Nigel's Type II Blog

Today we brought in our final rough versions of our type specimen poster. Instead of just leaving notes on sticky notes like last week, we broke into groups of four and left sticky notes with our names on it and articulated our criticisms using our voices.

I’d made changes from last week, and surprisingly, the things I felt unsure about were never brought up. I got a lot of good feedback on minor things which I plan on implementing before submitting my true final poster.

Today we spent the class giving each other feedback on our revised poster designs.

I got a lot of valuable feedback, such as the space between type and lines as well as the type recipes having too much emphasis. It was also suggested that I change the white and black sides as the quotes are larger and would be easier to read on black than the manifestos.

I also learnt that I should only use one heading instead of having ‘First Things First’ listed twice. 

We spent the majority of class today going over how to create a full size rough version of our posters without having access to 24x36″ paper.

It was really enlightening to see the poster at full size. When viewing on screen everything looks so small when I try to see the whole thing, so I didn’t even realize how long my line lengths were.

Our big project to finish off the semester is to create a Type Specimen Poster featuring two typefaces and the First Things First Manifestos (both the original and 2000s rewrite). The two typefaces I’ve chosen to use are Millesime, a nice display type with rough features but a consistent and clean look to it, and Gotham, a mathematical and heavier sans-serif.

For this blog post, however, I’m going to be focusing on inspiration.

Drawing inspiration from this Type Specimen poster seemed like a no-brainer as it’s for Gotham, one of the typefaces I’ll be using. I really like the use of all the different weights of the “o” in the middle in order to create something much more visually interesting than just a normal old “o”.

This is probably a lot more complicated than what my final poster will look like, but I do really like the layered look and can definitely try to emulate that in my poster.

What really stood out to my about this poster was the deconstruction of a single letterform. It shows the complexity of the typeface and also creates a really interesting visual.

Continuing on the theme of visuals, this poster uses letterforms to create a pile of dirt and a dump truck. Creating shapes out of letterforms is definitely a cool idea and one I will certainly play around with.

Seeing as my poster is going to be including the entirety of two Manifestos, this poster is a good source of inspiration because it contains two readable bodies of text that are separated in a visually pleasing way. This poster is a good inspiration for layout.

What drew me towards this poster was the overlain text. Franklin Gothic remains legible despite being layered on top of itself. It’s a cool idea and one I might try and implement.

This is actually a book cover and not a Type Specimen Poster, but what I liked about this one was the use of different typefaces together. It’s pretty common practice to use different typefaces for headers and body-copy, and this cover reminded me to make sure to try and include that in my poster.

Like the Clarendon poster, this poster uses letterforms to create shapes, only unlike the Clarendon example, this Futura poster is much more abstract. I’ll definitely try and use type for more than just body-copy and titles in my poster.

I really like the use of giant letters leading into words in unconventional ways. Maybe I could use a larger letter as a container for one of the Manifestos?

In class today we did an exercise that involved creating a basic page layout in several steps.

I thought it was an excellent way to learn about different features in InDesign and become comfortable with using them. Prior to today, I knew almost no keyboard shortcuts and definitely didn’t know about find/replace, and had never used the right margin before to clean up rag.

By the end of the exercise I felt very comfortable using tools I’d never used before.

In class we did a quick role play with the class next door to try and emulate what using my bus schedule would be like in real life.

All three “commuters” found bus times and roads very quickly, but had a little more difficulty finding the bus numbers. Primarily due to the fact that there is no change in weight between the type in the table.

The “commuters” were quick to answer my questions which is promising, but when asked about any difficulties they had everyone mentioned the same-y look of the schedule. To fix this issue I’d continue with my earlier idea of having the bus route numbers in separate bubbles or squares, keep the street names heavy but make the times lighter. These minor changes would really help with the hierarchy of the table and make it even easier for the user.

For this Assignment I was tasked with creating a layout for a bus schedule using tables in InDesign.

It wasn’t easy! I spent quite a bit of time humming and hawing over how to place the table, whether I wanted it to be vertical or horizontal, I even considered having the route number is circles instead of part of the grid-based table.

Here’s the end result of all that humming and hawing:

It’s certainly not the most exciting thing to look at, but I think it works well.

I kept colour out of the table itself in order to insure legibility. Legibility is also the reason behind my choice of a fairly large and bold sans-serif typeface.

I used the blue from the Translink logo for the headers and for a strip along the side to add some visual interest and establish an aesthetic that could be carried over to other brochures and flyers beyond this one (if this were actually used).

I kept the table at the forefront by having it in the middle of the page (and having it take up the most room), with the slightly less important information about attaining day passes or concession at the bottom as the majority of the users would likely already have a pass. But I still kept it in a large enough point size that no one would have difficulty reading it.

Serif: My three serif typeface choice were Palatino Linotype, Sitka and Javanese Text. All three of them are fairly similar, but each have unique characteristics that make them better suited for different uses.

Palatino Linotype is probably my favourite serif typeface that I’ve ever used. The letter shapes are very thin and have nice rounded serifs which give it a fairly prim and proper look. It works very well in large bodies of text and can still be legible even at fairly small font sizes.

Sitka is thinner and tighter than Palatino Linotype, not only that but Sitka has a huge font family to choose from which makes it a fairly versatile typeface. Sitka is a fairly delicate typeface however, so I’d likely only use it for text set in relatively larger point sizes.

Javanese Text, unlike Sitka or Palatino Linotype, offers no families to choose from, but is a strong and very legible serif typeface that works very well on screen due to the more consistent widths of its characters. For a print job, Javanese Text wouldn’t be my first choice, but it’s a very good choice for any text heavy digital work.

