Ideas Crit

Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Bold Extended

Bauer Bodoni

1

Choosing Bodoni as my base font gives the text the feel of authority, which is a contrast to my word ‘sarcastic’ so I’d aim to deconstruct the traditional looking serif font. Looking at the etymology of my chosen word I’ve discovered it derides from the Latin meaning of sarkazein “to strip off flesh”. I will therefore strip back Bodoni and alter the serifs, possibly inverting them and I want to mainly play around with Italics. I want to alter the font in uppercase, emphasising the ironic importance and reverse the Italic. Tom Driberg recommended that ironic statements should be printed in italics that lean the other way to conventional italics. So by manipulating Bodoni, sarcasm should shine through with the alterations of the traditional serifs, these will be put possibly at a 45 degree angle, slanting downwards which would also suit the reverse italic format. 

Here is an example of a Reverse Italic font: 

2

My second idea is to play less on the letterforms, but rather adding to them; using the font Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk Bold Extended. To draw attention to the letters ‘F’ and ‘U’ for obvious humorous reasons I want to experiment with the idea of intonation and accents, as when people say sarcastic things it’s usually identifiable by their tone of voice, the pronunciation and elongation of certain letters or sounds may reveal sarcasm from a seemingly innocent phrase. Playing with this ides, I want to experiment with umlauts on the ‘F’ and ‘U’ as well as other uses of punctuation altering vocal inflections. I would like to also include the ‘Irony Mark’ or ‘Percontation Point’, being the reversed rhetorical question mark. I believe the bold simplistic Berthed font could be metaphorical for a standard tone of speaking, almost a monotone voice; psychologist Clifford N. Lazarus described sarcasm as being ‘hostility disguised as humour’, therefore the only way of knowing the personality of the font is sarcastic and hostile is from looking at the punctuation.

For this task we had a time limit in which we had to sketch pictograms for our chosen word, it made me think about how it can be visually represented without considering the physical typeface.

 

Then passing our word around to others, they had to create their own versions of 'sarcastic' pictograms:

I particularly like the last one, the jagged edges symbolic of a harsh criticising tone of voice represented in some kind of sound waves looked good, my serifs may look better if they were reminiscent of this. 

Then another person had to create ten possible versions visually of the letter A in five minutes. 

Of all the 'A's my favourite is the elongated sleek one at the bottom as it looks like it could've been authoritative but has been stretched too far, almost like a mockery of the traditional style. Another favourite again being the one to feature jagged sound like waves, this really brings across the idea of tone and verbal intonation which can impact the meaning of words so much. 

I really like the idea that some of the feedback suggested in terms of combining my ideas but using the backbone of the first one with the reverse italics and altering the serifs possibly at a slanted angle, with the addition of the umlaut or some form of punctuation above the 'F' and 'U' to alter tone. I feel this will really encapsulate the personality or sarcasm, the idea gathered also from the feedback of having angular sharp serifs will aid this. I furthermore really like the idea of having very little spacing in between each letterform to emphasise confusion of meaning, by distorting the legibility we find it harder to read, as we would find it hard to pick up on verbal sarcasm if it's unclear.  

Brief 2 - Research of fonts

A Berthold diatype machine

Studio Brief 2 Introduction

Brief 2

Choose an emotion/ adjective to communicate through your own typeface.
Based on one of these typefaces:

- Garamond
- Caslon
- Times
- Baskerville
- Bodoni
- Helvetica
- Clarendon
- Berthold
- Univers

For this brief we will have to repurpose individual letterforms to work together in endless combinations, we must create a whole uppercase or lowercase alphabet.
Alongside this we need to write a paragraph justifying why you have selected the starting typeface.


Keywords

Type foundries: Make bespoke commissioned typefaces for specific uses. 

Type specimens: These are like testers; it will be usually in brochure format and will contain
- how its designed
- personality
- context examples
- how/ why


Research

Fontsmith (designed Channel 4 and ITV's typeface)
websites:
www.identifont.com
typotheque
friendsoftype

Kerndown

Kerndown

For this exercise we had a time limit in which we had to arrange letterforms and experiment with kurning to achieve a specific style for different brands, using only the three letters chosen.

