Typograpy 2

Typography in graphic art advertisment

2011-09-28T18:54:00.000-07:00

I found this advertisment in Communication Art magazine, the January/February 2011 issue, Typography Annual 1. It is by designer, Michael Kim. The art director is Dana Johnston. Dockers is the client. Their design team had this to say about what they created. "The fashion and apparel category is a sea of sameness. We wanted to create something distinct that would break the category conventions of models and lifestyle imagery. Utilizing different typographers for the ads allowed us to treat each advertisement as a piece of art. By keeping it simple, we were able to get back to what Dockers is all about: men and pants." I was intrigued by this ad. On closer inspection, even the copy is fun. I like the fact that the model is type. What a twist of innovation and creativity. In each ad the copy is different and masculine. It informs you about the product. The type faces give you an implied sense for each of the pants. The ad is basic and straight forward with a creative twist to it.

Famous Graphic Designer

2011-09-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

This is a piece by Josef Muller Brockmann that I found interesting. The play of positive and negative space always fascinates me and this is a beautiful example of it. The semi-circle shapes unify the piece, but their sizes vary keeping the piece interesting. His shapes and colors have inspired many graphic designers in the 21st century, as well as his clean use of type.

Grids,Type-2

2011-05-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

Project 3-corrections

2011-05-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

Grids

2011-04-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

Project 3

2011-04-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

Project 3-Final

2011-04-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

Revised again, Project 3

2011-04-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

Revisions-Project3

2011-04-10T21:07:00.000-07:00

Proofs P3

2011-04-03T19:56:00.000-07:00

Project 3 comps.

2011-03-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

Project 3 research

2011-03-27T21:09:00.000-07:00

Here are some ideas of brochures.

Revised Inside pages

2011-03-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

Story Shop Covers revised

2011-03-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

Chip Design Pages

2011-02-28T13:57:00.000-08:00

Revised Story Pages

2011-02-27T22:22:00.000-08:00

Inspirations about Stories

2011-02-22T22:25:00.000-08:00

I found these on an advertising sight for Anagram Bookshop in Prague by Kaspen Fantastic. I thought that I'd share these with you. This is my idea of books and creativity. It's the idea of bring the pages to life with imagination. I've always imagined that this was what happened in my kids minds when I 'd read out loud to them before bed. I would get them tucked in bed, turn out the light and sit in the hallway between their rooms and read a couple chapters of whatever adventure story they had chosen. Some nights it's was more than just a few chapters because they didn't want to stop. This tradition continued until they were in Jr. High. I hoped they went to sleep with adventures swimming around in their heads. I shared this because we are doing Story Shop, a book with stories written by 7th and 8th graders.

Inside Proofs

2011-02-21T12:55:00.000-08:00

2011-02-16T21:46:00.000-08:00

O.K. Tooooo many blogs for Blogspot to keep straight. So now I'm reposting to this sight. This last design is my favorite because it is simple, clear and uses the grid to demonstrate how the product works.

Inside Page Designs

2011-02-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

Here are some ideas for inside story shop pages.

Story Shop cover designs

2011-02-14T13:50:00.000-08:00

Here are 2 design ideas for the cover of Story shop.

Report on Story Shop Meeting

2011-02-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

On Monday, January 31st, 2001 we, the class, met with Lori Went and Laura O'Connor, who represented the staff of the Story Shop book project. We learned that the program was designed as a transition to bridge the gap in creative writing between Junior High to College for the District 505 school systems. Their goal is the promotion of creative writing to 7th and 8th graders. This program also gives them opportunity to advertise Parkland College to the kids, parents and teachers. Their hope is that it will generate future interest in Parkland.

They want a cover to reflect creativity and movement or the flow of the creative process of writing. It must also fit with the books done in previous years. Their biggest concern was that we don't design a cover too young because it still has to be acceptable to parents and teachers who will receive the books as well. There is no particular theme to the stories for the book. So, the subjects cover a broad spectrum. There are 14 stories that will each represent a chapter. We have the option of a full color cover. The logo must be incorporated into the design and they would prefer that the 2012 date be on the front cover. Required elements are logo, date, title, and backside test copy.

