Type: Draft 3 (Developed) – Verdana Type Specimen

Draft 1

Draft 2

Draft 3

I think I have developed my type specimen well. Although my design ideas differ completely, I feel like this shows how my designs have evolved more and more to fit the brief of a modern type specimen.

I chose to fade each letter of ‘Verdana’ to give the piece more depth, and in addition to this I also picked out letters to put behind each paragraph to add more depth and dimension.

I decided to split the numbers up to balance out the space; however, in order for the numbers to balance out the negative spaces surrounding the punctuation examples, I made the numbers larger. This draws the eye to the right side of the page, meaning the reader will view the actual type specimen first, and then follow the punctuation marks in the centre columns guide the eye to read the information in the middle of the page. Personally, I think this works quite well as it creates movement within the piece as it requires the reader to go against the standard way of reading (left to right).

I decided to show the alphabet in the different strokes and weights to show the reader why Verdana is a suitable font to use in the case of making a piece of text (whether online or offline) more legible.

The reason I changed my type specimen so much from my second and third draft is because I felt that I restricted myself too much using grids and shapes to make the space more dynamic.

 

 

Type: Draft 2 (Developed) & Feedback – Verdana Type Specimen

Development Sketches

I chose the second design, but I made it an 8 column grid to as it was nicer to work with and easier to create a balanced design.

I changed my design completely. I think I developed well from the last group critique and worked on the advice I was given. The X shows depth and draws the eye to the typeface. The opacity of this also creates a path for the eye and the first thing the eye will follow is the two x lines. I’ve used C’s and h’s to signify ‘Context’ and ‘history’, but I’ve used them in different weights to show the variation the typeface has.

Feedback

• There is a problem with the type – it looks scattered. People believed the first paragraph (left) is to tight to the edge, so next time I would add thick margins to solve this problem.
• The different line lengths look untidy and therefore all need to be made the same length (approx 8-10 words).
• The X isn’t effective, It looks more like a reflecting V shape and doesn’t work well with the space as it restricts the area for type and information. However, other people believed it drew your eye up towards the name of the typeface and balanced out the other white text within the heading. However, other’s thought the A’s that the X follows had clever placement and made the X look like it fits in with the heading.
• ‘h’ and ‘C’ seem scattered and pointless, and don’t work in context with the typeface given.
• Indents in some paragraphs and line breaks in others don’t look nice as a mix

What to do:

• Print off multiple drafts to see how it looks on paper, as paper and screen copies differ in appearance.
• Use the space; get rid of the ‘X’ if necessary.
• Use line breaks as it looks cleaner and fits in well with the context of the typeface

Type: Draft One & Feedback – Verdana Type Specimen

This is the first draft of my type specimen poster.

Feedback

The feedback I had was mostly about the space I have used.

• People felt that the grid appearance restricted how much I could play with the text.
• The boxes also restricted how much space I could use and how playful the type specimen looks.
• In addition to this I could’ve created more depth as my design looks flat and doesn’t attract the eye.
• Along with the space, the amount of information in the space needs to be made to 9 pt type and I need to add more information.
• Some people also thought that the balance wasn’t right as I had more information on the bottom than the top

 

Type: Design Process – Verdana Type Specimen

Below are my sketches and annotations to go towards my first draft of my specimen piece.

Design one didn’t work as it looks to illustrative and restricts the space I can use.

Design two looked messy and two tight.

I decided to go with this idea as it appeared the most dynamic and expressive.

Type: Design Research – Verdana Type Specimen

Typographic Posters

https://www.buamai.com/image/45739

http://chloescheffe.github.io/finaldraft.html

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/marindsgn/3621577963/

http://photoshopvip.net/81431

https://www.behance.net/PentagramDesign

Type Specimen Posters

http://marks.burocratik.com/post/55773079334/betype-by-georgiagraphics

https://www.behance.net/yentariusdesign

https://www.behance.net/ahmetalper

RMarDesign – https://rmardesign.deviantart.com/art/Futura-Typeface-Poster-119982311

https://theultralinx.com/2014/06/30-stunning-typographic-posters/

Type: Research – Verdana Type Specimen

Matthew Carter designed Verdana for Microsoft to use in 1996 (it’s name refers to Verdant (green); which is inspired by the green patch of land that surrounds the Microsoft Headquarters in Seattle). Matthew Carter worked with Linotype companies for years, and afterwards he became the co-founder of a digital type company called Bitsream Inc. Carter is now the principle of his own company that goes by the name of Carter & Cone Type Inc. who design and produce their own authentic typefaces, and are based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Carter & Cone have produced types on commission for Time, Newsweek, Wired, Sports Illustrated, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, BusinessWeek, The Walker Art Center, Yale University, Shinnyo-en, and the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, U.S. News & World Report,The New York Times, The Washington Post. the Museum of Modern Art.

Alongside Verdana, Matthew carter designed other typefaces such as Tahoma, Nina and Georgia; these were also to enhance on-screen legibility of text.

Verdana is a sans-serif, humanist typeface designed to enhance the legibility of type on-screen and to work with the natural pixel grid. In addition to this, their shape and letterspacing have been optimised for the typeface to be more legible on-screen.

Verdana was designed with a large x-height, open counters and crisp letterforms. Additionally, it was designed with extra space between its letters which makes the text look loose and balanced which makes the typeface easier to read.

Verdana doesn’t use ligatures, Matthew Carter found that it can be difficult to read ligatures such as ‘fi’, ‘ff’ and ‘fl’, so he designed them so they clearly do not touch – this made the typeface easier to read.

Verdana was created in order for it to be suitable to use on low-resolution output devices; such as equipment like laser cutters. Verdana has also become widely used off-screen too;

“Verdana is a simple, cost-effective font which works well in all media and languages.”

