Daily Typography

Typography seven times weekly

Times New Roman or Arial? Outside of what you select as the font type for what you’re typing, most people are unaware of the many different forms of typography they come into daily contact with. However if I was to mention a specific UK national newspaper title to someone, there is a high likelihood that they would be able to visualise the masthead title, and its usually unique font type. Obviously over time the designs can change, whether it be radically or evolutionary, but the aim is always to be distinctive. This is because there are around 23 UK national newspapers, if we include both weekly and Sunday editions. There is a lot of competition, as a whole and within the tabloid, mid-market and quality sectors. You need to stand out, and outside of the paper size, layout and written content, typography will play its part.

An example of this is The Guardian which moved to the Berliner-sized format of paper in 2005, a familiar format in many European countries. Until then the options had been broadsheet, such as the Financial Times, or tabloid as with The Sun. In 2003 The Independent, followed not long after by The Times, shrank from broadsheet size to tabloid (or should I say ‘compact’) size. With the alteration in size came changes design wise and this included fonts. The Times, which was the original source of Times New Roman, changed from Times Classic to Times Modern in 2006, citing an improvement in readability when it came to small font sizes. It was used for both the masthead and the remainder of the text, and was created by Neville Brody and Luke Prowse of Research Studios.

The Guardian followed a similar pattern in having a new font for its new size format and layout. It moved to a slab serif font, the specially designed Guardian Egyptian. It was designed by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz and was the only one to be used within the paper, although there are 96 variations. The previous masthead title had been in place since 1988 and involved two separate fonts conjoined. ‘The’ was in italic Garamond whilst ‘Guardian’ was set in bold Helvetica. The latter font style was also used for headlines, whilst for the body text a serif font called News Miller was utilised. In 2005 the reasons for the body text’s size selection (8 point on 9.5 point) was that it allowed more words in a space, yet it was still very readable.

Whenever design changes are made there are likely to be complaints, as people obviously will have become attached to the old design. This happened with the 1988 font change when a thousand letters of complaint were received in the first five days it was used. In 2005 the one major complaint was about the dropping of the Doonesbury comic strip. Says it all really! The efforts of the designers were rewarded in 2006 when the paper was joint winner of the world’s best-designed newspaper awarded by the Society for News Design.

Don’t Forget The Typography

Some of the best known brands and names in the business have invested millions of dollars in successful branding and one very important part of that process is choosing an appropriate and most importantly memorable type of typography that will be catchy and stay in the minds of the customers. Never underestimate such details if you ever plan on starting a company as we all well know that if a brand is easily recognizable and memorable, people will become clients much faster.

More

Typography – Designing Letters and Words Beautifully

The aim of any good business is to make some aspect of life easier, but there are always occasions when business people end up making something harder than it has to be. Consider marketing, which is quite a simple concept on its surface: marketing a product or service requires nothing more than discerning which emotional impulse or impulses will attract customers, and advertising your product to target those impulses using a unique, memorable theme. For instance, if you are marketing the Brookman divorce solicitor theme, you will definitely want to engage emotion and impulse to attract clients. The best marketing campaigns use the simplest phrases or jingles. Like most things, however, the devil is in the details. Even a great catchphrase can be undermined by a flat, uninteresting delivery on paper or on screen. This is where typography becomes vital to marketing a product.

Typography is more than choosing a font for your text. It is the art of making letters beautiful–making the shape of a word or sentence adds to its meaning. People have been creating new fonts since Gutenberg invented the printing press, but today’s digital media has given rise to an unprecedented variety of designs that can be adapted to a number of uses. Software is now available for your home PC that allows you to create your own unique fonts and designs to show your work off to its best advantage.

More

Typography Books for Children

If your son or daughter has started to read and write and if they are showing signs of eagerness whenever a brand new story book is being opened in front of their eyes, then it might be a well-inspired idea to purchase a typography book designed for children. Such books are to be found on the Internet, on specialized web sites and in libraries and they can develop the thinking capabilities of your child. Children get bored easily, which is why it is important to indulge them in more complex and interesting things. And topography is certainly something that most children enjoy.

More

Typography in the World of Marketing

Most people consider typography as one of the most important elements of a successful design. I personally think of typography as the most important part of any design, and a lot of professionals agree with me. One has to admit – no matter how attractive an ad might sound, if it is not written with the right set of letters, chances are that good viewers (and potential buyers) are going to forget all about it within moments of seeing the ad. In other words, without the perfect typefaces to complete an appealing ad, the entire purpose of a popular marketing campaign has a strong chance of being lost between the lines.

