CDF Project 3, Part 2: Type & Hierarchy
Print
2019
Individual Project
About the Project
The objective of this project is to create a type specimen poster for an assigned typeface using principles of typography we have learned in class. The final poster is meant to showcase unique characteristics of the typeface and include the inventor’s name as well as the date of creation.
The typeface I was assigned for this project is Garamond.
Research
The typeface Garamond is named after Claude Garamond, a sixteenth-century Parisian engraver known for his Roman designs. Claude Garamond engraved punch-cutters and helped to establish the old-style of serif letter design in the 16th century. The creation of the modern typeface Garamond started in the late renaissance period (around 1540–1561) and was formally developed from Claude Garamond’s punches after his death. Modern revivals of Garamond include both recreations, reinterpretations, and redesigns. Garamond falls under the classification of “old-style” and is often described as “classic and elegant” with strokes reminiscent of hand calligraphy. This typeface is often used in printing books (such as Harry Potter), maintaining its classic and professional reputation.
Characteristics of Garamond:
- low x-height (uppercase letters appear very large next to lowercase letters)
- top serifs on ascenders have a downward slope
- top serifs on ascenders rise above the cap height
- medium contrast
- rounded serifs
- ‘e’ has a small eye
- leg of capital ‘R’ extends past bowl
- legs of capital ‘M’ splay out slightly
Inspiration
I didn’t quite know where to start with my typeface poster so I did a bit of searching online and found the following posters:
I really liked the black-and-white, simple yet high-contrast look of a lot of the posters I saw. These posters all do a good job of displaying special features of their typeface while also strategically putting relevant information on there. This was super helpful in my approach to designing my own poster.
Initial Sketches
Because Garamond is a serif font with many special characteristics like the small eye of the lowercase ‘e’ and the extension of the leg of the capital ‘R’, I really wanted to accentuate that. In addition, I found the lowercase “g” to be one of the most interesting letters in this typeface, and it worked out great that it’s the first letter of Garamond, so putting a big “g” shape on the poster didn’t feel random. I played around with a couple different ideas on how to highlight the special features, like labelling the letters of Claude Garamond’s name with simple lines extending from the characters or circling the special features with dotted lines on floating letters to point them out. The italic ampersand in Garamond is also very unique, so I attempted to showcase it in a couple of my sketches. Garamond is often used in printing books and has a lot of professional as well as educational use-cases, so I thought it could be interesting to place words on a backdrop with a cap-line, a baseline, and an x-line like children’s alphabet practice worksheets. This would also demonstrate the low x-height well, so I sketched out this idea in the second sketch above.
The sketches with the large “g” really resonated with me. I liked that the scale of it makes it more of a shape than a letter and created a really interesting structure when it reached from edge to edge. It also created meaning for the empty space — rather than just letters floating in space, the letters had a special home, a hole in one of the loops of the “g”, to reside in.
Digital Iterations
Pre-Interim Crit
These were the digital versions I developed based on some of my sketches. I really wanted to keep the compositions black-and-white to really focus on the typeface itself, but did play around with a muted sky blue as an accent color to emphasize certain features of specific letters. I played with positive and negative space a lot as well as testing out boldness and italics. I ended up choosing the first “large g” poster and the landscape “book” poster to show at Interim Crit to get some feedback.
Post-Interim Crit
I received more positive feedback for the vertical-orientation “large g” poster at Interim Crit, so I decided to pursue this design for my final composition and drop the “book” design.
Feedback I received:
- the big “g” creates a sort of flow from the date down and through the poster which is nice
- nice use of negative space within holes of big “g”
- colored special features with dotted lines circling it is done well
- black text “Claude Garamond parisian punch-cutter” on the white of big “g” cuts off flow of the curves/loops
- sizing and amount of text in top loop of “g” is a little awkward (“a timeless masterpiece”, “classic & elegant”, “old-style”)
- color of labels on special features of letters “e”, “R”, and “h” makes them hard to see
- size of the 3 letters showcased on the bottom may detract from the name of the typeface and focus of this poster
Final Composition
For my final composition, I decided to move Claude Garamond’s name off of the large white “g” so it doesn’t disrupt the flow. Instead, I put “Claude” above the font name — now “Garamond” serves as both the name of the font this poster is about as well as the last name of the creator. I also changed the original 3 lines of words in the top loop of the “g” to be a paragraph — this allowed for the font to be a smaller size which really helped reduce the awkwardness of that space. I made the three letters in the bottom loop of the “g” smaller, so as not to detract from the title “Garamond” and to help establish the hierarchy of the poster: the name of the typeface is of utmost importance, then the date and special features, then the paragraph of text giving more details about the font. I also made the date and Garamond’s first name “Claude” blue — the new additions of the accent color helps to tie everything together and create a path for the viewer’s eyes to follow: from the top right corner’s date to the paragraph in the first loop, to Claude Garamond’s name, down to the special features in the bottom loop.