Luxury Car Brand


For the luxury car brand we used large spacing between letterforms reminiscent of brands like Chyrsler; the kerning seems to imply luxury as many luxury brands use this spacing, exuding confidence as they take up space unlike budget brands. This conveys this is a less accessible brand to the general public with their sleeker looking logo thanks to more drastic kurning.


Budget Supermarket


Highlighting the opposite approach to the luxury car brand, budget brands tend to use tighter kurning suggesting a friendly, more accessible approach. You see this featured often with brands like Asda, where there is not even any space between letterforms which seems to suggest a more community feel and in this instance affordability for all audiences.
 

Condom Company


For the condom company we decided to go for a more playful outcome, with irregular kerning with letters sharing different baselines. It may even appear to visually come across as fallic imagery, which suits the context , yet keeping the d and b on the same baseline we tried to retain some form of regularity and reliability as a main concern for the buyer would be that this product was reliable as the reality of the consequences if it wasn't it rather serious.

Indie Band


For the Indie band logo we also wanted to be more playful and look into using different baselines and decided on having the d on a separate line to o and b. This further creates a more triangular appearance which many indie bands use to represent letters, usually an A. So the actual shaping of the letterforms seems in this instance more important then the actual spacing, although we didn't want them touching as this may appear too soft, and often these bands want to convey they have a different approach and want to move away from conformity, which we can see especially here with the logo for 'The Locals' with their ironic name to match.

MK Gallery

Sara De Bondt designed the MK Gallery brand identity.She designed it so it doesn't have a distinct logo, typeface or colour.

There is a set of system fonts rather than one distinctive typeface, all that was set was that the M and the K had to be joined together.
No fixed logo, typeface or colour.
She created a grid system so anything shown on the website has to be set out in this grid format as well as graphics on the sides of the actual building. A local sign painter painted this directly onto the building over two weeks. On the website also the text and corresponding art work had to share one colour.



Sara chose this grid system as the Milton Keynes gallery site was made up of grid systems, that also takes a part in history as used during the second world war.

Helvetica

HELVETICA

5 Key points I drew from watching and analysing the Helvetica film were that Helvetica is:

- All about negative space
Vignelli said it's the space between the black, the white that 'makes the music'. There's a clear emphasis that this font focuses on the spacing of letters and how they align as the sides approach straight lines.

- Socialist Font
Accesible to everyone and can be interpreted in different ways by context.
Lars Muller "As its available all over and invites dilettantes and amateurs to create their own type design."

- Rational
Legible, ordered and structured in such a way different government organisations can use it to appear clean as well as accessible to the public.

- Weapon
Used a lot as the typeface for those promoting the Vietnam war, this typeface can similarly be used in advertisement to persuade as it is the 'neutral font', leading you to believe this is the normality.

- Dull
David Carson and other designers will argue this 'neutral' font that symbolises globalisation has been overused to the point in becomes dull. Carson explains font should be "interesting exciting and emotional", he points out words written in Helvetica and explains how none of these words are expressed through the font "There's no sunshine in this!".


Logos using Helvetica from Iconic companies use the font in such a way it suits them, in context they're easily recognisable and the font appears versatile as a neutral font it can be applied in any way a designer sees fit.

The evian logo using colour and lowercase gives the brand an accessible and honest appearance, suited to the context of their product.
 The American Airlines also using Helvetica, gives the font a completely different feel using the contrasting colours representative of American flag colours, and the use of uppercase A's which unlike the Evian logo give the font a more authoritarian feel, the AA ironically sharing a logo with American Apparel which furthermore appears to suit the context of a clothes shop despite sharing the same format. The use of colour adds an identity to the American airlines logo.
The neutral font appears clean and the concept that Helvetica was created for a more global typeface suits the airline brand due to the nature of their product.

