I looked at the contents from two different magazines Life and People. They both are special edition magazines about Robin Williams and Queen. Both are simple designs with the emphasis being on the images. I like the Robin Williams one more because I like that it gives descriptions of each section. You can see that the grid is used to place the text between the images. The Queen magazine is very simply, so the modular grid is really clear in the column to the right. I personally think the design for the contents in the Queen magazine would look better in the Robin Williams magazine, and vice versa.
Author: lindam25
Type Foundry: HvD Fonts
HvD Fonts is a foundry based in Germany. The foundry was started by a young Hannes von Döhren and became an established type foundry in 2008. The goal for HvD Fonts is to deliver fonts of the highest quality. The company has worked on design projects with Wal-Mart, Hyundai, Nordstrom, MasterCard and Volkswagen and HvD Fonts has won a few awards. Their site has fonts available for anyone to purchase as well as a portfolio of the work they have don’t for companies.
Typographic Ornaments
Originally, I was going to look more into Bodoni ornaments because Bodoni has become one of my favorite fonts to use. I decided to change to Minion Pro ornaments because in all truthfulness I don’t really like the look of Bodoni ornaments. Another reason I decided to look more into Minion Pro ornaments is because I never realized that Minion Pro had ornaments. I think often time, for me personally I just look over ornaments because I never really use them. I came across a site called thebookdesigner.com and Minion Pro’s ornaments stood out to me because they are small, cute and look like little drawings. They were created in 1990 by Robert Slimbach. These ornaments even though they are small still stand out the perfect amount because of the contrast of black and white in them. I like them because they are simple, clean and aren’t too dramatic.
Typewolf: Professional Web Typography
When I was visiting the type wolf site I came across Professional Web Typography. I found this section interesting because it touches base on so many different things. There are 10 chapters and when I was reading through them I found some things that would be helpful to me and possibly others. The chapters are short and images are provided so you can visualize what things should look like. One section I liked was setting type in the browser. It tells you how to do it and what it should look like as well. Another page I found helpful was in the last section called practicing type. This is a longer section but it does tell you how to set up a grid in CSS which I think could be helpful for myself and others. While these are just a couple of sections that I liked some of the other chapters were Choosing Headings, Selecting Body Text, and Exploring Variable Fonts.
Online Font Libraries
I chose to look at fonts on Typekit which has recently been switched to Adobe Fonts. I wanted to look at these fonts because I have an adobe cloud subscription. I didn’t realize that I could view all the fonts and activate them as well so that’ll definitely be helpful in the future. The fonts I chose that work well together are Amplitude Black and Benton Sans Book. Amplitude Black is the font I used for the header and Benton is the used in the place holder text. The fonts do resemble each other which is why I like them together but the do have differences. Amplitude is a font I would use for a heading because some of the letters like L and H reach above the ascender line. I personally wouldn’t like the look of that if amplitude was used as paragraph text. I also like the look of having a really bold heading and then the paragraph text is a thin font. I was between Benton Sans Book and Thin when choosing the paragraph text; but the Benton sans thin seemed a little to hard to read. While they both look the same Benton sans book is just a little bit bolder.
Animated Type: Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad is a very popular show and I found this example of kinetic type that depicts a well know scene from the show. The animations throughout this short video worked well, it is made clear visually when one character is talking versus when another one is talking through the black/white background color. A part of the video that stood out to me is when Skylar says, “I know what it could do to this family” and then that sentence slides down and crashes into the edge of the screen, symbolizing that she means the family could be ruined. Another part of the video that I thought worked well is a 51 seconds, the dialogue that was happening between two characters makes a noticeable change visually that only one character is talking. There’s minimal activity in the background during this part that works well because you can hear as well as see that whats being said does have a more intense nature behind it.
Expressive Type: Sweeney Todd
I found this Sweeney Todd poster and thought it was a perfect example of expressive type. The poster uses motion through the words, starting at the top with SWEENEY being the largest font and in white against the red and black. The reader has to work their way to the bottom which the wording is in red, not to take away from the focal point of the name. The simplicity of the background says a lot about what Sweeney Todd would be about by using the red to make it look as though blood is splattered against the black. This background works well for the poster causing it to stand out but also not taking away from the wording.
Rhythm of Hierarchy
I chose the Lallapalooza music festival schedule for this post. The first image of the line up was the first post I had ever saw for the advertising of this event and even when I first saw it, I didn’t love the look of it. I personally think that there are a lot of names on the line up that it is easy to get lost in all of it while trying to read it. Also, I do think that it becomes almost to hard to read as the names get smaller and smaller.
The second image of the live up I do like much better. I Like that it is separated by the dates of performances. The fact that it is separated by the dates and the headliners on each day are in a larger font, makes it easier to read. It makes it easier for the reader and it works better for the look of the poster. Having the dates and the headliners in a larger font also makes it easier for the reader to find what they are looking for as well.
Didot Type Specimen
I chose this type specimen book because I think it has a very simple yet elegant look to it, which works really well for the font. I think the minimal usage of words, letters, number and symbols on a page makes it easy for the viewer to follow. I also think having every other page in black and white makes each page stand out on its own while still having a connection to the other page.
Identifying Fonts
I chose to identify the font on the Walmart sign. I used an online resource to identify exactly which font it is, which is a font called Bogle. The font can be downloaded at the Walmart brand center’s website. When I was trying to identify the font the resource I used also said the Bogle font is similar to Myriad Pro Bold. After looking into it, Bogle is similar to Myriad with a few modifications on the letters W, a and t.
Typography Fall 19 