Handwriting: These typefaces are heavily stylized and not well suited for large bodies of text, but could be used for effect in small quantities or be used for headers.

Ampersand has a nice handwritten look to it and avoids looking overly digital. One unfortunate thing is its lack of variation in the characters, so if you have too many of the same letterform next to each other its digital nature will be visible. That being said, it’s a strong handwritten typeface.

Colors of Autumn is an exciting typeface that works well for use as a header of for poster design. I’d never even think of using this in a body copy though, it only works when used sparingly. I like the way the letterforms are on a slight angle and overlap with each other.

Dadhand is similar to Ampersand, but a little cleaner, making it easier to read. Unlike Ampersand, Dadhand is on a slight angle, but is slanted in the opposite direction of a typical italic or slanted font which makes it somewhat unique.

Sans-Serif: Sans-serif fonts are very clean and appealing for use on screens or for headers.

Futura PT is a classic, it’s clean and has a good font family to choose from that can make it work very well for headers or for body text depending on what you need. It’s very clean and geometric.

Gotham has more curve to the letterforms than Futura does. Like Futura, it also has a good font family that can allow it to be used as both an effective header or body text, although Gotham wouldn’t be my first choice for body copy, it’s better suited for headers or shorter text.

Museo Sans lacks the font family support of Futura or Gotham making its uses slightly more limited. However, it’s an incredibly clean and thin typeface that could work very well in the right situations, which is why it’s a part of my library.

Slab Serif: Slab serif fonts are not ones that I gravitate to naturally, and thus, these typefaces will probably gather the most dust in my library, that doesn’t mean they don’t have their uses though.

Alfa Slab One is a strong, bold typeface that has a historic look to it and could work well for a historic manuscript or possibly headers. It’s not a very versatile typeface though.

ChunkFive is a lighter slab, making it somewhat more versatile. It could be used effectively as a header choice when paired with a sans-serif typeface, but I certainly wouldn’t want to use it for body text.

DIN Next Slab Pro is the lightest and most flexible out of my slab font choices. Its thinner stroke widths make it easier on the eye and thus usable as body text (but it would have to suit the text). It could also make for a very nice header or even be used as part of a sign quite effectively.

Decorative: These typefaces are not usable for body copy and are very limited in use, but can create awesome effects if used properly.

Millesime is the least extravagant typeface out of my four. I really like it though, its letterforms are rough and have a great grunge look to them without losing legibility (like most grunge-y typefaces do), in the right context this typeface could really shine.

Big John is wonderful for headers, but requires a lot of tweaking as it’s not a very well optimised typeface. The crude nature of this typeface can make working with it slightly frustrating as it doesn’t always follow leading properly, always needs to be kerned and has no glyphs, but, if you can put up with all its flaws, Big John can be a beautiful typeface.

Electrix OT is a really neat typeface. Its use is very limited, but if used effectively it could be a really strong type choice. I can picture it being used for posters or as onomatopoeia for an electric shock in a graphic illustration.

For this Assignment I was tasked to take an example from a magazine and then recreate it. I chose and article from the magazine Alpinist.

This is the original. You can see a few of my notes for dimensions as we were not to simply scan and copy but attempt to recreate on our own.

Here’s my recreation. I used P22 Stickley Pro. It wasn’t a perfect match, but had enough similarities (such as the proper “W” and “R” design) which made it a pretty good fit.

Overall, I think this is a strong design reminiscent of newsprint thanks to the font and design choices (which makes sense as a magazine really isn’t much different than a newspaper). I like the use of lines to create gaps between text, like in the subheader or page number. And the way the text creates a frame around the photo works really well too. There’s also a complete lack of orphans or widows which is always nice!

That being said, there are a few things I would’ve done differently. For one, I wouldn’t have used gaps and small caps to create emphasis between new ideas. One or the other. I also find that the small caps in general are more difficult to read and don’t really mesh all that well with the rest of the design. And having read through this article while typing it, I don’t really think there’s a huge “idea gap” between the previous paragraphs when the small caps and space were used, it seems to me like it could’ve simply been another normal tabbed paragraph.

For this Assignment I was teamed up with Nick. Him and I went for a little walk around Bowen Street and quickly found an array of awful signs. A few good ones shone through as well, here are four of the signs we found.

Let’s start with the bad.

In case you can’t read it, it says “Landlubber Pub.”

The Beban Plaza sign is the one I chose to talk about.

I had a rather difficult time trying to identify this typeface as it would seem whoever designed this sign not only created a fake italic, but also stretched the type in order to make it taller than it naturally is. That is assuming that the type used was the one that I was able to find that, after some manipulation closest resembled the type here – Sylfaen. The typeface choice on its own wasn’t terrible, but manipulating a typeface is a big no no! However, even if I got the typeface wrong and it wasn’t stretched, the choice to use fake italics is still confusing. This is a sign for a Plaza and you want it to be bold and attractive to those driving past, italics are light and only really work for small bits of text in a book. It also doesn’t help that the sign looks incredibly dated and is more suited for a fast food restaurant due to the colour choices, heck, even the sign design looks more food-like (Pizza Hut anyone?) than you’d likely want the sign for your Plaza to look. An easy way to fix this would be to simply not skew the text.

I simply took the type, outlined it and didn’t mess around with skewing it at all. This made the sign look a little bolder and while more work with the colours and background would need to be done in order to truly bring this sign to the 21st century, this simple fix still made the sign much better in my opinion.

Next up, the good ones!

Nice and simple and a solid integration of the carpet roll into the O.