Curiosities in New Media Design
TyPoGrApHY.
Typography is one of the most fundamentally important aspects of any design (obviously not when no text is actually needed though).
Will Harris, who has written several books on the use of typography, says it is used to trigger subliminal emotions. For example, a Times New Roman font on a child's birthday card would not exactly be an appropriate use of type. A more playful and informal typeface would be best suited.
Appropriate or Inappropriate?
Designs of different natures require different typefaces. Formal or Informal is a good way of thinking (sort of a rule of thumb) for any designer to go by when choosing a font.
Will Harris makes a good point when saying that there are no good or bad fonts; only appropriate and inappropriate. There is a fantastic website that allows you to "filter out" an appropriate font by allowing you to choose a number of impressions and whether it is casual or formal such as:
Formal or Casual?
Warm
Cool
Serious Friendly
Andre Beato is a graphic designer and illustrator form Portugal. His work is dominantly black and white. He uses very little colour at all in most of his work. He focusses mostly on the use of typography which seems to be somewhat of a trend at the moment.
This image displays work from an artist called Sebastian Tudor who is based in Bucharest. I am really interested in his use of typography and layout. I especially like the CD covers and CDs. They made me stare at them to read all the text which I think is a very effective way of conveying information as it is laid out in a certain way that it makes you want to know what it says.
Once you have chosen your set of impressions and appropriateness, the application returns with a list of fonts for you to choose from that would be useful for the "feel" of your design.
I find it quite ironic that it is a fantastic tool for helping you choose an appropriate font, the website designers could have made use of their own tool and chosen a better font themselves; especially the sort of dark gold on black colour scheme (Grumpy Criticism).
To see use this tool for yourself click here: http://www.esperfonto.com/
Examples of good and bad typography.
After researching a bit, I found that there is quite a passion for typography. There are websites dedicated to good and bad typography such as:
Bad
This website has a vendetta against the comic sans font which I agree is a very ugly font. It reminds me of credits off of a really bad cartoon or if a clown was typing, comic sans is what would appear on the screen. I actually used this in as my essay font back in 2003 when I was a sports coach and was condemned for it (and rightly so).
Although it is in my opinion a horrible font, this does not make it a bad font. It makes it inappropriate for formal things such as essays, letters or bank statements to name a few. It would perhaps be useful for such things as mentioned previously, cartoon credits or joke cards or things of such nature.
An example of comic sans is further up the page referring to the "beeping sound" sign.
Good
Not only is his use of font very effective and most importantly, appropriate his website is actually really cool as well. You will see what I mean when you click on the link. His home page is great because it gives you lots of choices in which to gain information plus the use of the old pix-elated icons of 20 years ago is, I think, really good.
Good and Bad? - Helvetica
Helvetica has to be one of the most widely used fonts in the world. It is used by many corporations to display their word marks. Such companies as:
3M, American Airlines,American Apparel, AT&T, BMW, Jeep, JCPenney, Lufthansa, Microsoft, Orange, Toyota, Panasonic,Motorola, Kawasaki and Verizon Wireless.[14] Apple Inc (taken from wikipedia) all use this font. Apple even use it for their MAC operating systems.
An example of Microsoft's word mark made with Helvetica can be seen further up the page.
It is used on almost everything in Switzerland including all forms of tax letters. This is one reason why Will Harris says that in Switzerland, the use of Helvetica in an informal design or even a formal classy design would not be appropriate because it would have a negative effect on their subliminal emotions since they are used to seeing that type of font on things that they don't like reading such as tax forms.
However, Helvetica is very much the Marmite of the design world. You either love it or you hate it. I personally love it. I think it is just a really tidy font that can be used for a very large range of designs. It all depends on the design of course. I used it in my IAMCG designs as I thought it was appropriate for the design. It was suitable for making a formal statement as well as adding a simplistic sophistication to some of my images.
Some Videos on Helvetica. The first being from the documentary about... you guessed it; Helvetica.
Is this a propaganda video against Helvetica? 8>)
(bad joke... ahem moving on)
Designers that interest me.
Andre Beato
Andre Beato is a graphic designer and illustrator form Portugal. His work is dominantly black and white. He uses very little colour at all in most of his work. He focusses mostly on the use of typography which seems to be somewhat of a trend at the moment.Sebastian Tudor
This image displays work from an artist called Sebastian Tudor who is based in Bucharest. I am really interested in his use of typography and layout. I especially like the CD covers and CDs. They made me stare at them to read all the text which I think is a very effective way of conveying information as it is laid out in a certain way that it makes you want to know what it says.This particular artist is especially good at CD Covers. As shown above.
The EGO cover is my favourite design. It can be interpreted that the man is drenched in paint because he has over-indulged in his own creativity or in creativity itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment