understanding Typography
Here there will be showcase of different aspects where typography plays a part and a detailed study of my learnings and understandings on how these typographic fundamentals will affect a visual design.
Expressive Typography
This is to bring out the meaning of a word visually. Here to show the weight in the word “heavy”, I placed it at the bottom of the space and also gave thickness and to bring out the weightless feeling in the word “light”, I made it look like it’s floating out of the box. Also in the word “crowded” I reduced the kerning space to give a congested feeling and left large spaces between the letters in the word “space” to bring out its meaning.
designing of Pixelated Font
Designing a font style using grids and square boxes. I felt maintaining a similar style throughout the letters is very challenging. In the first pencil renders I managed to get similar look yet needed to improve with a few characters. A few suggestions I followed in my digital render after getting feedback were for the letters I and J, here I removed the serifs from them. In the letters X and Z, I’ve tried to get stronger diagonals as well.
understanding the concept of Hierarchy
This is a learning on prioritization. Grouping elements with respect to family they belong to and applying hierarchy to the most important element in the group with respect to the audience it is being designed for. I have utilized the colors to bring out the categorization in the style of the typefaces. This could help a certain set of audience and also i feel some sensible choice of colors makes the design quite appealing.
getting to know Grids & Layout
Beginning with some free hand ideations and concepts and then deciding the best suitable grid for that layout would ideally be the first step. Here I used a three column grid with the suitable gutter spacing. The choice of number of columns in your grid should be made depending on the layout designed.
Right from the first few renders I have started improving the layout in terms of the font style, font size, color, leading, kerning, placement of the elements etc. The challenge of maintaining the theme through all the three layouts and also bringing out a theme within them individually was interesting. I utilized al the fundamentals of typography to bring out the desired layout design.
designing Typographic Posters
In the first idea of my digital render (the first image above) I used only one large letter ‘G’ but I have learned from that the color that I have given to fill the top half of the poster is distorting the letter ‘G’ and that couldn’t be done because the poster was to give information about a particular typeface. And in the second idea (second image above) the diagonal arrangement of the title was bringing out a geometric feel which would not go with the Garamond typeface I chose.
From the feedback I got, I’ve also learned that I should be exploring more on the different unique characters that typeface is composed of. So in my latest renders I tried to give an emphasis to the characters that I felt has unique feature to it. I also tried to show the different families that the typeface had. The poster also has a little information about the typeface.
In this final render I reduced the size of the unique characters and increased the title size a bit more and also changed the color to bring more emphasis to the name of the typeface.
There has bee a learning of how each and every fundamental aspect of typography will help any sort of layout that is being designed and how small details like leading and kerning can bring out a major difference in our design and especially in typographic designs.