Looking at the rebrand of the American Airlines (the latter being the new logo), it's interesting to see how they've changed many factors yet kept with Helvetica, yet in many people's opinion including my own and Vignelli's (the original logo designer) they've gone a step backwards. To me the original logo was timeless and despite being designed in 1967, the use of font enables the design to still appear modern today. This font was predominantly used around the 70s and signified the corporate American refresh as modernism took over.The kerning of the new logo is looser and the font appears less crisp. They've also lost the identity encapsulated in the font through use of colour.
Vignelli commented:

"It has no sense of permanence. The American flag is great. I’m designing a logo now for a German company, and I’m using black, red, gold, and yellow. Why? Because national colors have a tremendous equity." 

The American apparel logo has far wider kurning whilst the original American Airlines had such little it appeared to be one word separated only by colour. The font is also bolder and comes across more playful rather than the thinner more formal airline logo. The bold tightly spaced American Apparel is suited to the brand.

Helvetica notes

HELVETICA

Typefaces give text a colour, a personality

Vignelli: It's the space between the black, the white that 'makes the music'
Type doesn't have to be expressive

Post war- social responsibility among young designers, the modernist period, emergence of swiss style striving for idealism where Helvetica emerges as there was a need for national typefaces

"Creating order is typography" Nick? uses his own grid systems, he bought a computer in the 80s and began working digitally very late on. You can't do better designs on a computer, you can just work faster.
Helvetica was a more machined typeface, a more neutral font , it shouldn't have a meaning itself; its in the content of the text, not in the typeface itself.

Type designer: Flat edges of the typeface terminals appear 'perfect', he could never "second guess Helvetica".

Mike Parker: Interrelationship of the negative space, the swiss payed more attention to the spaces between letter - "It's a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of surrounding space"

Eduard Hoffman: Original Helvetica designer, Stempel was the organisation. The original name for Helvetica was originally named: Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei
Helvetic: Latin name of Switzerland
Helvetica : The Swiss Typeface

America: Corporate identity of the 60s included wiping 'goofy' typography and replacing it with Helvetica, he explains how
governments and corporations love Helvetica as the smoothness of the letters make them appear human and accessible as well as clean and efficient.
Overused so much in the 70s particularly it becomes merely routine.

Helvetica has its appeal as its so versatile and doesn't 'say' anything so its subjective.

Erik Epiekermann, Germany: Helvetica has no rhythm or contrast however now it's so default on the Apple mac and Windows and the evolution of the computer has made this default, we have no choice anymore. It needs a lot of space, to get this spacing it's a 'nightmare' as the designer tried to make all the letters look the same, it becomes 'like an army, not people'.

The way something is presented defines the way you'll react to it. In advertising this is most relevant

Lars Muller: Typeface of socialism as its available all over and invites dilettantes and amateurs to create their own type design. Something you don't notice but something we would miss if it wasn't there, the more the designer uses a type ultimately the more dull it becomes.

Paula Scher: Two separate cultures of design: corporate culture, clean, Helvetica.
Morally opposed to Helvetica as it signified being a sponsor of the Vietnam war. She then went onto use drawn type; without previously realising: "Type has spirit and can create mood, a broad pallet to express all kinds of things".

Stefan Sagmeister: Then designers were desperate to get away from Helvetica, it became boring and confirmative. Created his own types, one carved into skin.

David Carson: Raygun magazine, the typography was completely experimental. Grunge typography. He had no prior training so just did what he thought looked good with no idea of the rules of typography. This is more "interesting exciting and emotional". Dingbat used for a boring article, not worth reading , badly written.
"Just 'cus somethings legible doesn't mean it communicates, send a different message valuable for where its being used."

Type so broken after the grunge period after the late 90s, so designers return back to an old way of designing with a new set of theories to support it.

Type designer: Disagree its the superficial superficial way, many people connect Helvetica with globalisation but he's not afraid of this at all, as we can all put a twist on it using variations of kerning.

Micael C Place: Making something beautiful out of something very ordinary, it's all about an emotional response. Enjoys the challenge of making Helvetica speak in a different way.

