51–262 Type & Hierarchy Project 3 documentation
Project 3 was to create a type specimen poster by using scale, weight, linespacing, alignment and placing emphasis on both type and hierarchy.
The typeface I got is Helvetica. After doing research and collecting some background information, I learned that Helvetica has some interesting characteristics such as being simple, neutral, and transparent. It originated in Switzerland in 1957 and it was designed to be neutral that is supposed to impose no feeling on the audience and create no meaning. Designed during the post-war time period, Helvetica served as the opposite of the fancy and decorative typeface that covered the majority of cooperated materials and advertisements during the same time period.
Because of the features of Helvetica, I decided to keep my design simple to align with its characteristics. And I started with drawing sketches.
The initial design is largely associated with the capital letter “H”. I wanted to keep the letter H salient to create hierarchy and emphasis, which is an effective and simple way to draw attention from the audience. The letter “H” also stands for Helvetica.
The bottom two sketches have Helvetica clearly presented and I wanted to split the poster into two parts to create a sense of grouping and hierarchy in this way. Both sketches have the headline and text separated.
Later I moved onto digital iterations.
The original digital design kept the capital letter “H” and placed the rest of the word into a right -angle shape to echo the flat edges and reflect on the typeface’s feature of being plain and simple.
However, the background information paragraph has a a ragged margin that creates a shape and draws too much attention.
I was trying to play with the information paragraph to see where it best fits.
In this version, I deleted the quote since it was not necessary and important information. I rotated the “H” more to create a more obvious angle, and I adjusted the font size, space between letters to reduce the ragged margin. I played with the placement of the paragraph and found the best place to fit. This design has the paragraph aligned with the “tica” and extend the shape and create more angles and edges.
This is the final version of my poster. I added a character set on the top to align with the letter “H” to extend the original shape it was forming. And it also fill in the white space to make it more dynamic. My instructor Saumya introduced me to the Swiss Design Style, which inspired me to design this final piece. The Swiss Design Style uses various acute angles and lines. I also worked with MacKenzie (the other instructor) to adjust the alignment and fix the margin of the paragraph. I also separated the information paragraph into four parts based on the meaning to make it easier to read.