– Camilla Meiby, IKEA spokeswoman

This further supports that it’s used to improve a brand/document/piece of literature’s readability which makes it more accessible to those who may struggle to decipher text in particular typefaces.

When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works it becomes sort of magical

– Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Senior VP of Industrial Design

 

Sites/Books used for research:

• Getting it Right with Type, Victoria Squire
• http://www.will-harris.com/verdana-georgia.htm
• http://www.prepressure.com/fonts/interesting/verdana
• http://www.fontshop.com
• idsgn.org

Type: Ives’ Type

Norman Ives does not used typography in a conventional way. His work appears more to look like a collage and evokes an emotion or thought through the layout of his work. Ives’ work uses sections of letterforms in order to create his pieces, the typefaces differ which builds tone and depth due to the differing stroke widths and point sizes.

Personally, I believe this piece has a loud tone to it, the large stroke widths and weights build the illusion of someone shouting – it gives a sense of urgency. However, there’s also this idea of secrecy as Ive’s uses a few words (rather than just letters) but cuts them up and only shows extracts of them, thus not showing the full story. This lead me to think that the sense of urgency, suggested by the piece, almost reflects on our demand to know the hidden words and the aggravation a person may feel towards secrecy.

We created our own Ives’ Type collage in class.

My pieces are the yellow on blue. Some letters were very difficult to make abstract, such as the letter ‘A’ or ‘K’, as all the examples I saw of these sort of mimicked each other; I think this was because the lack of curves and basic shapes of such letters restrict a person on how they caqn manipulate the letter form in order to change its appearance. However, the letter ‘Q’ that I had, along with a couple of others, offered more room to play with the letter form. The letter Q has a large counter, and because of this, just an abstract piece of the counter could mean that the piece could be of a variety of different letters. It could be perceived as an ‘O’, or maybe a ‘C’ if positioned in a certain way.

It was interesting to see how people read a letter, and the features we associate with each of those letters.

Type: Vernacular Typography – “Presence”

My group was given the word ‘presence’ to work with.

Presence- ‘a person or thing that exists or is present in a place but is not seen.’

We wanted to show the word presence within a natural environment as we thought the ever-changing elements of nature would work well with the idea of presence.

Our first idea was to use light and dark leaves in order to create the word, but I didn’t think it would work as the leaves are all roughly the same colour, and we needed our word to still be visible to the viewer, we just didn’t want it to be obvious. instead of leaves, we used twigs on leaves, but again the colours were too similar for all of the letters to be visible.

We used sticks and leaf stems to create the letters, and placed them in a natural setting, we chose a rock, in order to create a slight contrast between the word and the surface, without making it seem obvious. Originally we thought of somehow putting the letters on the trees but found it difficult to think of a way to get the letters hanging off the branches without anyone getting hurt.

I really liked how the twigs work with the background (rock) because they greyish tones of some of the twigs against the rock emphasise that element of presence. I think the moss works well with the leaf stems too and creates more texture and depth within the image.

It was so interesting learning about type in space, and how to manipulate a space to send a message to someone.

Type: Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Layouts

It was really interesting to see how space and layout have an effect on the way content is read/viewed.

Symmetrical

Personally, I prefer this type of layout, I feel like it looks cleaner and nicer to read. This may be because I find things that are balanced more aesthetically pleasing than those that aren’t.

(The elements of design here DO NOT link to one another, it’s for testing layout methods)

I like how simple this layout looks., it’s definitely easy to follow and I like that it isn’t too busy and cluttered. I felt that the spaces made the design look cleaner, but I also found that the spaces made the design look more balanced and more aesthetically pleasing too.

Asymmetrical

I’m not that fond of asymmetrical layouts as I find they can look quite messy and cluttered.

 

(The elements of design here DO NOT link to one another, it’s for testing layout methods)

I found it difficult to balance text and image in an asymmetrical layout, I struggled with having gaps and wanted to make all of the text and images match up in line with one another; so it’s clear that I found stepping out of my comfort zone kind of hard. I found that this piece looked messy and not very pleasing to the eye.

I think if I was to do this again i would left-align my title and maybe fill the gap with a large piece of text or another image, as I feel like this piece looks unfinished. I also felt that it was easier to overcrowd an asymmetrical layout with text and images than it was with the symmetrical layouts, as I focused on trying to keep the symmetrical layouts balanced and pleasing to the eye.

I think I need a bit more practice, but it was interesting to see how I went about designing the two layouts.

Type: Feedback and Reflection – Hybographic Six Word Story

I really enjoyed this project and completely value the feedback I had from it. My favourite part of this project was its element of playfulness and how interesting it was to construct a hybrid typeface in relation to a story or specific character. It showed me that there are a lot more typefaces and creative ways to use type that don’t constrict you to just the typeface you find in Word or Illustrator, therefore opening doors to a whole new world of creative ideas and opportunities.

The first piece of feedback was that “Jumbly, Gobblefunking…” looked liked it was squashed in comparison to the rest of the text. However, other people argued that they liked the clumsy element of the words showed through its placement, and that it really showed the character of the BFG. The typefaces I used also worked well together as they also gave the illusion of the words falling on top of one another, therefore emphasising the BFG’s clumsy character even more.

In addition to emphasising the character of the BFG, my peers also saw that I tried to show his optimistic character through the use of white text on black.

The main thing I took away from this feedback session was that I could’ve played with scale a lot more, and put emphasis on certain words by making them bigger, like the word ‘more’.

I could’ve made ‘more’ larger in order to show the BFG’s excitable character and emphasise the word and how its important to express ourselves, and I feel this would’ve held more of an impact if I’d made it slightly bigger.

Read more:

• Process: Hybographic Six Word Story
• Outcome: Hybographic Six Word Story

Onto the next project!