This year there is a more restrictive budget, so anything we can do to help keep the cost down would really help. So when you design a cover and the inside pages, give them some options that might reduce the cost and still keep the overall look you want. We were informed that the books are on sale through Parkland online, at the Orpheum, WDWS radio station, and possibly at Jane Adams Bookstore. Advertising is done in-house at Parkland, through the District 505 school systems and at the Awards Ceremony. There will be an author there at the ceremony for the kids and parents to meet. The books sell for $6.00 each.

Homework 3 [18,4] and [27,4]

2011-01-28T15:58:00.000-08:00

O.k. here's the first of the homework assignments. These are not quick to create. This layout was the De Stijl style asymmetric type styles used. So this is a typeface that is asymmetric. The other movement was cubist movement. I blended the cubist movement with the De Stijl movement and came up with the color blocking. Not very good but it works. Ideally there should be some more black lines and squares to further the cubist movement idea. If I have time I may add some later.

This design is off page 44, number 18. It is still the De Stijl's [The Style] that explores asymmetric type, simplicity, and image using letter forms as abstract elements. That is from the book. I think he wanted the type to feel blocked like the images were.

Well here's the next homework assignment. This layout is to use symbolism of which I created a symbolized picture and the abbreviations for Loch Lomond, Virginia. The other task was to use san serif type from the 1960's-1970's. Along with san serif type that was big in this area, M.F. Agha introduced full color spreads and full color bleeds. the photo is ful color and as least a full half bleed. I found that the randomness of the choices more difficult to wrestle with for a design.

This is an example of #4 on page 46. This is a magazine copy [sort of] from the M.F. Agha, who introduced to the use of san serif type, full color and full bleeds. This photo did not lend it's self to having copy near the bottom like the picture it's taken from. Since the magazine it was taken from used a cartoon image, I altered this one to be more illustrative. It is O.K., but I would have enjoyed a more fun styled picture for this. So, I think I've made enough bad choices for one day. The magazine also choose wild type. That's not going to happen here. At the time that this was done the Designer had to have spent hours putting that together. We are truly spoiled today with all our choices in typefaces and styles.

The inside pages

2011-01-25T17:28:00.000-08:00

Here are some title pages and contents pages. I'm just looking for some ideas that might be able to be used. I am finding that inside pages are not that easy to find. I know some books that I've looked in and they are beautiful, but I'm not finding them.

I went to my bookcase to see if I had anything more interesting and usable than the internet was giving me. Here is some of what I found. I didn't put any of the beautiful children books up because they didn't apply. But that's too bad because I love beautifully illustrated books. I did find that the newer book are more creative from slight images behind the chapter heading to margin notes and symbols on top and bottom. They also have more interesting treatments for page numbers and additional decorations. The older books from the earlier part of the 1900 often have pen illustrations added with the text. Those are very nice additions, but probably not going to happen in this project. It was more interesting than what I've shown here, but again I only put up some stuff. I am an avid reader and had several bookshelves to choose from. Hey! I forgot my daughters bookshelf. Hum! It is 11 o'clock, she needs to get up and I think I will give her a "Wake up, I want to look at your books" call. I'll be right back.

Well, I'm back. She hand to monitor how I handled the books. So Funny, just as particular as I am about my books. She had some newer book and some interesting treatments. Just look them over and you'll see some areas we have that could set the tone of the inside of the book. Most of the type is the same but the Chapter head, numbers, and some highlighted with italics areas had more choices.

book covers

2011-01-25T17:23:00.000-08:00

These are some book covers that I have found recently. Some are books for 7th and 8th graders and some are for Short Stories. I've found that many of them are of an abstract theme. This may be because the stories inside vary in topic. Some books I see do have a common theme, but I don't think that will be the case for our project.

White space

2011-01-24T17:07:00.000-08:00

Well, after a stupid mistake I'm up and going. Thank You Jennifer for your help. It's sometimes a strange trip on figuring out what you do know and what you don't know and the sometimes in between that should be left unsaid. So, lets talk about white space. I think that would be safer. This is a two page spread I found on the internet looking for title pages. It has white space or as some call it "negative" space. What I like about this is that it's not the usual run of the mill title page. It is using color and shape to gain your attention. The type is actively jumping on the page because the designer used the type in 3 sizes, 3 colors and used the word 3 times. Maybe they were taking a art class??? No! They did that already, Oh well. The designer also grouped the type interestingly, like it is bouncing. It bounces along with the other text sentences and further creates movement across the page. So we now have white space trying to hold the bouncing text on the page and doing it nicely. The main text word grouping is off center and is placed well and balanced with the large amount of white space. This keeps the very busy "Crash" in place an lets the eye do the jumping with the words with out running off the page. That white space is actively being used. I think the designer has made a very successful page.

