Expressive Type

The Paradox of Tolerance by Dalena Train is an expressive type book that explores how censorship is a disservice to society. Train believes type can be manipulated to explore and communicate an idea, and that with a broadened sense of awareness, we can uncover the truth. This book shows this idea through it’s use covering of abstract, high contrasting, black and white text within various sizes and styles throughout. This allows more expression to be given to the words and phrases left uncovered, for example, there is no censorship on 2 pages of large text, “Censorship is the tool of those who need to hide actualities from themselves and others…” The contrast between the sizes also draw attention towards that portion of text, as well, such as the “But am I hurt, yes…” paragraph in the final photo.

Animated Type

The Dua Lipa lyric video above is a successful example of kinetic type through it’s use of bright, neon colored words in various fonts that quickly appear on screen in sweeping motions in accordance with the lyrics being sung in the song. The words in the lyrics in this video each have different transitions, some are more bold, some are more curved, and they are all variously animated and flashing, down to each letter. The bright, neon design of these words allow a letter to continue down to the line of the next verse. An example of this can be seen during 1:41 of the video between the verse and pre-chorus. The other words blinking around the words themselves in both lyrics add to how fast-paced the video is trying to be. All of these characteristics mentioned of the type in the video add to the theme of the song and lyrics themselves.

Hierarchy Rhythm

This rock concert poster from my local venue back home is a good example of visual hierarchy through its use of fonts, colors, sizes, kerning, and positioning with its colorful, lighter shaded background and its photo of the band as well. Take for example the stretched lettering of the bands name, Yacht Rock Revue, and how it is at the very top of this group of text. It has wider kerning that has stretches longer over the much smaller, and partially italic tour name directly below it. It’s lighter coloring accents the band photo while the starkly different bold, red, font for the date and title of the venue below it draw your attention to it to the other information and details, as well.

Fatype Type Foundry

Fatype is an independent type foundry established by Anton Koovit and Yassin Baggar. They were involved in designed a custom typefaces for Google, Lancel, Condé Nast (GQ France) and Balenciaga. Fatype distributes quality, taylor-made fonts and offers its know-how for the creation of logotypes and letters, the customization of existing of existing typefaces, and language extensions. In their collection you can find ten quality families.

The fonts cycle through a sampling of each of their styles in their previews.

Feel free to check out their high-quality, modern designs, here.

Type Specimen Book: Myriad Pro

I was drawn to Myriad Pro from a selection of older font books I found available digitally through Adobe.

An example from the book shows the text in larger, condensed, italic, and capital, among other various formats. The book keeps it simple, with a plain white background and paragraphs of texts in different weights, languages, and weights, as exampled below on an earlier page.

This font is quite sharp, clean, and simple, as it can be used in signs, tickets, maps, which it also shows in the book, which I found very interesting as well. The bold font used here still manages to let a lot be seen from a distance.

Honey Nut Cheerios

For identifying fonts, the logo of Cheerios brand cereal, specifically Honey Nut flavor, seems to be most similar to ITC Garamond Condensed after uploading the logo to whattthefont.

This typeface family has several different weights to it and was first released in 1975 in Book and Ultra, only. Cheerios have a double lowercase ‘e’ that the Garamond condenses the eyes of, while the teardrop terminal and bilateral serifs on the bottom of the lowercase ‘r’ is are very short as well, along with the serifs of the lowercase ‘i’.

The lowercase ‘t’ of ‘Nut,’ and the lowercase ‘h’ and ‘i’ of ‘Cheerios’ have a lower angled serifs too. The ‘n’ and ‘u’ in “Honey Nut” have more condensed apertures much like the lowercase ‘e’s mentioned. There are also semi serifs on capital letters such as the ‘H’ in “Honey” and ‘N’ in “Nut.”