Typeface History and Features
Didot was created by Firmin Didot from the French printing and type making Didot family. It was revived in the last century when fashion magazines including Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar decided to do a major makeover and use Didot as its cover font. Didot is a title display font. It is signified by its strong verticals and “hairline” serifs, giving its unique elegance but also a decrease in readability. When used for smaller texts such as in text blocks, Didot requires “optical sizing”, where the letters are adjusted so that the eye will not focus on the strong verticals only.
Design Considerations
The left design is my attempt to signify “spotlight” shining onto the poster. I used a curved line of text to bring everything together. I wanted words outside and inside of the circles with inverted colors to add contrast, maintain readability, and suggest the ease of the spotlight moving around on the poster.
The right design is meant to be a page from a magazine or newspaper. I wanted the font name to be central, and a overlapped the letters for a better contrast between the strong verticals and thin horizontals.
After the inter crit, I took some advice and changed a couple things: For the newspaper poster, I took out overlapping 1784 for readability. For the spotlight poster, I inverted the colors to better represent a light shining onto a dark poster, made “DIDOT” larger to emphasize the font name, adjusted the curved text for better readability, and changed the poster to a more interesting “expensive-looking” burgundy-and-mint-green color.
I ultimately chose the spotlight poster because it is more particular about suggesting “the fashion world”.