Manuel Krebs & Dimitri Bruni: We like restrictions, inspired by Carlson then Swiss typography, they aimed to look further back and look at structure of design. Dislike humanistic typefaces as these contain too much expression. Helvetica itself has a certain style an aesthetic, you will do what the typeface wants you to do and use it in a specific way.

10 Key Points about Helvetica

- "Just 'cus somethings legible doesn't mean it communicates"- David Carson
- "Type has spirit and can create mood, a broad pallet to express all kinds of things"- Paula Cher
- Timeless
- Neutral, efficient, rational
- Horizontal Terminals appear 'perfect'
- Negative Space
- Omnipresent: Something you don't notice but something we would miss if it wasn't there, the more the designer uses a type ultimately the more dull it becomes.
- Modernism
- Typeface of Socialism- Lars Muller
- Companies fighting against Helvetica as it's own brand

Brief 1 -Calibrate- Final Outcomes

For my five final outcomes, I included a variation of logos which were the favourites selected during the class crit, as I was initially unsure wether the more geometric logos looked better than the more abstract. It transpired the geometric ones were favoured, which highlighted to me how these can then also be more easily suited to randomly generated backgrounds on my concept webpage.
The square logo using the rue of thirds seemed to be the clear favourite as it was most 'aesthetically pleasing' and 'modern' looking according to my survey questions. I only included one that didn't use a grid system (the third logo in mint) as this was noted to be most visually pleasing for someone, so to add a more varied choice to a potential client this was included incase they weren't to like those logos incorporating a grid system:

Furthering this development, I played around with the concept that these logos (especially those using a grid system) would be suited to any background, so I created 5 mock homepage's for the website concept to test this out.

This logo design is my favourite and I believe to be the most effective especially thanks to it's versatility. This is the most geometrically structured using the rule of thirds as well as non italics and sans serif Futura. I've aligned the letter up better than I had previously as the kerning using standard spacing didn't work, so I separated the letterforms and aligned them in a grid in photoshop. 

As the letters are in a grid, any randomly generated image displayed in the background of my homepage, the logo would fit in place and the white colouring highlights the negative space created by the font overlaying the image which despite being the focus of the website, the logo is highly legible and contrasting. 

The logo appears clean and modern, the colour allowing it to blend and be played with which is perfect in the context of the website where the images and people's interests are ever changing and evolving. The typeface I believe blends well with this idea as it's modernist geometric layout as well as letterforms mirror the idea of moving art forwards, which the concept of this website strives to achieve.

The split in the word in this logo design I aimed to represent the joining of multiple minds and ideas, as collaborating is the purpose of the website, the use of italics just for the B and R highlights this link, so while people may have different ideologies and thoughts, on one level we may share similar interests or be able to aid each other with specific knowledge and vice versa; which is what I tried to encapsulate in the logo with the two different baselines. I like how the kerning remains the same throughout despite this split, the B and R share the same spacing only because they are set in italics. It doesn't however use a grid system that is as versatile as the rule of thirds, making it harder to blend over different backgrounds. It also doesn't come across as a creative brand logo as much as the others which use typically artistic layout methods.

The business cards mock up came out really well especially due to the rectangular format and the turquoise highlights. This then allowed me to design the back, with the slogan 'Calibrating Artists'.

I continued to experiment with using different backgrounds and slotting in my logo designs, playing around also with colour. However it is evident these vibrant pinks (although they fit perfectly with this Jenny Holzer background) will not work so well on another. The latter also doesn't use as much a simplistic grid as the first hence looks a bit messier especially in context, despite the fact it may appear more interesting by itself; the purpose of the logo is more important.

This was a slight variation on the first design, however I decided the uppercase far more effective as all the letters are therefore ascenders, sharing the same height, accentuating the geometric layout.

I'm happy with the outcome of this brief as it enabled me to explore typography in a different way as I usually prefer to use more elaborate typefaces and working by hand. The use of grid systems I never associated with typography and opened up new concepts to me, research into Wes Anderson and especially the Whitney Museum's 'Responsive W' (research blog post found under Personal and Professional Practice) enabled me to experiment with typography with a versatile graphic approach.