As an example, let’s look at the famous Builder Highgate Company whose main purpose is to satisfy the needs of people who are looking for professional designs and custom built homes. They are looking to successfully bond with their clients and offer them the best solutions for their family needs and budgets. The logo of their company and the fonts that have been used to create it make a pretty strong statement. People tend to confide in companies or businesses that are using professional typefaces for their logos, business cards, or even their official presentation web sites. These types of “professional-looking” fonts usually inspire a great deal of trust immediately, and they influence potential buyers’ thoughts and actions at an unconscious level, which is a boon to the advertiser.

More

Importance of Typography in the World of Advertising

Advertisers are constantly looking for ways to increase the influential power of their ads. The pressure to influence the audience is so high that the advertisers are encouraged to match their advertising’s visuals, language, tone, and everything else with the motivation and understanding of the audience. A less considered approach in the field of advertising is to select executional element that will increase customer’s attention and help him/her relate with the brand. Following this point, advertisers are now giving importance to a potential critical but relatively underestimated executional element that is typography.

More

Web Advertisement and Type Face

There is a marked difference in advertisement on the web and that in the print media using paper and ink. There are the factors of size of the print, there is the case of bandwidth and then there is the factor of design aspect that catches the viewers’ attention. To be noticeable is one common factor be it in print or on the web when it comes to advertisement. On the web the attention grabbing technique is even more serious a matter because the viewer has the tendency to browse and skip one advertisement if it does not impact the viewers’ attention. All viewers would never be the target audience for a particular net advertisement.

More

Some Important Issues to Be Considered In Typography

Typography is defined as the discipline and procedure about type layout and the art of processing of type that includes the length, point size, line spacing and the typefaces. Earlier typography represented a specialized occupation until the computerized era, when it opened up to new ages of visual creative designers.

The mechanical press was invented in the mid fifteenth century by the German Goldsmith, Johannes Gutenberg. It was Gutenberg who developed some of the unique techniques of creating letter punches in large quantity which are required for printing of multitude copies of text. The printing technology revolutionized itself with the discovery and development of this technique.

In modern typography there are many issues to be considered when deciding about choosing a font type and also the layout of the text. Some of the issues that are to be considered in modern typography are:

The Context

This means that the visual appeal of typography is not specified by the person who is laying out the text of a page. It is done through the response of the font to the specific words that the text is comprised of.

Contrast and Stress

Earlier the “thins” and “thicks” of a letter were based on the direction, angle and pressure of a pen. However in type, the stress is defined as the direction in which the curve of a stroke changes its weight. There are three types of stress in typography. They are the (i) Angled or oblique (ii) The semi-oblique and (iii) The vertical stress. The contrast means the amount of the variation that happens in between the thick and thin strokes.

Revival versus the construction

There are many designers who use typefaces after learning about their construction. A typeface that is simple and has a repetitive pattern lacks in individuality in the letters and thus makes it difficult to distinguish from each other. High contrast between the foreground letters and the background paper should also be considered in typography.

Apart from these, the right size of the font matters too, after all you wouldn’t want the font to be as big as r4i cards nor as small as a dot.

Similar Posts:
Reconstruction Efforts Hampered By Voles : Greetings,…
I would have loved to see Elvis perform in person : I wish I…
Uses of Cloud Computing for small scale organisations : I’ve…
Four Easy Ways to Make Your Web Design More Effective : This…

When and how to use italics

Ah…italics…one of the most interesting and equally CONFUSING things about fonts. Some people use them whenever they like, chucking them in at every opportunity, while others do bizarre things which them such as…horror of horrors…only italicising one or two letters of a word! What does it all mean? some people scream in sheer terror.

Well here’s the good thing, with italics there really ARE no rules…

Yes I said good! Because although this means the “rules” are open to interpretation, that doesn’t mean that it has to be a nightmare deciding on how you wish to go about using them.

Here are a few examples of the ways in which some people use them. If you’re one of the many confused people out there, this might help bring this little devil into perspective:

…italics aren’t necessarily anything to be scared about…

More

The Essence of Right Typography

The secret to succeed as a graphic designer and to learn graphic design on the web is to know the right typography. Why? That’s because typography and selecting the right fonts is the key to success of a graphic designer’s career. His or her career is highly dependent on choosing the right fonts in his/her graphic work such as ad design, logo design and more.

The very idea that we need hundreds of fonts on our own computer is the first initial mistake that most designers make. That’s because it is really confusing to get the appropriate fonts when you already have that many. The best advice is not to make use of the free fonts, the ones you have on the computer or the ones which you find on the web. The significance of typography is quite high and each instructor must teach his or her students what is good and what a bad font is.

More