2010-12-08T16:05:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd finish off with some fun magazine covers I found online. These show some different fonts all used together to create the faces. They created a sorta"hand drawn" feel by using different weights, styles, and sizes of fonts.

2010-12-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

I found this on Campus the other day and liked it. It was on the window of an empty store front. I looked up the font on Identifont.com and it worked! It is called Bergell. I like the energy and the decorative elements of this font. It's got attitude. Although the black in the background was probably not planned it adds a starkness and strenghth to the font.

2010-12-02T12:57:00.000-08:00

I found this on Campus last time I was there. What do you think? It is colorful, very modern and casual. I had first thought that it was a coffee shop or maybe Chocolates, but no it serves frozen yogurt. I had thought that the o's in the Logo were coffee beans. The typeface is not identified. I'm really not sure what to think. Maybe they were going for fun and informal to grab your attention???

2010-11-17T18:15:00.000-08:00

I liked this poster I found in a window in downtown Champaign last week.
I love the way the type was done for the poster. It's also a classic wedding photo for those of you who aspire to be a photoprapher. You could substitute their names or the wedding date in place of the type. It could be the front cover for their album too. Anyway, back to the type. Identifont doesn't know what type it is. I like the way the type and the spacing is used as the type plays with the viewers eye. I think the designer had fun with all the curves they had to create. It reminds me of some of the things that the designer, Herb Lubalin would do.

2010-11-10T17:58:00.000-08:00

While I was in town photographing building for our buzz assignment I came across this sign. I liked it and several others, but we'll get to those later. The typeface used is Arquitectura for Church Street and ITC Avant Garde Gothic is used for Square. Wow! Identifont actually worked this time. I like the tight spacing in the words, Church Street and how it contrasts with the widened spacing of the word, square. The little squares add just a bit of color and their placement draws your attention as well as stretches the word square out to fit in nicely.

2010-11-03T20:29:00.000-07:00

I found this in a back issue of Layers magazine I have here at home. My favorite thing about it the O that is made with arrows. It is an article about Dreamweaver. I also love the A substitutions. Then the whole cover plays with type all over. It's eye candy. Well Identifont can't figure this one out. It is a modern styled typeface. It is simple like Arial Rounded MT Bold, san serif. I have seen this many times. This very boxy, rounded edges is fun because the A M and W all play with your eyes. The G, in GO LIVE, looks like Avant Garde, but the E is not right.

2010-10-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

Here are 2 more typographical
designs I found that I thought
where fun examples to see.
They are both about type as
design. I like the colors choices
in the first design. The second
design is more straight forward,
but still fun.

2010-10-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

I found this in the Parade insert of the News Gazette. I thought that it was a very creative way to make type. This is a Target add promising 5% of it's income to support local communities. The little red rectangles are books. I thought it fit for this weeks project and some of the ideas in class. I am not going to try to give the 5 a type catagory. The rest of the text body is done in helvetica.

2010-10-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

Well sometimes the every day items go unnoticed. This is the logo on my stove and refrigerator. It is simple but I would know it in a store. It is an old logo, but with today "retro" looks is still working for them. I like the elongated length of the san serif type. Identifont returned 30 choices to me, with no correct answer to the font name. I think that the designer lengthened the space between the characters as well forming the stylized look. It is clean, slightly angled and the Capital F is set lower than normal.

2010-10-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

This is a nice poster for the Avant Garde Font. It has been creatively placed together. The extending lines off the letters cleverly cuts across the page giving it order within the cluttered space. The altered type could have been fitted tighter and given the word a more solid appearance. I think this type has made many creative logos and will continue to inspire designers for a long time to come. This is a fun typeface to play with.

