Online Font Libraries

I chose to go with Google Fonts and found the typefaces Bitter and Monsterrat. I enjoy putting a serif and sanserif together to make it seem like it has a sort of format and some level of hierarchy. The Bitter font has only three types: bold, italic, and regular. While Monsterrat has 12 types to vary with. In the beginning of the paragraph you can see which type is used in italics. I decided to use a black background to sort of emphasize the typefaces and their shapes so that they stand out more. And I was able to preview this feature through google fonts since you can change the background of the page to see the font in black or white colors. Therefore, I believe these two paired well together especially with the variations of thick and thinness.

Typographic Ornament

Through the beginning of the semester I’ve had a fascination with Bodoni typeface. Bodoni had created ornaments in his typeface for the bottom of pages for books as part of a design. Each letter, symbol and number has a designated ornament. These ornament designs were found in “Manuale Tipografico.” They were used to separate sections of text, to accent a page layout or now a days used for graphic design. These symbols have been used in graphic designs for elegant looking pieces. They have been nicely illustrated to be able to fit their pieces by using their unique shapes and form.

Typewolf

Typewolf had various links to look through but I drew most of my attention to the type anatomy page (https://www.fontshop.com/glossary/) . They have almost every detail about anatomy you could think of. Even more than what we were learning for part of the first project we started. This website also contains likes to fonts and their own blog for any news about topics relating to typography. I enjoyed reading and learning more about typography on this webpage.

Expressive Type

This poster was designed by Michael Bierut for a ball in 1999. It’s a very subtle for of expressive type but still eye grabbing. He was able to create a sense of light by playing around with the color and transparency of the overlapping letters. You can almost sort of feel the energy of the light by given the illusion that it’s light. They’re not a solid color but sort of “dusted” for the effect similar to neon light signs. I believe this poster is captivating just enough for the audience to wonder what it’s purpose is in order to read the super fine print at the bottom.

Table of Contents

I had an odd difficult time finding a very modern type of table of contents. But, interesting enough, I enjoyed looking at how simple older table of contents were. This book, The Land of Oz: the Further Adventures of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, is from 1904 and uses all kinds of simple. The images only relate to the characters in the book, the font seems to be consistent, and the color well is black. There’s not a lot of hierarchy since the page was made to its simplest form. It’s all straight to the point for the readers to not get distracted or possibly overwhelmed because there is too much going on in the page. Now a days, of course, it could be better. It could be designed with various font and possibly add color (since its feasible) to create hierarchy and a more appealing, eye-grabbing look. But for a 1904 book, it’s not too bad, just in it’s simplest form of design.

Animated Type

I truly love this animation.  The creators of Apple used simple type (as well as consistency), circles, and lines to talk about their message that they’re giving. The sounds, the simplicity of using two colors, and the graphics all tie together to make one piece. They talk about how people are trying to perfect everything when we should be using creativity, as designers, to improve a better way to connect with everyone with the intention of enhancing every life they could possibly touch. This quick kinetic type video was an interesting way to approach a simple design for a designers massage. The flow of one word to another and the shapes around it, made it work really well. I just truly have no real words for this video because of how well they worked on it and how simple it is.

Hierarchy Rhythm

I have always wanted to go to Coachella and I believe I’m just waiting for the right time with the right amount of money. But that’s not what this post is about, it’s about their poster. Coachella is a huge event in California every year for 2 weekends. This poster does a decent job portraying the dates in a different background color with a shape around it, using different font sizes and grouping the artists that are performing on a certain day.

With various font size, they’re using the biggest known artists to the lesser known artists (as I’m assuming). My eye actually caught the names of the artists first instead of the concert. I had found another version of this poster below. In this version they don’t show which days the artists are performing but this shows my assumption to be true. They had put the more important and well known artist towards the top.

I believe the (top) poster is good given the amount of information they hold. It was up to the designers to chose what to put in order to not make it so clustered (because there’s another poster about the schedule). I think the couple of things I would change is the time it starts for each day, spacing and not have added the stars in the background. Spacing is always important. There should be a bit more spacing between each day the artists are listed to give a true distinct look that they are artists performing on different days.  Lastly, the stars are a little distracting for the light weighted fonts at the top near the title of the event. Keeping them and changing the color of the font or keeping the color of the font and changing the background would help it be easily readable. Other than those few changes, the poster has a clear message of who is performing what day and what event this is.

Type House and Foundries

Being shown a lot of type, I found an interest in Frederic Goudy’s fonts. He was the first of many to be part of the American Type Foundry created in 1892 and formed by 23 foundries. It became the most dominant manufacturer in America for metal type form. Most of the type are still used today. Goudy started designing at the age of 40 and created a lot of hand made fonts for prints and advertisements such as his first font he designed, Camelot. Most of his fonts are available today through various websites offering typefaces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Goudy

To look at all of the similar and various fonts he created visit: http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-61704.html

Type Specimen Book

Looking on the website provided to us through blackboard (https://www.emigre.com/TypeSpecimens), I found the font Platelet. I even started reading the booklet a little bit to see the history and to look at the other letters in the font. I thought the cover was clever in relation to the history of being used in California’s license plates, it caught my attention right away. Even though there were only eight pages, it was simple and beautiful and the designer of the booklet was able to show the uniqueness and beauty of the characters. Below I provided one more image of the pages I found most interesting.

Identifying Font

Clarendon Wide Bold

Gilbert balls are best known for being used in rugby. The picture on the left is a key chain of a tiny Gilbert ball I have collected from a rugby tournament. I was able to determine the font using whatthefont.com. Most of the fonts that were listed, were different types of Clarendon. Small little history about the font, is that it is a slab-serif released in 1845 by Thorowgood and Co. in London. And the designer of this font is Robert Besely.

Now, looking through them all, almost gave me a headache. I was able to distinguish that it was Clarendon Wide Bold by looking at the tail of the R and how much it curves up, the thickness of the letters especially from thin to thick, and the spacing between the letters. If you look closely between the regular bold and the wide bold in the image provided, for example you can see the spacing difference clearly between the I and the L.