Telling Stories With Type

So before I stated this class, I had never really thought about typeface too much. Sure, I've gone through the long lists of fonts in Word when making a birthday card or poster, but I've never stopped to think about why I selected a certain font. Now, I've realized that typeface makes a big impact on how we see things. Even the spacing of letters and phrases give off a certain feel.

I found a few clips off YouTube that use typefaces to tell a story. The way they are spaced, the colors, and the orientation have a big effect on the feel of each story. Each one is set to an audio clip from a famous movie, and even though there are no pictures, only words, the viewer gets a feel for the mood of the movie. The first one I found was from Wedding Crashers. When he starts to ramble off the thoughts in his head, the words jump back and forth, portraying the dilemma he is going through. The sentences are also very close together, empathising his rambling. The words bend to mimic two bodies when he talks about the 'awkward hug.'

The second clip I found was similar but for the Dark Knight. Even though this clip is also just using words to convey the story without images, the feel is very different from the Wedding Crashers clip. The dark backgrounds and types make you feel like you're in the middle of Gotham, fearing death and the Joker. I like how each character's voice has a corresponding typeface. For example, the when the Joker is talking, the typeface is unorganized, messy, and the letters are not lines up. This is how we see the Joker, as a crazy mess. When the butler speaks, the fonts are classy, going along very well with his British accent. The typefaces are intimidating when they need to be and crazy when that is the point to get across. It is amazing and very interesting to me that so much can be portrayed simply through the design of a letter.

Oh look! Another post on typography!

What is there to say about typography that hasn't already been said?  It's one of the most overlooked yet profound methods of advertising and expression in the history of media, and as such, it seems only fair to devote at least a few blogs' worth of time and effort to this noble art.  The lectures, combined with the Lupton reading, have made it all too clear how much of an effect typefaces and type orientation and type color and type size have played in our decision-making as consumers.  It's a job that rarely receives its due credit, choosing fonts that will catch our eye and convey meaning and manage to not overwhelm us with too much visual stimuli.

But when you think about it, and I mean really think about it, typography is one of the only things in our lives that we encounter on a regular basis.  I'm talking every single day in our nearly century-long existences.  Even

 looking around my room I am bombarded by text, be it from my Dark Knight poster or the label on the bottle of the aspirin I took last night for my headache or the label on the Obama pin on my bag or the title of my Snow Cake DVD sitting on my desk.  It's everywhere, and what's more, for some things it's universally recognized.  Take for instance a poster for one of my own personal favorite movies, Jonathan Demme's Oscar-winning picture The Silence of the Lambs, displayed above.  It's a fairly well-known image:  Jodie Foster with the death's-head moth over her lips, the title of the movie featured beneath.  We probably all recognize it right off the bat, and if you don't, you need to start watching better films.  Point is, the set-up is a pretty clear indication of the sort of picture you're about to see:  suspense-thriller, intense plot line, won't-take-your-shit characters.

Now take a look at the image I created in Photoshop.  It's the same basic idea:  Jodie Foster with the death's-head moth over her lips, the title of the movie featured beneath.  The picture is the same, the coloring is the same.  Except...oh wait, there's a small adjustment made to the words The Silence of the Lambs.  I just used a different font, but now the tone of the entire poster has gone from suspense-thriller, intense plot line, won't-take-your-shit characters to something akin to "Clarice Starling goes skipping through the meadow with Dr. Lecter in search of bunny rabbits and rainbows."  In going from a sans serif typeface to a downloaded font called Font Diner Dot Com Sparkly, the whole theme has been altered.  THAT is the power of typography.  Genius decisions can bolster sales by the millions, and mistakes have the potential to lead to marketing flops and even bankruptcy.  It is a rare form of art that can so evenly balance the incorporation of creativity with the preciseness of logical decision-making.  This is the definition of graphic design.

Type Type Type

Ever since I joined my high school yearbook, I realized the importance of typography. Different fonts can insinuate completely different images, even if the discrepancies between the two are minor. A font says a lot about a design, ad, or image; often, it defines them.

The first two images I’m putting up illustrate serif fonts. The first phrase is written in Times New Roman, and the latter is in Minion Pro. Times is unoriginal, conventional, and normal. Minion looks mostly the same, but has a seemingly greater sophistication than Times. These subtle differences had the ability to change the entire feel of our yearbooks (and ultimately, designs on the whole). Thus, I can only imagine how varied a tone can change when using completely different looking fonts.

I adore the intro to the most recent version of Casino Royale. I've attached it here because every aspect of the credits works so well together, including the type. That video, among others (including ones like that Kanye video posted below) inspired me to design that way for various school projects.

I love type//typography. It’s an amazing way to express the tone and message of a design. What if Harry Potter had been written like so?

The whole Medieval look doesn't really suit the cover even though it could be argued that the style is the same. No, we (Harry Potter readers) grew up with the US title design of Harry Potter and most happen to find it completely appropriate.

Type is so easy to analyze, yet so difficult to master.
Hopefully by the end of this class, we will all have a better grasp on the typography phenomena.

Word Art

After reading Lupton's Letter section and attending GRA 217 weekly lectures, I have gained a great deal of insight and a new type (pun intended) of appreciation for written characters. I never realized how much work and effort went into developing and refining a single typographic style. Now, even when I use simple word processing programs and see the list of possible fonts, I look at them much differently. Countless, dedicated individuals worked to perfect their own style, and give the common characters of language, well, character.

The truth is, we use letters to express ourselves, to make our thoughts known, essentially, to communicate, each and every day. We may not say to ourselves, 'I shall use this sans serif font because the words I wish to convey carry a great deal of weight themselves',

or 'As a tribute to all the time and energy this monk of the past spent creating each and every flourish of this font, I'll use Old English.' Instead, we probably utilize the most convenient and immediate method of type available to us and begin rap-tapping away. We have become almost desensitized or numb to lettering even though it pervades our world in nearly every communicative outlet.

Because of this sad truth, I really admire those who take letters that one step further. These individuals acknowledge the hidden significance inherently encoded in each character of typography. Thus, they express themselves by making words into works of art. This added dimension makes for some very cool pieces of design. I check the design blog Abduzeedo nearly every day to see what graphic designers have created, and quite often, the most interesting and thought-provoking pieces simply contain letters of the alphabet arranged in new and interesting ways. Instead of just using pictures, or just using words, they channel all of their design elements into an interesting and dynamic vision to create something like the examples above. Placement, perspective, contrast and color all work together to make words more than just words. This is why design is such a key element of communication media. They say a picture speaks a thousand words. So when we combine pictures AND words, we can actually express volumes.

What do you think? Can typography actually stand on it’s own as art?