface that works like no other, a Modern which — unlike the commercial cuts of Bodoni — would have hairline serifs, and maintain them over a range of sizes. From the Didot collection we chose the grosse sans pareille no. 206 of Molé le jeune as a historical model, and extended the scant material in Didot’s 1819 Spécimen des Caracteres with quite a bit of invention: italics designed to work at large sizes, a range of different weights, and the many characters that Didot’s workshop never made. In the service of the design’s thin hairlines, we drew each of the family’s six styles in seven different “optical sizes,” each designed to be used at a different range of sizes, for a total of forty-two fonts.

The ‘July’ subhead got 9 matches:

  • Vedo Book
  • Irma Light, Regular & Medium
  • Cyntho Pro Regular
  • Relay Wide
  • Family Bird
  • Relay Wide Light

It looks to me like Relay Wide Light is the closest match. At the beginning of the activity I noticed I was broadly scanning the words and the typefaces but I was then looking in more detail (see the image above). The sorts of things I started picking out were:

  • Bowl shapes
  • Whether there were serifs
  • The position of serifs – were they either side of the line or just above/below, right or left
  • Where serifs sharp or rounded
  • Angles – this was noticeable particularly on the ‘S’ character, did the top and bottom line up or where they slightly offset

This was another good activity for really looking at typeface construction and understanding the characteristics that enabled me to decide which typeface is the closest match. It was also interesting to see that although a magazine like ‘Elle’ has its own house style much of its content includes advertising with additional typefaces. I was struck in looking through the magazine at just how many typefaces are included; this must make presenting a consistent style challenging.

Once I had finished my typeface searches I came across this blog piece, mystery solved!

Domaine and Galaxie Copernicus in use for Elle UK by Suzanne Sykes & Mark Leeds in the UK.

Suzanne & Mark have really mixed it up with three totally different typeface families, including a forthcoming sanserif from Mário Feliciano. On paper and in theory, these typefaces shouldn’t “mix”, but in Elle they totally work. It’s a testament to the typographic skills of the designers that they’ve created a sympathetic environment for the fonts to thrive! The magazine is thoroughly contemporary, as it needs to be, and the pacing various throughout. Some spreads verge on controlled mania, others are calm and tastefully restrained.

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Research Point: Typography 2

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Images of protest placards

Protest Typography

Our civilization is based on the alphabet and numerals. These elementary marks have no semantic meaning, but have been assigned roles as visual substitutes for speech sounds and arithmetic quantities. (Meggs, 1992)

…typography with its ability to corporealize language can be a capable tool of intervention against issues that concern us as citizen-designers. In order to understand typography’s capacity as a means for design activism there is the need to perceive typography as part of a greater system, –a network that includes written communication, language, technology, politics and society. (Özkal, 2016)

Typography, it seems to me, has a crucial role to play in capturing our thoughts and putting them out in the world. Often this is probably done without much thought – we just happen to use whatever is set as the default on our computer or device. I remember for a long time in the organisations I worked for everything was Times New Roman for day-to-day communication.

Having worked with a designer when setting up my consultancy business I am aware that the relationship between the typeface used and the message you want to convey is very nuanced. We worked through a series of questions around the tone I wanted to set, as well as practicalities like legibility and readability. The typeface was saying something important about me and the character of my business.

I would argue that typography has an innate power. I have been collecting examples of protest typography on Pinterest and it is interesting to see that in most images of marches in particular, the placards are ubiquitous. The protest typography I have looked at so far seems to have a number of common characteristics:

  • It is designed to ‘shout’, to be big and bold
  • It is generally black, although reversed out typeface, and sometimes red are also used
  • Whether handwritten or printed it is predominantly all caps
  • It is also generally san serif, with quite a slab typeface
  • The message is usually conveyed as succinctly as possible – of the 117 images I have pinned so far the word count is generally between three and seven
  • Some are ‘designed’ and mass produced, others are handwritten on found materials

Its role seems to be to reinforce an uncompromising point. A statement that makes it clear what the bearer thinks about the issue in hand and that this view often sits in opposition to what might be regarded as a dominant ideology. I think this is what Oskal (2016) is referring to when he talks about being watchful of the invisible actors in typographic communication. This leaves me with a question about whether typography in itself is benign, is it purely the application that positions it?

Letters in their attempt to confront letters, create a crack that makes us become more watchful; hence recognize the invisible actors in typographic communication. Typography can work with or resist these actors, but in whichever way, to use its capacity it is necessary to perceive typography in its relation with other systems, such as language, technology, ideology and politics. (Özkal, 2016: 8)

References

Meggs, P. B. (1992). Type and image: The language of graphic design: John Wiley & Sons.

Özkal, Ö. (2016). Letters against letters: Typography as a means for Design Activism. Paper presented at the 5T Design & Resistence Conference Proceedings.

 

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Exercise: A typographic jigsaw puzzle

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Sentence created using a deconstructed typeface

Exercise: A typographic jigsaw (Graphic Design 1. pg 89)

Using the deconstructed typeface provided try to put the elements together to create the phrase:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Sentence created using a deconstructed typeface

Typeface jigsaw puzzle

As instructed I drew a baseline and a median line and then traced the various elements provided to see if I could construct the sentence. I also printed a larger version of the sentence to help me identify the shapes. This was fascinating in that it really highlighted the nuances of the typeface construction and was more difficult than I thought it would be. I used all but two of the pieces provided which I was pretty pleased with. There were a couple of points where I felt like I was looking for a shape I couldn’t find which was a bit confusing.

