Project 3: Types and Hierarchy
Print/Illustration
2019
Individual Project
About the Project
The project was done as an assignment to demonstrate a certain typeface (in this case Times) in the Communication Design Fundamentals class. The poster was intended to show the typeface’s unique qualities, as well as its history and modern usage. The final product was in the format of a printed 10'x16' type specimen poster. The constraints were that the poster only uses types or basic shapes, with minimal use of color.
Project Process
Before I embarked on the creation of the poster, I conducted some initial research on the history and usage of the Times typeface, as shown below.
Typeface Research
Times belongs to the Transitional Serif family of typefaces. It was commissioned by the newspaper Times of London, one of the world’s most popular newspapers at the time, to replace the dated 19th century font in 1931, and designed by Stanley Morison. He used an older font named “Plantin” as the basis of his design.
Times has short ascenders and descenders, and a large x-height. These characteristics allow for a shorter line height suited for printing on newspapers, and uses space very economically.
It quickly grew after its creation and became the de facto standard in all publications such as newspapers and corporate documents and contracts, partially due to its legibility and its availability as the default font in many printers and typesetting software, such as its use as the default font in Microsoft Word. Even in the 21st century, the Times font family remains the top in terms of daily use around the world.
Poster Design
Initially, due to the quotidianness of Times, I did not generate many useful concepts or initial designs for the poster, as seen in the above sketches. This is partly due to the fact that the more “interesting” concepts for the poster often would make Times look out of place, as it is most commonly used in official publications and formal written documents. I also considered designing the poster in the format of an old newspaper or contract, though I dismissed the idea due to it potentially looking too cliché, as it is probably the first idea one thinks of when one thinks of Times.
After some experimenting, I later settled on the above design with semi-transparent instances of the word “Times” as the central concept, with heavy emphasis on depicting modern usage in a “show, not tell” way. However, I received feedback during the interim crit that the use of color when comparing Times and Futura was out of place and made Futura seem like the typeface being demonstrated. I also received feedback on the overall structure/outline of the top half of the poster as well as the sample typeface document (the Potsdam Declaration) being out of place both in terms of visual design and also content.
For the final design, I improved the structure of the top half of the poster by using sequentially shorter lines as well as changing indentation and reducing variation in font weight and size within lines. To improve the dramaturgy and demonstration of modern usage, I also used Chicago citation style for the year and author of the font, as well as putting at the bottom of the page high-school essay formatting instructions and a passage on line spacing to parody the fact that most high-school essays require students to follow a strict format in terms of font. Last but not the least, colored text was eliminated from the poster to due the typical lack of color when the Times typeface is used.