2010-10-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

I found this in the current Digital Artist magazine. The type is helvetica, no surprise. The design is by Jonathon Yule. He takes you through a tutorial on how to create the robot. It is all type! He used Adobe CS4 to do his design. He prefers to use san serif type for this robot.

Project 2

2010-10-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

The Village Garden Shoppe is a floral shop that makes floral arrangements for Special occasions, Holidays, funerals, baby announcements and birthdays. They have an extensive line of gifts to go with the flowers as well. They also sell plants both indoor and out door from their greenhouse. They service Mahomet, Mansfield, Seymour-Pinetree, and Farmer City. They service Blair funeral home, Jackson Heights Nursing home, and Calvert-Belange-Bruce Funeral.

2010-10-01T23:43:00.000-07:00

The company I decided to do is JCPenney. It has been around since 1902, when it started as a Golden Rule store in Kemmerer, Wyoming by James Cash Penney. By 1915 it had developed into a store that sold private label brands of clothing and house wares, which was the major reason for their success. This company has weathered times like the Great Depression, World War ll, and various recessions. These hardships have made the company what it is today. JCPenney's target market is middle class to upper class families who want Brand name clothing and house ware items. They have concentrated in Men's, women's, and kids fashions since 1971 when they reorganized their marketing strategies. Their competition is Sears, Bergners, and Macys. On a side note, they have always had clothes in the slim sizes, I had to have for my kids when they were young. Almost nobody else carried those sizes. The Chairman and CEO of JCPenney is Myron E. {Mike} Ullman lll. The headquarters is in Plano, Texas. I don't know if I can do them any better, but I would like to try. I think it's time to update that look.

2010-09-29T17:48:00.000-07:00

This is a sign from Universal Studio Theme Park in Florida. As I said before I take pictures of signs. I like the use of the typeface in the word Disaster. It is distorted intentionally. I have not been able to find the typeface it is. I also looked up the typeface for the other words only to be told it was Sonic which was wrong. It didn't give me any other choices. The distorted typeface and the use of red exaggerates the title and give it expression. This is also an example of using 2 typefaces in a sign.

2010-09-13T22:26:00.000-07:00

I have been looking at Business Logo's everywhere I go. It seems to me a lot of them are "big-basic-square" sort of things with only one purpose . . . to aggressively shout at you. It is much the same way with commercials on the T.V. You can hear the commercials all the way in the kitchen or bathroom, blaring at such loud decibels that you go deaf anyway. Finally, I started seeing other logos with a different look. They are smarter or clever in some way. In an earlier post I talked about the MIB logo. It is squarish, but it is also clever. When I was in Wisconsin over the Labor day weekend, I got to see a lot of signs. Far too many of what I call "generic" logo's. I would rather see more subtle and creative logos. Shouting at someone to get their attention all the time tends to turn a deaf ear or shall we say a blind eye. When there's so many of the same thing nobody is seen. I have several photos here that show you what I mean. Some are clever and some are not. I tried to use the Identifont to learn the typeface of for Busey but it didn't work. I would have thought that this would be easy. I guess not. In my opinion, maybe shouting at a possible client is not going to help. There's a lot more tools in a graphic artist or a typographers bag of ideas than to just loudly yell in a sign form. I hope if we're serious about design, then looking for other ways to catch a customer's attention is better. We need to use good typefaces that are not only clear and readable, but are innovative and represents the business better. The column in the B is clever. It is also associated with tradition, classic characteristics, and is conservative. It is ancient and solid, associated with money. That is every thing a bank wants to present to the client. The US Bank is trying, but it is just not there. The pocket or upside down house just doesn't work. The typeface is just like so many others, generic! It tries for the all "American" look by using the red, white and blue. The red behind the US also tries to make it seem like it has more authority that others, but leaves the opportunity flat with the pocket symbol. One might ask who's pocketing the money in this economy. Universal uses the "blocky" style with outlining, giving it just a bit more boldness and orderly appearance. Then they wrap it around a world globe and it rotates too. Very cool and very expensive!!! What do you think? Can we change the look of tomorrow's designs and choices!