This was a very absorbing means of looking at the anatomy of a typeface and showed the importance of its construction. Things I might otherwise have taken for granted. In some ways it reminded me of doing calligraphy classes at school, not something I especially excelled at because it required an attention to detail I was not good at. I distinctly remember discussions about the pen strokes and creating particular bowl shapes.

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Research Point: Typography

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The history of typography, printing, and reading are all linked; what else can you find out about this history that you find interesting?

A quick online search of the ‘history of typography’ reveals a wealth of information primarily documenting the timeline from its earliest developments through to the present day. This short animation is fun.

This TedX is also a playful look at how we see typography

I was struck by the statement that ‘typography, printing and reading are linked’; for me this has political connotations. It is closely linked to education and goes back to the debates about providing the masses with the ability; a political act that was seen as controversial. Much of my secondary research has therefore focused on typography in relation to politics and protest.

When I first started GD1 I watched lots of graphic design documentaries, it was a new field for me and I knew that this immersive approach works for me. One of the videos I watched was Wim Crouwel Talking About Swiss Style.

While it was not specifically about typography in relation to protest what I was struck by was the fact that typefaces I may take for granted were not universally available, he describes how difficult it was to get the Grotesque typefaces in the Netherlands when he started working. This is an extraordinary concept in an era when I can pretty much download any typeface I want (as long as I can pay for them). I think this is important in terms of the cultural history of typography. I was intrigued and previously unaware that typefaces were so closely associated with particular countries of origin.

 

 

 

Point of Sale feedback

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Love fruit poster with fruit heart in the middle

I am slightly conscious of working in my own bubble recently and although I have been getting feedback from friends and family it felt like I was at a point where I needed something more. I decided that with the point of sale exercise I would go to some of my fellow students and ask for their views.

I am not as confident in the graphic design field as I am with my photography so this was quite a big step. I felt comfortable approaching the Facebook Visual Communications group, partly because it is more visual platform and partly because I still seem to have tech gremlins logging into the OCA fora for some reason.

That aside I got some very generous responses and I am grateful to everyone that replied. Opinions naturally varied and some people preferred the backlit fruit whereas others liked the puppet warped fruit. Comments included:

…It reminds me of a stained glass window and I think would definitely work well from a distance. Using lots of different fruits too makes it versatile…

…this feels like 2 totally separate posters (the landscape version of sliced fruits) and not as coherent as the first image.

I like this, fresh and simple.

…it’s my favourite but I feel like the fruit blends into the background a bit. Perhaps a green or blue background would be punchier?

I really like the photographed fruit but the Heart + ‘Fruit’ in the middle is not as interesting to look at… I’d rather fill my eyes with all those translucent shapes! Why the typewriter font? Is there a reason for choosing it?

It was obviously great that people responded positively to the ideas but what was interesting was the questions that were raised:

  • The colour of the backgrounds
  • The choice of typeface
  • Whether there should be gap in the centre of the sliced fruit
  • The red heart being distracting

All the points were useful insights because they were not necessarily the things I had seen and/or they were a good test of whether I had made conscious choices about what I put where. Taking on the comments I played a little with the backgrounds, and the typeface and heart on the sliced fruit version. Thanks to Charlotte for suggesting what now seems obvious about combining the two ideas (if I were to rework it again I’d use a backlit orange slice too)! In the end my preference is still with the single fruit & veg on a white background but other people did seem to prefer the backlit versions.

While the process was a little nerve-wracking I’m glad I did it and it has given me confidence to ask for feedback again. It was particularly useful in highlighting the value of different iterations of a design and a good test of how willing I was to let go of some of the aspects of what I had produced. The exercise also highlighted the challenge of managing the seemingly infinite variety of solutions – colour, composition, typography etc.!

 

Research Point One

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A series of different typefaces - based on 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' phrase

Research Point (pg.38 OCA Graphic Design)

What sort of items have you collected so far?

What was it that made you want to keep these items?

My research to date has been broad in terms of getting to know the field a little better, and narrow in terms of the specific exercises and assignments. A core part of my strategy involves using different Pinterest boards extensively to collect visual examples:

I am also following a number of OCA Pinterest boards as that gives me access to more examples and includes things I might not have collected myself. I have a growing pile of books that span practical guides through to theoretical and conceptual approaches. These are particularly useful for weaving into other aspects of my life as I travel!

I am making use of my sketchbook to collect examples of the work of a range of Graphic Designers. This has been very helpful in terms of the HG Wells book cover design exercise. I have also been collecting magazines and online pages to get a feel for different design and layout approaches.

A series of different typefaces - based on 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' phrase

Collecting

The current collecting focus for me is typefaces. I have learnt how to add new typefaces to my apps on the desktop and am making use of lots of free resources. It has been interesting exploring a number of websites that talk about trending typefaces. The Google fonts site is also helpful in that it suggests typeface combinations (this is helping me gain confidence in thinking about what I would use). Typography is the area I probably feel least comfortable with and although it comes later in the course I feel it is something I need to be thinking about as soon as possible.

The reasons for collecting these different materials vary. With some it was purely because I had some form of immediate response to them, approaches I really liked and disliked. Some surprised me or showed an idea I would never have thought of. Some of the illustration based examples made me full of awe – a case of illustration envy! In many cases it is an aesthetic response, something beautiful, ugly, funny or sad. In this process I have also found myself particularly drawn to work with a socio-political message. I am more interested in this field than the commercial ‘selling’ aspects of graphic design although I accept that there can be complex messages in those too and the dividing lines can be fuzzy.

I love research and as such this all feels quite natural to me. I think the thing I need watch is the never-ending data collection syndrome. The collecting bit is easy, it is knowing when to stop and make decisions that is the challenge!

 

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