2010-09-07T22:05:00.000-07:00

Well, who can resist this one. I saved it as a gif file, but I can't the MIB is various colors. It is all white lettering. I love the little men in the I. The designer cleverly make the "I" like it was a door. Somebody had way to much fun doing this. They did a good job using black and white for not only contrast but also keeping in mind the theme in the movie. The big bold typeface is very appropriately used, creating a solid in your face attitude. The typeface is Franklin Gothic standard heavy or that's what Identifont says. Overall, a very masculine, cold and aggressive typeface. It fits the movie.

2010-09-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

Well now who doesn't recognize this one! I love signs and always take pictures of them for my albums while on vacation. This was an amazing place to find signs with all kinds of typefaces. This is the first one you see going in, announcing to the world with all it's fancy script, that you have arrived. The style is so distinctive that it fairly dances for you. It holds your attention as the eye has to study all the turns as it changes in weight from one letter to the next. This is a case where Disney did not spare the dollar and thought about what they wanted in a logo. When you look at any product from them that logo is there. Because of the excitement that Disney is known for the Logo had to be as distinctive and energetic as the cartoon characters that made Disney famous. I think they have done this very well. The word "World" at the end is almost a disappointment, but it does give the eye a gentle rest. The rest of the type calms down and is more conservative. This cleverly moves your eye back up for the more spontaneous Walt Disney type. I wonder if this is a real typeface or was it created only for Disney's logo?

History of the ITC Galliard Typeface

2010-09-01T15:31:00.000-07:00

ITC Galliard typeface has had a long history in the making. Robert Granjon, a letter cutter, started it in the 16^th century. He was the son of a Parisian printer by the name of Jean Granjon. As was the tradition in those times, Robert was trained in his family business of printing. He traveled throughout Europe designing type for one city and then moving on to the next. It’s no wonder that he developed a beautiful typeface set and left behind some 400 punches and matrices that would become the beginnings of the ITC Galliard typeface that we see today. In 1957, Mike Parker studied the antique typographic set at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp. This was the beginning of a lifelong desire to see this wonderful typeface made available to designer today. Parker would later become Director of Typographic Development at Mergenthaler Linotype in the mid-1960’s. A designer during the 1950’s, Matthew Carter, was awestruck by the typeface while he was interning at the Enschede Font Foundry, in Haarlem. Carter was helping his father, an Oxford University Press archivist, clean and study the Granjon typographic set at the Museum in Antwerp. At that time, Carter didn’t have access to the technology to efficiently be able to recreate the type set into a useable form. In 1965, Carter joined Mergenthaler Linotype. Now both Parker and Carter’s dream would combine to create a stylized reinterpretation of Granjon’s antique typeface. However, it would still take another 16 years to produce a strong historical typeface that was useable and contemporary. In 1978, the typeface was named Galliard and was an instant success. The Galliard typeface gained the attention of Aaron Burns. He was the president of the International Typeface Corporation. He, like others, loved the typeface enough to pursue it and add it to the ITC typeface library. It wasn’t until 1981, that ITC gained exclusive rights to Galliard. Burns announced the typeface in December 1981 Issue of U & Ic. Magazine even before it was approved. It has taken four centuries going from Granjon’s first design to Carter’s reinterpretation to create this beautiful, versatile, timeless typeface, Galliard.

Logo Changes?

2010-08-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

This is the old Logo. I saw that the restaurant had moved and the new sign was put up just a few buildings over. I thought that this was an interesting opportunity to blog on. In the first design the multi colored letters are too busy and cluttered. I don't think that it adds to the design. But when I looked at a flier recently I saw that many of the Mexican restaurants in it, in Champaign, had also done this multi colored idea in their logo's. It may be a client preference?? I do like the clarity of the words MEXICAN CUISINE in the green band. The 2 styles of type fit well together. Los is also direct and strong, fitting well.
The new logo is shown below. I like the new colors in "ZARAPES" much better and they still flipped the red in the "s" for a little eye catching effect like the first sign had. Also, the brighter colors make the typeface show up better for easier reading at a distance. Moving from 2 lighted panels to 1 presents a nicer and cleaner look. I don't know if I like the larger type for MEXICAN CUISINE or if I liked the longer sign size in the first sign. It may be throwing off my visual perception. Finally, I think the "LOS" is lost this time around. So my question is 'what do you think about the 2 signs? Did they do better the second time around?'